My dear Friends: 

HAPPY TRINITY SUNDAY!

Some years ago, while travelling in Turkey with friends, we were invited by a family to the town of Iznik. This beautiful town sits in a ‘paradisiacal’, fertile, valley on the banks of a vast lake. The people of Iznik are renowned for their artistry in the colours and designs of their tile making! Iznik’s historical name is Nicaea/Νίκαια (Nicaea).

It was there, in the year 325, at the Council of Nicaea, that the early Church Fathers tried to express the awesome beauty of the Holy Trinity. This was in the ‘formulation/promulgation’ of the Nicene Creed which we often recite on a Sunday. I can only try to describe the way in which God’s love for each one of us is embodied in the Father, manifested in His Son, Jesus, and fuses us as one in, and by, the Holy Spirit. The Holy Trinity is a fusion of Love! A little like an Iznik tile! The clay, colour and glaze are fused in the bonding heat of the artisan’s oven. The Holy Spirit is that boding heat which fuses us into one with the Father, Son and Spirit who love us passionately.

I believe that an essential part of our Life’s journey is to experience that fusion with the Divine. This is not just the prerogative of the ‘saint’ or ‘mystic’. It is the inner yearning of every soul! St. Augustine of Hippo expressed it in the words, You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rest in you. This same feeling was experienced by the great Sufi mystic, Jalāl adDīn Rūmī when he said, I once had a thousand desires, but in my one desire to know you all else melted away.

I guess this awesomely beautiful feast of the Holy Trinity, on this Sunday of the Holy Trinity, is not just about saying a prayer of belief, but opening ourselves to experiencing that lifechanging ONENESS with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

How many times have we gone into automatic pilot as we started a meeting with…In the name of the….! Our fusion with the God of Love, in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, becomes a life-changing event! Our hearts, souls and lives become one with Love, Compassion, Forgiveness, Peace and Justice. We become beacons of Hope in the most challenging of times. We become sources of the Divine Physician’s healing in the most wounding of times. We become aware, in the words of Rumi that, Each moment contains a hundred messages from God. To every cry of "Oh God!" He answers a hundred times: "I am Here."

Remember me as loving you,

Fr. Antony