Recent Articles, Trinity Sunday, June 15, 2025
“Angels at Mamre” – Rublev
Trinity Sunday
Remembering St. Barnabas, June 11
Lectionary Trinity Sunday, Year C
Visual Lectionary, June 15
Commentary, June 15
Trinity Sunday
What the Trinity and what it is not
The Importance of Trinity Sunday
The Trinity in Nature
Visualizing the Trinity
Nicene Creed, line by line
Trinity Sunday Hymn – Holy, Holy Holy
Trinity Sunday – the Trinity Knot
Father’s Day and Juneteenth
Father’s Day Prayer
What is Juneteenth and Why celebrated on June 19?
Remembering St. Barnabas, June 11
St. Barnabus Curing the Poor – Paolo Veronese.
Collect for his day -“Grant, O God, that we may follow the example of your faithful servant Barnabas, who, seeking not his own renown but the wellbeing of your Church, gave generously of his life and substance for the relief of the poor and the spread of the Gospel; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.”
Who is St. Barnabus and why do we celebrate a feast day for him ?
Three reasons why Barnabas is a famous saint:
1. He was one of the most highly respected leaders in the early church. Born on the island of Cyprus (which means “copper” because of the mines there), his name was Joseph, but the apostles called him Barnabas (which means “son of encouragement”).
2. When Saul (as Paul was still known) appeared in Jerusalem after his conversion, he was spurned by the Christians he had persecuted. Yet when Barnabas “took him by the hand, and brought him to the Apostles”, and spoke up for him, Paul was immediately accepted (Acts 9:27).
He was Paul’s mentor and advocate and was the leader when he and Paul were sent off on the first missionary journey. But Paul’s personality and fervor soon dominated.
Where it had been “Barnabas and Paul”, it was now “Paul and Barnabas”. (See Acts, Chapter 13.)
3. Barnabas was so vital to the spread of the Gospel that he earned the highest accolade that any Christian can receive; “. . . . he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith”. (Acts 11:24)
Around 49, at a council in Jerusalem, St Peter helped to carry the argument of Paul and Barnabas that Gentile Christians need not be circumcised.
It is odd, therefore, to discover Barnabas and Peter siding against Paul in refusing to eat with the Gentiles (Gal 2:13). Was this a matter of personal sympathy? The last we hear of Barnabas is of his falling out with Paul over the latter’s refusal to accept John Mark as a travelling companion.
“So sharp was their disagreement, that they separated from each other; Barnabas took Mark with him, and sailed off to Cyprus.” (Acts 15:36-40)
So Barnabas passes from the written record. Tradition holds that he preached in Alexandria and Rome, before being martyred at Salamis.
Commentary, Trinity Sunday, Year C
I. Theme – The Trinity points to the mystery of unity and diversity in God’s experience and in the ongoing creative process
Holy Trinity– Anton Rublev (1430)
The lectionary readings are here or individually:
First Reading – Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31 Psalm – Psalm 8 Epistle –Romans 5:1-5 Gospel – John 16:12-15
The first reading reminds us of the holiness and wisdom of God’s personal mystery. The second reading invites praise for God’s glory, which we hope to share through our cooperation with God’s Spirit at work in us. In today’s gospel, Jesus promises the Spirit, who will convict the world and guide the disciples into truth.
Our language about God springs from our experience of God’s activity and, at best, only points to divine mystery. Though we know that all our language about God is metaphorical and that all our most comprehensive explanations fall short of God’s essential mystery, nevertheless we continue to be lured by God’s holy mystery.
Though we freely admit that God is beyond our rational capacity, we also recognize that God is not beyond our experience. Our metaphors move from what we know best to what we experience as lesser known. Our touchstone to the mystery of the Trinity is first of all the mystery of our own self. Despite our most persistent efforts to “know our self,” there is always so much more of our self that escapes our scrutiny.
And the mystery of human selfhood spills over into our encounters with the mysterious others in our lives. Even those closest to us–our parents, children, spouses and friends–remain somehow other and surprising.
How do we know God? The question is not merely academic, but influences our deepest belief and behavior. The Trinity is not a heavenly riddle but an ongoing revelation, filling and blessing us and our days.
The Trinity, along with the Incarnation and the divine presence in history, is one of the great antidotes to the tendency of some Christians to see God as apathetic, a-historical, and unchanging in contrast to the passionate, evolving, and transitory world of time and space.
This lively God has not decided everything in advance without consulting the creaturely world, nor has the living God imaged the whole unfolding of history in one eternal, unchanging vision. The Trinitarian God suggested by today’s passages embodies loving fidelity through intimate and changing relationships with the unfolding world and its inhabitants
God is constantly doing something new, and God is constantly being revealed to us in new ways. God is still speaking through the acts of creation, which Wisdom (which also has at times been interpreted as the Holy Spirit in the New Testament) is part. Maybe even the Trinity falls short in showing us the way God is made known to us, but we have used it throughout Christian history
Visual Lectionary Vanderbilt, Trinity Sunday, June 15, 2025
Click here to view in a new window.
