Augustine wrote: “You see the Trinity, if you see love.” According to him, the Father is the lover, the Son is the loved one and the Holy Spirit is the personification of the very act of loving. This means that we can understand something of the Mystery of the Holy Trinity more readily with the believing heart than with our feeble mind. Evagrius of Pontus, a Greek monk of the 4th century who came from what is now Turkey in Asia and later lived out his vocation in Egypt, said: “God cannot be grasped by the mind. If God could be grasped, God would not be God.”

Mysteries of the Universe

The observable universe is now estimated to contain anywhere from 200 billion to upwards of 2 trillion galaxies (and potentially trillions more if we account for tiny, faint proto-galaxies in the early universe revealed by the James Webb Space Telescope).

Our galaxy is called the Milky Way. The Milky Way contains 100–400 billion stars, and based on data from exoplanet hunting missions, we now know that nearly every star hosts at least one planet. Our Sun is just an ordinary star among these hundreds of billions in the Milky Way, and Earth is one of its small, rocky planets.

The diameter of the observable universe is about 93 billion light-years. A light-year is a unit of length equal to approximately 5.88 trillion miles (the distance light travels in one Earth year).

A world-renowned scientist Dr. Henry Morris notes that the entire universe is Trinitarian by design. The universe consists of three things: matter, space, and time. Take away any one of those three and the universe would cease to exist. But each one of those is itself a trinity. Matter = mass + energy + motion. Space = length + height + breadth. Time = past + present + future. Thus, the whole universe witnesses to the character of the God who made it (cf. Psalm 19:1).

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While the staggering scale of the universe remains a profound mystery, our reach is expanding. Beyond sending astronauts to the Moon during the mid-20th century space race, humanity has entered a new era of deep-space exploration—including the Artemis program, which aims to establish a sustainable human presence on the Moon as a stepping stone for the first crewed missions to Mars.

If the universe is so mysterious, there is no wonder why the nature of the Triune God Who created it, remains a mystery and why we have to accept the mystery of the Triune God as revealed by God Himself in the Holy Scripture!

Icon of the Trinity

There is a beautiful Russian icon of the Blessed Trinity painted by a monk named Rublev. The monk, Andrei Rublev (c. 1360 – 1430), was a medieval Russian who painted Orthodox icons and frescoes. His Trinity icon is considered the greatest of its kind, and one of the finest works of religious art ever created, depicting a wordless conversation among Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is based on an earlier icon known as the “Hospitality of Abraham” illustrating Genesis 18 which depicts the three angels who visited Abraham at the Oak of Mamre (see Gn 18:1-15) sitting around a table.  The painting is full of symbolism and is often interpreted as an icon of the Holy Trinity. A dish of food lies on the table. But the thing that immediately strikes you is the fact that at the front of the table there is a vacant place. The vacant place is meant to convey openness, hospitality and welcome towards the stranger and outsider. 

That vacant place is meant for each one of us, and for all the human family. It signifies God’s invitation to us to share in the life of the Trinity. God doesn’t exclude us. He invites us to come in and sit at His table. He wants to share His life with us.