Fr. Mark Patrick Hederman: It is a cruel irony that the first detonation of a nuclear weapon by the United States on July 16th 1945, as part of the Manhattan Project, was code named ‘Trinity.’ Oppenheimer, who assigned the name ‘Trinity’ to this death-dealing operation says that he was influenced by the poetry of John Donne [1572-1631] Donne seemed to claim that unless the Trinity used its almighty power to overcome and subdue us we would never come to heel and behave towards God in a mannerly fashion.
Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
Unless God’s love is weaponised into a nuclear explosion on our planet, we won’t pay any attention. Less than a month later, on the 9th of August, 1945, a plutonium bomb, resulting from the Trinity experiment, was dropped on Nagasaki in Japan killing 75,000 people instantly. The world certainly sat up and took notice. We now had unheard of power in our hands. Today’s Feast reminds us of an alternative power, an alternative energy, the power of love which we can, each one of us, switch on or off, whenever we wish, at will.
Going back to the beginning of the world as we know it, the explosion which was the creation of the universe at the beginning of time – sometimes described as ‘the big bang’ – was a Divine, life-giving experiment, also with the code name Trinity. The Trinity brand is imprinted on all things that exist, and every last particle, is in relation with every other. We are relational beings and love is our connection.
Ever since it has been revealed to us that the God who created this marvellous universe is a three-personed unity which we call The Trinity, whose feast day we celebrate today, the greatest brains of humanity have tried to explain what this might mean.Theologians have built geometries and theological constructs to work it out, or so they think. Diagrams were sketched and maps were drawn. Augustine spent sixteen years writing his De Trinitate starting in the year 400.
These were mostly men, using their heads. Let us skip the head work and get down to the heart work. There are people in this world who spend at least two hours a day in conversation with the makers of the universe who, they believe, are dwelling deep in their hearts. I think of the Carmelite order of contemplatives who have sixteen communities at this time in Ireland. I am influenced especially by a young French Carmelite who called herself Elizabeth of the Trinity especially to emphasize today’s particular feast. She was seven years younger than Thérèse of Lisieux. Although less well known than the little flower, she was canonized by Pope Francis in 2016, ten years ago. She died at the age of 26 in the year 1906 and her feast Day is on November the 8th
Elizabeth promised to spend the eternity she now enjoys helping any of us to find the three persons of the Trinity in our hearts. She has taught me, more than anyone else, that the God of love is an immensity, an abyss, an ocean, into which we can plunge at every moment, without endangering our own personal identity or interrupting the rhythm and integrity of our way of life here on earth. God is the tsunami of love that sweeps each one of our surf boards to heights where we can enjoy the company of the extravagant Trinitarian Three . . . . ‘I would like to whisper this secret to those I love, she writes, that they too might cling to the great silence within until it reveals its song.’