Trinity.  The First Article of Religion in the Book of Common Prayer says: "There is but one living and true God... And in unity of this Godhead there be three Persons, of one substance, power, and eternity; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost."  That, in sum, is the Church's belief about the Nature and Being of God.

    How much easier it would have been to simplify!  How many controversies would have been avoided! How many intelligent seekers might be willing to settle into the Church!  Who wants Doctrines and Dogma? The world wants a simple faith.

    The only stumbling block to this kind of accommodation is truth.  The scientist, to be worthy of his vocation, must be willing to let the facts of his experience upset the old clichés; even at the cost of disapproval. Galileo, Copernicus, Newton, Pasteur, Einstein:  we honor them because as scientists they honored truth.  The Church, too, must risk disapproval to stand by the facts of Christian experience.  The fact is that Trinity is the Church's experience of God.
 

    The period from Advent to Whitsunday relives the Acts of God as He revealed Himself to man.  In Advent we see God the Father preparing the world for the coming of His Son and we make our hearts ready for Christmas.  Beginning with Christmas we celebrate the coming of God the Son into the world and His manifestation, at Epiphany, to the Gentiles.

    In the Lenten Season we share in the trials of Christ ending at Gethsemane and Golgotha.  Easter reveals the triumph of the Son of God and Ascension honors Our Lord's return to His Father. Whitsuntide celebrates the coming of God the Holy Ghost to the Church empowering the Apostles and their successors to preach the Good news of the Acts of God, to the world.

    Trinity Sunday summarizes these mighty Acts of God by honoring Him as He revealed Himself: one God in three Persons; Father, Son and Holy Ghost.  Massey Shepherd, in his Prayer Book Commentary, summarizes this excellently: The Church concludes "the sequence of observances of God's se1f-disclosure of Himself and of His redemptive purposes in time with a celebration of that ultimate revelation, of what He is through all eternity, Three Persons in One God."

    The Sundays after Trinity, almost half the Christian Year, provide a season in which we explore the meaning of the Church's experience of God in the life and witness of the Church and of
individual Christians in the world today.
 

    Holy Baptism brings us into new and intimate relation with the Triune God.  We are baptized "in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost."  In the Name of the Father we are made children of God.  In the Name of the Son we are incorporated into the Church, being made partakers of His death and resurrection.  In the Name of the Holy Ghost we are made regenerate and the new life of God is planted in us.  From the beginning of his life the Christian experience of the one God is Trinity.

    Holy Communion is the regular renewal of our relationship with the Triune God.  Every act of Christian worship is worship of the Father through the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit.  In particular is this true of the Eucharist where we worship God the Father with the sacrificial offering of our prayers, our selves, our alms and our oblations of bread and wine.  God the Holy Ghost bears these our imperfect offerings to the heavenly Sanctuary where they are united with the oblation of Christ Himself as well as the worship of "Angels & Archangels, and all the company of heaven."  God the Holy Ghost then brings down to us the one true, holy and perfect Gift: the Sacramental Body and Blood of His Son, our Lord and Savior Christ.  Partaking of the Blessed Sacrament we are "strengthened and refreshed for our vocation to the world.
 

    This experience is particularly acute in the life of prayer.  In his excellent book, "Beyond Personality", C. S. Lewis had this particularly striking passage: "An ordinary simple Christian kneels down to say his prayers.  He is trying to get into touch with God.  But if he is a Christian he knows that what is prompting him to pray is also God: God, so to speak, inside him.  But he also knows that all his real knowledge of God comes through Christ, the Man who was God--that Christ is standing beside him, helping him to pray, praying for him.  You see what is happening.  God is the thing to which he is praying--the goal he is trying to reach.  God is also the thing inside him, which is pushing him on--the motive power.  God is also the road or bridge along which he is being pushed to that goal.  So that the whole threefold life of the three-person Being is actually going on in that ordinary little bedroom where an ordinary man is saying his prayers."

    Reading Holy Scripture we find that God the Father has caused them "to be written for our learning" through the power of the Holy Ghost that by this same power "we may embrace and ever hold fast, the blessed hope of everlasting life, which (He) has given us in our Savior Christ."

    The Church bases her convictions about the Trinity on the assumption that behind the experience of a triune God is a triune Reality.  This fact of experience corresponds with the facts of Reality because God is truth and reveals Himself truly as Trinity: one God in Three Persons.  This He "was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end."

    In conclusion, the Doctrine of the Trinity makes sense only within the life of the Church.  The Christian Year is marked by the sign of the Trinity.  The Sacraments are marked by the sign of the Trinity.  Private devotions are marked by the sign of the Trinity.  Christian worship is filled with images of the Trinity.  In particular is this true in the Eucharistic Liturgy.  Dean Austin Farrer of Oxford pictures this with great beauty: "The figure of the Son is here the Christian priest, in whom Jesus sacramentally offers himself to the Father Almighty.  He lifts his eyes and hands toward the region above and behind the altar, where it is as though the Father sat enthroned on cherubim.  Through the mystery of consecration and communion a channel is joined, and the Spirit descends, bestowing gifts of grace. But the whole congregation of the faithful are equally Christ; yes, you are Christ in this holy action or, rather, He is you, offering himself in you, and you in himself, to the Almighty Father; on you the Spirit descends.

    Service is over, the congregation departs, and now God scatters the image of his Triune Being through the community . . . when each worshipper goes to his own place, bearing in himself the person, name, honor, and action of the Son of God; moving under the benediction of the Everlasting Father and quickened by the overflowing Spirit of the Father and the Son.