Trinity Sunday
Trinity Sunday, the first Sunday after Pentecost, honors the Holy Trinity—the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Although the word “trinity” does not appear in Scripture, it is taught in Matthew 28:18-20 and 2 Corinthians 13:14 (and many other biblical passages). It lasts only one day, which is symbolic of the unity of the Trinity.
Trinity Sunday is one of the few feasts of the Christian Year that celebrates a reality and doctrine rather than an event or person. The Eastern Churches have no tradition of Trinity Sunday, arguing that they celebrate the Trinity every Sunday. The Western Churches did not celebrate it under the 14th century under an edict of John XXII
Since that time Western Christians have observed the Sunday after Pentecost as a time to pause and reflect on the Christian understanding of God
The intention of the creeds was to affirm the following core beliefs:
-the essential unity of God
-the complete humanity and essential divinity of Jesus
-the essential divinity of the Spirit
Understanding of all scriptural doctrine is by faith which comes through the work of the Holy Spirit; therefore, it is appropriate that this mystery is celebrated the first Sunday after the Pentecost, when the outpouring of the Holy Spirit first occurred.
The Trinity is best described in the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, commonly called the Nicene Creed from 325AD.
Essentially the Trinity is the belief that God is one in essence (Greek "ousia"), but distinct in person (Greek "hypostasis"). The Greek word for person means "that which stands on its own," or "individual reality," but does not mean the persons of the Trinity are three human persons. Therefore we believe that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are somehow distinct from one another (not divided though), yet completely united in will and essence.
The Son is said to be eternally begotten of the Father, while the Holy Spirit is said to proceed from the Father through the Son. Each member of the Trinity interpenetrates one another, and each has distinct roles in creation and redemption, which is called the Divine economy. For instance, God the Father created the world through the Son and the Holy Spirit hovered over the waters at creation.
The Importance of Trinity Sunday
Article from Building Faith – “Three Teaching Points of Trinity Sunday”
God is Love Because God is Trinity. “In the First Letter of John, we find one of the most comforting and profound claims about God, “So we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is Love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” (I John 4:16). For this to be true, for God to be love, completely and perfectly, God must also be Trinity. For there to be love you need three things; the lover, the beloved, and the love or union shared between the two. Only in the revelation of God as Trinity can we see that God is love.
The Trinity Is To Be Loved, Not Solved. “Look again at our verse from First John, “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” John is not trying to help us solve a puzzle; instead, he wants us to see that the Triune God has created us so that we might share in his love, that we might abide in God and God in us.
The Trinity is the Central Mystery of the Christian Faith and Life “When we are baptized, it is in the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Our prayer is Trinitarian in shape; for example, the collects in the Book of Common Prayer (BCP pg. 211) are addressed to the Father, through the Son, in unity with the Holy Spirit. Many of the postures we use in worship and prayer are Trinitarian; the sign of the cross, for example, invokes the Name of the Triune God. The whole of our lives as Christians is a participation in the mystery of the Holy Trinity.
Visualizing the Trinity
The Trinity is most commonly seen in Christian art with the Spirit represented by a dove, as specified in the Gospel accounts of the Baptism of Christ; he is nearly always shown with wings outspread. However depictions using three human figures appear occasionally in most periods of art.
The Father and the Son are usually differentiated by age, and later by dress, but this too is not always the case. The usual depiction of the Father as an older man with a white beard may derive from the biblical Ancient of Days, which is often cited in defense of this sometimes controversial representation.
The Son is often shown at the Father’s right hand.[Acts 7:56 ] He may be represented by a symbol—typically the Lamb or a cross—or on a crucifix, so that the Father is the only human figure shown at full size. In early medieval art, the Father may be represented by a hand appearing from a cloud in a blessing gesture, for example in scenes of the Baptism of Christ.
Later, in the West, the Throne of Mercy (or “Throne of Grace”) became a common depiction. In this style, the Father (sometimes seated on a throne) is shown supporting either a crucifix[111] or, later, a slumped crucified Son, similar to the Pietà (this type is distinguished in German as the Not Gottes)[112] in his outstretched arms, while the Dove hovers above or in between them. This subject continued to be popular until the 18th century at least.
By the end of the 15th century, larger representations, other than the Throne of Mercy, became effectively standardised, showing an older figure in plain robes for the Father, Christ with his torso partly bare to display the wounds of his Passion, and the dove above or around them. In earlier representations both Father, especially, and Son often wear elaborate robes and crowns. Sometimes the Father alone wears a crown, or even a papal tiara.
