Editorial
The Trinity Epistle provides the ground-tone for the year, always returning when there is no particular festival to be celebrated. To hear it with fresh ears is always a challenge.
Can we hear the three names that appear in the second part of the Epistle, not as different titles for one being, but as the names of three beings that interpenetrate each other? This may seem a strange question, until we realise that in the spiritual world, lower beings find their fulfilment and personhood by opening themselves to higher beings.
The Trinity Epistle directs our attention first to our humanity, in which we can experience Christ. This is the one of whom G M Hopkins says: “I am all at once what Christ is, for he was what I am.”
Through Christ we come into connection with the ‘Son, born in eternity’. This was the revolutionary realisation that dawned on Thomas eight days after Easter, when he addressed the Risen Christ as Lord and God.
Then we become aware of the Creative Word, the Logos, the counterpart of that eternal source of all becoming in the created world, who is at work in the creation of the world, as well as in our creativity – the essence of our humanity. In this way, the prayer circles back to its beginning, drawing us through its poetic form into the experience of mutual interpenetration and indwelling.
Tom Ravetz
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