Contemplating the Holy Trinity and ruling out the heresy

Catholic Homilies by Fr Linus Clovis

A silly illustration, but one which is necessary for a difficult topic. Once upon a time the was a place called Flatland. And in Flatland, Mr Square was walking along one day. This is a two dimensional world, boring place. Mr Square met someone though that changed his life forever, Mr Sphere. Mr Sphere said he came from a different place called Spaceland, which was three dimensional. Mr Square had no experience of a three dimensional world what so ever. He couldn’t fathom what he was talking about in any way. But he believed him. Mr Sphere was a nice chap and he believed him. He was convincing. But later on, talking to other inhabitants of Flatland, Mr Square was taken to be a crazy person, because they had no experience whatsoever of a three dimensional world that he was talking about. This is a silly illustration, but it’s not that different to where we find ourselves if we think about and imagine the Holy Trinity. Because the Holy Trinity is a multi dimensional being. We have no experience of this. Human beings are one person but God is three persons. We have no experience of this. The only way we can try and conceive it is through illustrations. St. Patrick used the Shamrock, sometimes we use the triangle or other geometric shapes. But these are very basic finite illustrations attempting to explain the infinite God. There’s only so far you can go. For this reason, if we can take one step further and understand one more thing about the Holy Trinity today, this homily would have been a success. To keep it simple I would like to say what the Holy Trinity is not and something to do with what it is. First, the Holy Trinity is not what heresies claim it to be. Just remember what a heresy is. It’s when an opinion is presented which is contrary to the Holy Scripture and the Dogmas of the Church. For example, if the Scripture says in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God, and then the Word came and dwelt amongst us… For Fr. Nicholas’ complete homily please listen to the Audio.