In the 17th century there was also a brief vogue for representing the Trinity as three identical men (example), conceivably influenced by Hospitality of Abraham images. This period coincided with the Spanish ascendancy in Latin America and the Philipines, so examples can be found in older churches in those areas. One odd example represents the Trinity this way in an image of the Coronation of Mary.
Soon, however, this type of Trinity image was condemned and supplanted by one in which the Father is represented as an older person, the Son as a younger one seated at his right and shouldering a large cross, and the Holy Spirit as a dove that hovers above the space between them. In the latter type the Spirit is represented as casting light upon the other two persons (symbolically, making it possible for humans to know them), but in one unusual variant he emanates from both their mouths simultaneously, a reference to the Latin trinitarian theology in which the Spirit “proceeds from the Father and the Son” (a phrase from the Roman Catholic text of the Nicene Creed that reads simply “proceeds from the Father” in the Orthodox and Anglican versions).
Nicene Creed – line by line
We say this creed every Sunday in the Eucharist service. It is the central creed or belief of Christianity and goes back to 325AD. On Trinity Sunday it is good to break it down into its essential meaning.
Walls of Nicea
“I believe in one God“
The Greek, Latin and proper English translations begin with “I” believe, because reciting the creed is an individual expression of belief.
“the Father Almighty “
God the Father is the first person, within the Godhead. The Father is the “origin” or “source” of the Trinity. From Him, came somehow the other two. God the Father is often called “God Unbegotten” in early Christian thought.
“Maker of heaven and earth, And of all things visible and invisible: “
Everything that is was created by God. Some early sects, the Gnostics and Marcionites, believed that God the Father created the spirit world, but that an “evil” god (called the demiurge) created the similarly evil material world.
Trinity Sunday- Hymn of the Week – “Holy, Holy, Holy”
Reginald Heber (1783 – 1826) was an English clergyman, traveller, man of letters and hymn-writer who, after working as a country parson for 16 years, served as the Anglican Bishop of Calcutta until his sudden death at the age of 42.
Reginald Heber wrote "Holy, Holy, Holy" while serving as vicar of Hodnet, Shropshire, England. He was the first to compile a hymnal ordering hymns around the church calendar. Wanting to celebrate a triune God, Heber wrote "Holy, Holy, Holy" for Trinity Sunday–a day that reaffirmed the doctrine of the Trinity and was observed eight Sundays after Easter. The hymn was first published in 1826.
Years later, John Dykes composed the tune Nicaea especially for Heber’s "Holy, Holy, Holy."
Trinity Sunday – the Trinity Knot
Trinity Sunday on our church calendar is the only Sunday in the year devoted to a doctrine of the church.
The Trinity Knot is also known as ‘Triquetra’ which comes from the Latin for ‘three-cornered’. It has been found on Indian heritage sites that are over 5,000 years old. It has also been found on carved stones in Northern Europe dating from the 8th century AD and on early Germanic coins. It developed during Ireland’s Insular Art movement around the 7th century
It’s likely the Trinity knot had religious meaning for pagans and it also bears a resemblance to the Valknut which is a symbol associated with Odin, a revered God in Norse mythology. According to the Celts, the most important things in the world came in threes; three domains (earth, sea and sky), three elements, three stages of life etc. It is also possible that the Triquetra signified the lunar and solar phases. During excavations of various archaeological sites from the Celtic era, a number of Trinity knot symbols have been found alongside solar and lunar symbols.
For Christians, the Trinity knot consists of three corners, some designs also include the circle in the center. The three points of the Trinity knot represent the Holy Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit and the circle eternal life
A Father’s Day Prayer, June 15, 2025
We give thanks for fathers.
We give thanks for those fathers who have striven to balance the demands of work, marriage, and children with an honest awareness of both joy and sacrifice. We give thanks for those fathers who, lacking a good model for a father, have worked to become good fathers.
We give thanks for those fathers who by their own account were not always there for their children, but who continue to offer those children, now grown, their love and support. We pray for those fathers who have been wounded by the neglect and hostility of their children.
We give thanks for those fathers who, despite divorce, have remained in their children’s lives. We give thanks for those fathers who have adopted children, and whose love and support has offered healing.
We give thanks for those fathers who, as stepfathers, freely choose the obligation of fatherhood and have earned their stepchildren’s love and respect. We give thanks for those fathers who have lost children to death, and who, in spite of their grief, continue to hold those children in their hearts.
We give thanks for those men who have no children, but cherish the next generation as if they were their own. We give thanks for those men who have ‘fathered’ us in their roles as mentors and guides.
We give thanks for those men who are about to become fathers; may they openly delight in their children. And we give thanks for those fathers who have died, but who live on in our memory and whose love continues to nurture us.
We give thanks for fathers.
Amen
Adapted from a prayer by Kirk Loadman-Copeland