The Trinitarian horizon of communion surrounds all of us. It inspires us to live in love and fraternal sharing, certain that where there is love, there is God.

A story is told of a missionary in a tropical country who, during his home-leave, came across a wonderful sundial. He felt the sundial would be ideal for his villagers in the mission. He thought he could use it to teach them to tell the time of the day.

The missionary bought the sundial and took it along when he returned to his mission. When the village chief saw the sundial, he was very impressed.

He made sure that it was set up in the centre of the village. The villagers were also excited about it. They had never seen something so extraordinary and beautiful in their lives. They were even more thrilled when they learned how it worked.

The missionary was delighted by everyone’s response to his sundial. However, he was not expecting what happened a few days later. The people of the village got together and built a roof over the sundial to protect it from the rain and the sun!

The sundial is a lot like the Holy Trinity, composed of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit, and we Christians are a lot like the villagers in the story.

The Holy Trinity is the most beautiful reve­lation of the Christian faith. Its doctrine underlies all major Christian feasts, including Christmas, the Epiphany, Good Friday, Easter, the Ascension and Pentecost. All the official prayers of the Church, including the Holy Mass and the Sacraments, begin with an address to the Holy Trinity.

The Holy Trinity is the most beautiful reve­lation of the Christian faith.Still, for many of us it seems of little practical value when it comes to our daily lives

We are baptised, absolved of our sins and anointed in the name of the Blessed Trinity. We also frequently bless ourselves with the sign of the Cross, invoking the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and we conclude our prayers glorifying the Holy Trinity.

Still, as Pope Francis pointed out during last year’s celebration of the feast of the Blessed Trinity, instead of putting the revelation about the Holy Trinity to work in our daily lives, we have built a ‘roof’ over it, just as the villagers did over their sundial.

For many of us the Trinity seems of little practical value when it comes to our daily lives. We treat it more like an ornament of our faith.

God is not some awesome nebulous power that created the universe and floats around out there somewhere in outer space. God has revealed Himself to us with the magnificent truth that He is a family of three persons, because God’s love is essentially one of family-type relationships.

This ‘divine family’ is not closed in on itself, but instead is open to us. God invites us to share in this family life. We are called into it.

The Trinitarian horizon of communion surrounds all of us. It inspires us to live in love and fraternal sharing, certain that where there is love, there is God.

“Our being created in the image and likeness of God-Communion calls us to understand ourselves as beings in relation to one another, and to live interpersonal relations in solidarity and mutual love,” says Pope Francis.

These relationships are played out primarily in the context of our ecclesial communities, so that the image of the Church as an icon of the Trinity may be increasingly evident.

However, they also consist of “every social relationship, from the family to friendships, to the workplace, all of them”. They are all concrete occasions offered to us in order to build relationships that are increasingly humanly rich, capable of reciprocal respect and disinterested love.

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