The Holy Trinity

The great church feast of The Most Holy Trinity that has been described as a “heavenly feast with a hellish twist.”

That apt description is well illustrated by the following story:

Once there was an elderly man, and one evening he was taking his usual walk. He was enjoying the crisp night air and the wind blowing gently. But suddenly he heard a voice crying out, “Help me! Help me!”

The man looked around and saw no one and so he continued his walk. Again he heard a tiny voice, “Help me, help me!”

This time he looked down and he saw a small frog. He gently lifted up the frog and looked at it intently.

The frog spoke, “I am really a very beautiful princess. If you will kiss me, I will turn back into a princess and I will hug you and kiss you and love you forever.”

The man thought for a moment, placed the frog in his top pocket, and continued walking. The little frog looked up out of the pocket and asked, “Why don’t you kiss me?”

The man responded. He said, “Frankly, at this stage of my life, I’d rather have a talking frog.”

The moral of this story, if you need ask: “Where there was once solitude, there was now community.”

It is a lesson that echoes Christianity’s links with what Rabbi Sacks has described as the essence of faith in Judaism. According to the Rabbi, regardless of the foundational principles that frame Judaism as a religion, “faith is (ultimately about) the redemption of solitude. It is about relationships – between us and God, us and our family, us and our neighbours, us and our people, us and humankind. Judaism is not about the lonely soul. It is about the bonds that bind us to one another and to the Author of all. It is, in the highest sense, about friendship.”

Let us Pray:

Holy God, faithful and unchanging:

enlarge our minds with the knowledge of your truth,

and draw us more deeply into the mystery of your love,

that we may truly worship you,

Father, Son and Holy Spirit,

one God, nowand for ever. Amen.