Triune

Hand-made by niece Mary

St Patrick’s Day cards now seem to come back to Ireland as frequently as previously they went abroad to greet our emigrants. Marie, my second generation Canadian cousin sent me one and enclosed a bright green shamrock sticker; this latter I in turn, forwarded to another cousin in Australia. Being from my father’s side, he doesn’t know Marie in Canada, but he has a campervan, and thus a mobile window, needing an emerald sticker at this time of year. The shamrock symbol travels easily ‘round the world and is instantly recognizable almost anywhere.

But still wherever we are, we struggle with the idea of a triune God, symbolized by the three leaves. Happily for St Patrick, perhaps his listeners had less complex thinking patterns and could relate to the little familiar plant, close to, but distinct from the clover family. The mystery of the Trinity can challenge us even more, if we are asked to consider these three divine persons inhabiting our very souls. But this came easily to a young French woman who died in 1906, Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity. She was a gifted Carmelite nun who died aged 26, from Addison’s Disease, still untreatable at that time.

During five short years in Carmel, Elizabeth had developed a deep and loving devotion to the Trinity dwelling within her, in line with the teaching of St Paul. And two years before her death she wrote her celebrated prayer: “O my God, Trinity Whom I adore, help me to become utterly forgetful of myself, so that I may establish myself in you, as changeless and calm as though my soul were already in eternity. May nothing disturb my peace nor draw me forth from you, O my immutable Lord, but may I penetrate more deeply every moment into the depths of your mystery.”

And, aware of her role as a disciple in spreading the Good News, Elizabeth wrote to a friend: “I think that in Heaven my mission will be to draw souls by helping them to go out of themselves, to cling to God by a wholly simple and loving movement and to keep them in this great silence within, that will allow God to communicate Himself to them and transform them into Himself.”

Today this hunger for contemplative prayer is growing, and not confined to religious life. Indeed the call to this inner silence was never intended to be limited to a privileged few; all are called to be temples of the Holy Spirit. (Romans, 8:9)