Today, the first Sunday after Pentecost, is known as “Trinity Sunday”.  Trinity Sunday has its origin in Western Europe some one thousand three hundred years ago, and its object was to instruct the illiterate peoples of Western Europe in the more subtle truth about God’s Nature.  . . . Trinity Sunday is a festival of the Doctrine of God.  It is a festival which attempts to set the reality of God before the Faithful.  . . . Trinity Sunday is a festival of a great many words.  . . . It is a festival of a great many words because no one word can describe our ineffable -- our indescribable -- God.

    But this year, . . . rather than giving you more words, . . . I thought I’d give you a prayer.  The prayer comes from the sacred island of Iona, off the coast of Scotland.  It’s a Celtic Prayer; . . . a prayer from the mystical peoples of Brittany, Cornwall, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.  It’s a prayer of Saint Columba, and it says:


    The Celtic peoples were brought to the Christian Faith by Saint Patrick some one thousand five hundred years ago.  But unlike the peoples of Western Europe, the Celtic peoples took to the Triune Nature of God like ducks take to water.  . . . They took to it because it explained their reality.  Because, for the Celtic peoples, there was a single and unified reality, . . . but it was a single and unified reality that consisted of three mercies.  The first mercy of which reality consists for a Celt is Effulgence (the light -- both daylight and nightlight -- the light which illumines the Dark).  The second mercy of which reality consists is Being (life and the matrix in which life is “embedded”; . . . the living matrix which is life and sustains life).  . . . And the final mercy of which Celtic reality consists is Wisdom (the order which gives Being a sane and sensible purpose).   And so, Saint Columba’s prayer gives voice to what the Celtic Christians believed about God.

    God is one Reality consisting of three Mercies.  . . . God is, first, Effulgence.  God is the Light which is near to us in order to reveal, in the darkness, the ultimate and cosmic direction of our lives.  . . . But not only is God cosmic, . . . God is also the Light which is near to us in order to reveal in what direction we must go today.  God is a bright flame before us.  . . . God is near to us today in order to guide us into the sacred life which is above all and keeps us from becoming lost in the Dark for evermore.  God is a guiding star above us . . . to bring us Home.  . . . Which is all to say that God is Spirit.

    But God is Being as well.  God is the Being from Whom we have our own being.  God is the Being in Whom we are “embedded”.  God is the Father from Whom we have life.  God is the Mother Whose milk sustains our life.  . . . God is the matrix of all life.  God is the Earth beneath our feet, . . . God is the Air on every side, . . . and God is the Living Water Who is within.  . . . Which is all to say that God is our Father; . . . God is our Mother.

    And God is Wisdom.  God is the Wisdom -- the Word -- Who is the source of sanctity.  God is the source of holy purpose.  God explains our being to us and keeps us attentive to the sacred use of the Earth and of the things and persons of the Earth and of Light.  . . . God is our kindly shepherd.  . . . God is the Son.

    And so, Jesus counsels us from John’s Gospel,

When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth; . . . He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you.  All that the Father has is mine . . .

On the day that Jesus ascended into Heaven . . . He said to His disciples, “Wait here until I clothe you with God’s light.  Don’t go wandering about telling people about me just yet . . . otherwise you might become lost.  But wait here and I will send you the Spirit of God to light your way;  . . . I will send God the Holy Spirit Who guides you into all truth.”  . . . And so, on Pentecost Jesus sent us the Holy Spirit, Who is like a fire before us; like a guiding star above us . . . to guide us into Truth. 
    . . . It has been fashionable these past several decades for some types of preachers and semi-theologians to misrepresent the words of Jesus you have heard today by saying that the Holy Spirit is guiding us into new truth; . . . that the Holy Spirit could not communicate the entire truth about God to the biased and unscientific men who wrote Holy Scripture and so, must correct, for us, the things they wrote in their prejudice and in their ignorance; . . . that there are things Jesus didn’t talk about in His rush to save us during His earthly ministry, so the Holy Spirit comes to our aid by filling in the blanks left by Jesus.  . . . But all of that is a lie; . . . it is swamp gas; . . . it is false light.  The Truth into which God the Holy Spirit, the light that is before us and the star that is above us; . . . the Truth into which the Holy Spirit is guiding us consists of the Ground upon which we stand; the Faith upon which our lives are founded; the sacred use of Earth and the things and persons of the Earth and of Light.  The Truth into Whom the Holy Spirit is guiding us is not new; it is the Ancient of Days; it is God the Father, Who is the Source of all life and Who is the Source (the Father) of the Truth -- Father of the Wisdom -- which makes all life sacred, . . . because God the Father is the sanity and sense of Creation.  And that sanity and sense has been articulated in God’s sacred Word, . . . first spoken by the Holy Spirit to prophets and scholars . . . and then made Incarnate by the same Spirit to come to us as God the Son, Shepherd of Souls; Whose tender Incarnation and sacred Teaching and Counsel and redeeming Death and sanctifying Resurrection are the Truth and the Life of the Father in Whom and to Whom the Holy Spirit guides us.

    We are, therefore, encompassed about by God, Who is before us and above us and beneath us and behind.  . . . We are encompassed about by God, Who is like a Family to us; . . . Who has set us in His midst to sit by the warmth of His Fire.  … God is the Bright Flame Who is before us; . . . He is our Home.  And, so that we might not lose our way in this life, while we are sojourners -- while we are God’s ambassadors within this material order; . . . so that we might not lose our way, God is our Guiding Star; . . . He is our compass by which we know where we are in this life . . . and the Way to go when this life can no longer sustain us.  . . . And, so that we might have a Way, He is a Smooth Path beneath us; . . . God is our Smooth Path to keep us from stumbling -- to keep us from losing our balance and falling over the precipices of this life into the abyss of Darkness -- . . . God is our Smooth Path to keep us from stumbling in this life . . . and to bring us without injury to the life everlasting.  . . . And God is our Kindly Shepherd Who is perpetually with us wherever we are; . . . God is our Kindly Shepherd who goes behind us to protect us -- to see the dangers that approach and encompass us about with His might; . . . to see the good that shall be a mercy to us and guide us to its delight.  . . . God is like a Family to us:  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; . . . one Reality consisting of three merciful Persons.  He is our dearest Lord to Whom Saint Columba has taught us to pray,