Basics: The Trinity and prayer

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

If God is love, then surely God is not alone. As Christians, we believe that from all eternity, God has dwelt in perfect beatitude as three persons, as Father to His Eternal Word, His perfect Son, in the unity of the Holy Spirit. We refer to this unity of persons within the Godhead as the Trinity.

As I begin prayer, in order to ground myself in a prayerful mindset, I try to call to mind the very foundation of all reality: this community of divine Persons, the eternal Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I focus on the furious outpouring of unselfish Love that flows between the Father and His perfect image, His beloved Son, an outpouring so profound and consuming that it constitutes the third person of the divine Godhead, the Holy Spirit.

Next, I think about how much God must love each of us, that He sacrificed this beloved Person, His divine Son, even unto the torture of the cross, as a ransom for our sins, in order to purchase us back from the slavery to sin and death we had sold ourselves into. We understand that, even if we had been alone in our sin, God still would have made this sacrifice on our behalf alone.

All of Christianity flows from this idea of God, not as one, but as a community of three persons, and from the relationships between them. This total outpouring of self is the standard which believers should strive for in their own lives, for in this relationship is the principle and reality of love itself.

In the ‘Glory Be’ prayer, we celebrate this loving underpinning:

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son: and to the Holy Spirit;
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end. Amen.