The Holy Trinity
While browsing through tweets about the feast day of the Most Holy Trinity today, I came across this one:
We all make the Sign of the Cross every time we pray. Christians have been doing that since the time of the apostles. So what are we really doing when we make that sign? We’re expressing our faith in the Trinity and our faith that the Trinity was revealed by Jesus on his Cross.
— Abp. José H. Gomez (@ArchbishopGomez) May 27, 2018
And this tweet really moved me. So, I’d figured I would illustrate this with this powerful artwork of the Holy Trinity:
In this picture, the crucified Christ is being tenderly received into Heaven by the Father, with the Holy Spirit, personified as a white dove, hovering overhead and opening up the glory of Heaven. And so you have the entire Holy Trinity together — the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
And it’s beautiful because there is so much love and tenderness in this picture.
Yes, Christ’s appearance in this picture is grim. After all, He suffered and died in one of the most painful, agonizing ways to die. In fact, it was so painful that the word “excruciating” gets its meaning from the word “crucifixion.” There is a good reason why Christ looks so broken!
Yes, the angels are anguished — and rightly so — that Christ has been tortured.
And still, there is so much love.
And this love that the Holy Trinity embodies is the love that we have faith and believe in. After all, to have faith is to trust. And so we conform our wills to the Holy Trinity by following God’s Commandments, trusting in our Lord Jesus Christ by following His path, and letting the Holy Spirit transform our lives.
And this is scary. After all, we are called to follow Christ, and to follow Christ means that we must pick up our crosses and follow Him. We remember this every time that we cross ourselves — after all, even the physical hand motions draw out the cross of Christ. Nor is this path necessarily easy. After all, it broke Christ. Perhaps it will break us as well. Following Christ is not the easiest thing to do.
Yet, this artwork reminds us that, when we meet God, there will be love.
And that love is worth everything.
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This artwork is featured in my book, The Sorrowful Mysteries!
