Last Sunday was the feast of the Holy Trinity – usually called Trinity Sunday. As those who preach regularly will know it’s not exactly a favourite Sunday for preaching! Here is my sermon.

Isaiah 40.12-17, 27-end; 2 Corinthians 13.11-end; Matthew 28.16-20

How many persons in the Trinity?

Before you answer that, let me tell you a story. It’s not my own story, it’s a story from Donagh O’Shea, a member of the Irish Dominicans.

I want to pass on to you (he says) an insight I received years ago in a small church in Rome: the preacher was a tiny vivid Italian with flashing eyes, and a chasuble and gestures that were both far too big for him. He was preaching in a church beside the Tiber, on Trinity Sunday He told of his earlier years in a parish near Naples. In those days, he said, the days ofhisyouthful enthusiasm, he had begun to wonder if the people in his country parish remembered any-thing of Christian doctrine. They were good people, he said, but he wondered how much they knew of the faith. There was only one way to find out: he had to ask them. So he would ask them, out of the blue, in the middle of a conversation or:when he met one on the road: “Franco, how many Sacraments are there?” or “Cristina, tell me, what are the precepts of the Church?” One day, he said, he was talking with Gianni, a very poor farmer with a large family and hard put to it to feed them. “By the way, Gianni,” he said, “can you tell me how many persons there are in the Trinity?” “Persons in the Trinity!” said Gianni with amazement; “l don’t know. Four, five, ten. I don’t know, and I don’t care. I don’t have to feed them!” Continue reading →