People's Prayers: Prayers of the People: Knowing God or No-ing God? Trinity Sunday, '15 Yr B

Sunday, June 11, 2017

Prayers of the People: Knowing God or No-ing God? Trinity Sunday, '15 Yr B

for Sunday May 31, 2015, Trinity Sunday, Yr B, Readings: Isaiah 6:1-8, Ps 29, Romans 8:12-17, John 3:1-17

IMAGE Only, UPDATED 06/06/17 (Yr A)

How is a mystery explained? And if explained, it is no longer a mystery. The mystery of the Trinity is nothing if not confounding. One God/Three Persons - separate yet one, equal with different roles that are ultimately the same, belief in one is meant to be belief in all and the One that is the same but different.
Franciscan theologian Richard Rohr tells us that "...the Western Church overemphasized the individual "names" Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but not so much the quality of the relationships between them, which is where all the power and meaning lies!" And further, "The real and essential point is how the three "persons" relate to one another--infinite outpouring and infinite receiving..."
Rohr tells us that "...Niels Bohr, the Danish physicist who was a major contributor to quantum physics and nuclear fission, said the universe is 'not only stranger than we think, but stranger than we can think...' The doctrine of the Trinity is saying the same thing: God is not only stranger than we think, but stranger than we can think...Perhaps much of the weakness of the first 2,000 years of reflection on most of our doctrines and dogmas is that we've tried to understand them with a logical or rational mind instead of through love, prayer, and participation itself..." Perhaps we are called, as one mystic suggested, to be almost a fourth person in the flow of God...[to read the piece in its entirety, click the link: Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation, The Trinity]
If rational knowing all about God becomes the substance and goal of our faith, aren't we merely reducing God to our level and then dismissively no-ing to all that God is? How more engaging to know that mystery is always unfolding?
One of my favorite ways to attempt understanding is through a piece of a 6th century creed from Dublin known as Tírechán’s Creed ~ when speaking of God it says:

He has a Son who is co-eternal with himself;

and similar in all respects to himself;

and neither is the Son younger than the Father,

nor is the Father older than the Son;

and the Holy Spirit breathes in them.
And the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are inseparable.

Got it now?

LET US, GOD’S PEOPLE, PRAY

Leader: ~ Holy, Holy, Holy - Lord, Savior, Sanctifier, as Jesus did with Nicodemus, undo our certainty and need to know all there is about You. Grant us openness of mind, sincerity of heart, and willingness to come to You as unknowing, to allow the wind of the Spirit, the redemption of Christ, and our birth from Above, to move through us in Your many and miraculous ways.

Mighty God in Three Persons

RESPONSE: We worship You in the beauty of holiness

~ Holy, Holy, Holy - Lord, Savior, Sanctifier, in a world filled with the smoke of confusion, let us answer “Here we are; send us” to speak Your voice with clean lips, to bear witness for truth and justice for all Your people, in the halls of government everywhere. We pray especially for: add your own petitions

Mighty God in Three Persons