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The Mystery of the

“The great of the Church St. spent over 30 years working on his treatise De Trinitate [about the Holy Trinity], endeavoring to conceive an intelligible explanation for the mystery of the Trinity. There is the story of St Augustine with the boy on the beach. Augustine meets a boy on the beach. He was walking by the seashore one day contemplating and trying to understand the mystery of the Holy Trinity when he saw a small boy running back and forth from the water to a spot on the seashore. The boy was using a sea shell to carry the water from the ocean and place it into a small hole in the sand. The of Hippo approached him and asked, “My boy, what are doing?” “I am trying to bring all the sea into this hole,” the boy replied with a sweet smile. “But that is impossible, my dear child, the hole cannot contain all that water” said Augustine. 2

The boy paused in his work, stood up, looked into the eyes of the , and replied, “It is no more impossible than what you are trying to do – comprehend the immensity of the mystery of the Holy Trinity with your small intelligence.”

The Saint was absorbed by such a keen response from that child, and turned his eyes from him for a short while. When he glanced down to ask him something else, the boy had vanished.

Some say that it was an Angel sent by God to teach Augustine a lesson on pride in learning. Others affirm it was the Christ Child Himself who appeared to the Saint to remind him of the limits of human understanding before the great mysteries of our Faith.

Through this story, the sea shell has become a symbol of St. Augustine and the study of .

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St. Augustine described the Trinity as the Lover, the Beloved, and Love

Himself:

1. The Father (The Lover) loves the Son (The Beloved).

2. The Son returns the love of the Father.

3. The Spirit is the bond of love between the Father and Son.”

In his book, Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis wrote:

“The union between the Father and the Son is such a live concrete thing that this union itself is also a Person .What grows out of the joint life of the Father is a real Person, is in fact the Third of the three Persons who are God.” The relationship between the three persons is so close that they “indwell” on one another, and all share in the distinct work of each. Their mutual indwelling activity has been traditionally described as a kind of “Dance.” The key to understanding the Trinity is to recognize that it is not just a math problem ( how can three be one?) , the Trinity is a relationship.” 4

‘Perichoresis’ is a theological term meaning ‘the dance of God’, all three persons of the trinity inter-relating in a totally harmonious fluid way. C.S. Lewis described the Trinity as a “dance” saying, “God is not a static thing…but a dynamic, pulsating activity, a life, almost…a kind of dance” (Mere Christianity, p 136).

Ultimately for us the Trinity is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be entered into.

When we approach God as a problem to be solved we will fail in trying to understand God. Just as when we approach another person and try to figure them out like a problem , we fail. But when we approach God as a mystery, reverently on our knees, we enter in ( with God’s grace) to a deep and deeper understanding of who God is. I believe that we will spend all of eternity entering in further and further and never exhausting the mystery of God.

“God who has been with us from the beginning, creating and comforting, promising and protecting. The Father. 5

God who has been one of us, hungry and hopeful, tired and triumphant. The Son.

God who guides us, teaching and trustworthy, mentor and minder, the

Spirit.

It is the Trinity that envelops us in love — past, present and future; above, beyond, within; fulfilling all our needs.”