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The late medieval legend about Augustine’s meeting a child on a beach is depicted in a fresco of the Life of Saint Augustine by Benozzo Gozzoli (1420-1497) in the Apsidal Chapel of the Church of Saint Augustine in San Gimignano, Tuscany, Italy. Note the artist’s inclusion of what may be three groups of three seashells each, subtly hinting at the topic of their conversation. (Image found here.)
+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. (Amen.)
On and off over more than fifteen years early in the fifth century, the Church Father Augustine was writing a book about the Holy Trinity. Reportedly, during that time, while walking along a beach meditating on the Holy Trinity, Augustine saw a small child using a seashell to scoop water out the Mediterranean Sea and to pour the water into a small hole in the sand. Augustine rhetorically asked the child what he was trying to do and gently explained that it was impossible to empty the sea into the hole. In reply, the child rhetorically asked Augustine what he was trying to do and if he thought he could fit the whole sea, presumably that of the Holy Trinity, into his small vessel, and then the child is said to have disappeared from Augustine’s sight.
In today’s Gospel Reading for the Feast of the Holy Trinity, Jesus’s eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them, and when they saw Him, apparently at least some worshiped Him and at least some doubted. St. Matthew’s Divinelyinspired Gospel account is not perfectly clear to us whether all eleven disciples worshiped or doubted or both, nor does it say precisely what was doubted by those who doubted. Yet, Jesus commissioned the eleven to make disciples of all nations (confer Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope, 30-31), baptizing them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that He had commanded them. Soon enough the disciples would have the Holy Spirit poured out on them by the Son, Who received it from the Father, as we heard Peter describe in today’s Second Reading (Acts 2:14a, 22-36). At that point, after the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, we might expect that the disciples’ understanding of the Holy Trinity included such things as the Trinitarian implications from the creation account that we heard in today’s Old Testament Reading (Genesis 1:1-2:4a), implications such as the Father’s creating by the Word of His Son with the Spirt hovering over the face of the waters, and the three Blessed Persons of the Holy Trinity discussing making human beings in their image, after their likeness.
Ever since the creation of the world, the Divinely-inspired St. Paul writes to the Romans and to us, God has shown His invisible attributes, such as His eternal power and Divine nature, in the things that have been made, and, from heaven, God reveals His wrath against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of people (Romans 1:18-20). We realize that, on account of our sinful nature and all our actual sin, we deserve death here and now and torment in hell for eternity. And, there is nothing that we can do to save ourselves. On our own, we do not know such things as God’s Trinitarian nature, nor, apart from God’s revelation, do we know that God graciously forgives sins for the sake of Jesus Christ. All people need to be made disciples as Jesus described in today’s Gospel Reading, because all people need the salvation that such discipleship brings!
Augustine’s book about the Holy Trinity begins by identifying three classes of people who try to start understanding the Holy Trinity not with faith but with their fallen human reason, and Augustine relates how those three classes of people end up further from the truth, so Augustine starts with Holy Scripture and eventually sees a limited role for sanctified human reason (On the Trinity, Book I, Chapter I). Truly, God’s Word reveals His Trinitarian nature to us, even if the Latin word translated “Trinity” was not used in the original Hebrew and Greek Scriptures nor in any Latin writings until decades later. Still, the Gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes (Romans 1:16). By God’s Word, The Holy Spirit calls us to turn in sorrow from our sin, and the Holy Spirit enables us to believe and confess that Jesus is Lord (1 Corinthians 12:3). And, St. Paul writes to the Ephesians and to us, through Jesus, we have access in the Spirit to the Father (Ephesians 2:18). And, when we by the power of the Holy Spirit come in repentance and faith to the Father, then He forgives us our sinful nature and all of our sin for the sake of His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.
God the Father’s Son took on human flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit. The divine and human natures are personally united in Jesus, and the attributes of His divine nature are communicated to His human nature, so, for example, in the Gospel Reading, Jesus could say that all authority in heaven and on earth had been given to Him. That authority belonged to the Second Person of the Holy Trinity according to His divine nature, but it was given to Jesus according to His human nature. The communication of that authority to Jesus human nature is related to Jesus’s revealing the Father by the power of the Holy Spirit (Matthew 11:27). Arguably the greatest revelation of the love of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit is on the cross, where Jesus died for the sins of the whole world, including your sins and my sins. Jesus died for us; He died in our place; He died the death that we deserved. And, as we heard St. Peter describe in his Pentecost “sermon” in today’s Second Reading, God raised Jesus up, loosing the pangs of death, both for Him and for us who repent and believe! He Who was named “Jesus”, because He would save His people from their sins, did save His people from their sins. He Who was named “Immanuel”, which means “God with us”, was, is, and always will be God with us (Matthew 1:21-23; confer Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 18:20). He is present with us by the apostles whom He commissioned and their successors, pastors’, preaching His Gospel and administering His Sacraments.
At this Baptismal Font, with water and God’s Word, we, as it were, pour “A seashell full of the Holy Trinity”. So, we have, in a sense, direct knowledge of Him, and so we have, in a sense, sufficient knowledge of Him! The Triune God present and active at Jesus’s baptism (Matthew 3:16-17) is present and active in our baptisms. There were baptisms before today’s Gospel Reading, but after today’s Gospel Reading, every proper baptism is a baptism in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Those so baptized, even infants, become God’s possession and are under His protection. All are taught to observe all that Jesus commanded, including both Holy Absolution in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of Holy Spirit (Matthew 16:19; 18:18-20), which forgiveness from the pastor is valid and certain on earth and in heaven (confer Matthew 9:6), and the Sacrament of the Altar (Matthew 26:26-29), in which bread that is Christ’s Body given for us and wine that is Christ’s Blood shed for us give us forgiveness of sins and so also life and salvation.
As with the disciples in today’s Gospel Reading, the presence of the Lord leads us to worship. We seek and receive the forgiveness of sins for Jesus’s sake through His Word and Sacraments. In the Divine Service, from the Trinitarian Invocation to the Trinitarian Benediction, we worship the Trinity in person and Unity in substance of majesty coequal. Such worship is the “catholic” faith (with a small “c”), that is, the faith that the true Church of all times and all places has confessed. Such faith leads us to do good works in keeping with our callings in life, including our giving an answer to anyone who asks for a reason for the hope that is in us (1 Peter 3:15). And, as evidence of our faith, those good works are the basis of the judgment on the Last Day. Until then, we are sure that the Lord is present with us and that He gives us the grace and strength that we need to get through all of the afflictions that God in His wisdom permits us to face.
Of course, the little boy whom Augustine supposedly saw could not by a seashell (or by any other means) empty the water of the Mediterranean Sea into that small hole in the sand, just as Augustine could not empty the sea that is the mystery of the Holy Trinity into his small vessel, whether that vessel was his human reason in his head or his expansive book. Even the Athanasian Creed with its precise statements does not exhaust the Trinity’s expression or depth. The mystery of the Trinity remains; the Trinity is, to paraphrase the Gradual (Psalm 145:3, 5b, 6b), unsearchable. But, as those baptized, we have, as it were, “A seashell full of the Holy Trinity”, and God reveals Himself to us drop by drop, bit by bit, chiefly in forgiving our sins by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. As the antiphon of today’s Introit exhorted us (Psalm 16:811; antiphon: Liturgical Text), let us give glory to Him, because He has shown His mercy to us.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +