Countless volumes have been written trying to explain the mystery of three persons in one true God, leaving us to resort to metaphors such as the three-leaf clover to try to comprehend the Divinity. Many of us grew up with the quintessential pyramidal Trinity structure of God at the top and Son and Spirit in opposite corners. But what if we looked at this ‘mystery’ from a different perspective? What if we shifted our language of God as a being towards the concept of God as love? What if we focused more on the relationship within the Trinity versus the persons of the Trinity? What if stopped looking at God as a noun…and instead considered God as a verb? Check it out…

1. Deacon Jim Knipper Page 1
26 May 2024 Trinity Sunday Princeton, NJ
Today we celebrate Trinity Sunday – which is one of the few Feasts of the Liturgical year that
celebrates a reality and a doctrine rather than an event. On Trinity Sunday we give glory and praise to
God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit – three divine and distinct beings and at the same time,
one true God. Interestingly, while all three persons are found throughout the bible, the word ‘Trinity’
never appears in the New or Old Testament, rather it was first coined in the late second century by
Tertullian and later instituted by Pope Gregory IX in 828. It took another 500 years before the
celebration of Trinity Sunday was made universal by Pope John XXII.
Indeed, throughout the centuries, countless volumes have been written on this doctrine of three beings
in one God. Growing up attending Catholic grammar school, I can remember the Dominican nuns
resorting to using metaphors to explain three beings in one, such as St. Patrick’s classical shamrock.
But the conclusion always came down to the fact that it is a “mystery.”
So…what if we looked at this ‘mystery’ from a different perspective? What if we shifted our language of
God as a being towards the concept of God as love? What if we focused more on the relationship
within the Trinity versus the persons of the Trinity? What if stopped looking at God as a noun…and
instead considered God as a verb? For this is the stance in the 3rd
and 4th
centuries that the
Cappadocian Fathers took, which was later adopted by Councils of the Church. Their Trinitarian
theology says that God is a “circular” rotation known as perichoresis. And the best translation of this
Greek work is “dancing”. The way that the early Christians looked at the three persons in God is a total
outpouring and perfect receiving among three intimate partners. And that whatever is going on in God –
Father, Son and Holy Spirit – it is like a dance and God is not the dancer – rather God is the dance
itself.
When I studied Organic Chemistry at the University of Scranton, we spent many lectures on the fact
that besides the inherent energy in atoms, there is a great amount of stabilizing potential energy that
exists between them…and that this chemical energy comes from the dance or the flow between the
atoms. So too, the Greek fathers did not focus on the quintessential pyramidal Trinity structure that
many of us grew up with – Father, Son and Spirit – but their metaphor dealt with a circular sense of flow
and movement of love between Father who generates, the Son who is begotten and the Holy Spirit who
proceeds.
And it was the gospels of the Easter Season that reminded us that one reason God sent forth his son is
so that we would know that we are all invited to join into this divine flow. The same flow that starts at
the very beginning of our Christian life when the baptismal waters were poured over our head while the
minister intoned the Trinitarian blessing of Father, Son, and Spirit.
As a father and grandfather, the best example I can give you for what the flow looks like or feels like –
is when you look into the face of an 18-month-old child, or younger. For they have yet to reach the age
of where they have begun to turn off the flow with the ‘no’s’ of the terrible 2’s – and thus all they
recognize is flow. When they make eye contact and smile at you – you can’t help but sense and feel
God flowing through you. Perhaps that is why Christ said that we must be like children in order to enter
the Kingdom of Heaven – we have to let go of what we hold onto and take the sacred plunge and join in
God’s flow…to be in relationship with God and with each other.

2. Deacon Jim Knipper Page 2
It was Pope Francis who said, “The human person grows more, matures more and is sanctified more to
the extent that he or she enters into relationship, going out from themselves to live in communion with
God, and with others. [For] everything is interconnected, and this invites us to develop a spirituality of
that global solidarity which flows from the mystery of the Trinity.”
Another word that describes this relationship is ‘kinship.’ It is the Jesuit Greg Boyle who writes, “We
need to inch ourselves closer to creating a community of kinship such that God might recognize it.
Soon we imagine, with God, this circle of compassion. Then we imagine no one standing outside of that
circle, moving ourselves closer to the margins so that the margins themselves will be erased. We stand
there with those whose dignity has been denied. We locate ourselves with the poor and the powerless
and the voiceless. At the edges, we join the easily despised and the readily left out. We stand with the
demonized so that the demonizing will stop. We situate ourselves right next to the disposable so that
the day will come when we stop throwing people away.”
What we often miss is that this Divine Flow, which empowers kinship and relationships cannot be
earned by anything we do – meaning that the flow is always there, filled with mercy, always present and
available to everyone, without any exceptions – all we have to do is to be like the 18 month old toddler
and to be open and to allow it to happen by letting go and accepting this outpouring of God’s love.
For when Christ healed the lame, the sick, the sinner – there was no shame, no judgment, no
exclusions - he simply asked – ‘Do you want to be healed?’ Do you want to be forgiven? – they would
answer – yes…he would touch them…and the flow happened – freely given. It is when we try to
exclude others and ourselves through hatred, through deceit, through a cold spirit, through the barriers
we try to hide behind - that we block the flow, and the nature of sin is realized.
In her great tome on the Trinity, Catherine LaCugna wrote: “any notion of God as not giving, not
outpouring, not self-surrendering, not totally loving is a theological impossibility and absurdity. God only
and always loves. You cannot reverse, slow, or limit an overflowing waterwheel of divine compassion
and mercy and a love stronger than death. It goes in only one, constant, eternal direction—toward ever
more abundant and creative life!”
So, on this Trinity Sunday we can continue to try to comprehend the mystery of three persons as one –
or we can focus on the relational dance and kinship the Trinity invites us to enter. The invitation is there
for all to simply let go and give thanks and praise to our God who loves us and is present to us and who
invites us to join in God’s dance, God’s love, God’s movement, God’s flow of Father, Son and Spirit.
For we are a people called to be a part of the flow….so that the flow can move through us, with us, in
us and shared with those around us.
Changing the image of God from nouns to verbs may radically change the viewpoint you and I may
have about the Trinity. But changing the way we live our lives from being a spectator to one who takes
that scared plunge to join in God’s divine flow – that, my sisters and brothers, will change our lives –
forever.