Infinite Trinity, Finite Minds

The Infinite Trinity

Today is Trinity Sunday, on which we celebrate one of the most mysterious of Christian Mysteries. I find it fairly easy to understand that there can only be one infinite being, one “Divine Substance.” Likewise, I can also understand that love is something necessarily directed toward another, and so a God Who is Love would want to have other Persons to love. I have a very hard time wrapping my finite mind around how they can both be true at the same time, but how could it be otherwise?  

You may have heard the famous story about St. Augustine. He was in the midst of writing his great treatise De Trinitate (On the Trinity). Feeling the need to give his tortured intellect a rest, he went for a walk on the beach. There he saw a little boy, busily using a shell to bring water from the sea to a small hole he had dug in the sand.

“What are you doing?” asked the bishop.

“I’m putting the sea in this hole!” responded the boy.

St. Augustine smiled. “You can’t fit the immense sea into that little hole.”

The boy immediately retorted, “And you can’t comprehend the infinite Trinity with your finite mind.” Then he vanished.

I Bind unto Myself

So you and I are in good company if we find The Trinity challenging. Fortunately, even if the philosophical explanations elude us, we can know the Triune God through the experience of Faith.  Thanks be to God. And after all, isn’t it through experience, and not intellect, that we come to know love?

In any case, perhaps because the Trinity is such a deep concept, there aren’t a lot of Trinitarian hymns. The ones we do have tend to be well known: “Holy, Holy, Holy! Lord God Almighty,” “All Hail Adorèd Trinity,” “Holy God We Praise Thy Name.” This last hymn is based on the ancient Te Deum. The song that Amedee Royer sings in the clip below, “I Bind unto Myself,” derives from a prayer almost as ancient, the Lorica of St. Patrick. I’ve included the words below the clip.

Featured image top of page: The Vision of St. Augustine by Sandro Botticelli, 1488

I Bind unto Myself

The original prayer is quite a bit longer. The song below includes two parts of St. Patrick’s prayer. It begins and ends with a ringing invocation to the Trinity modelled on the opening of St. Patrick’s Prayer. In between we hear the most familiar part of the original hymn:

I bind unto myself today,

The strong name of the Trinity:

By invocation of the same,

The Three in One and One in Three,

Of Whom all nature hath creation,

Eternal Father, Spirit, Word:

Praise to the Lord of my salvation --

Salvation is of Christ the Lord!

Christ be with me, Christ within me,

Christ behind me, Christ before me,

Christ beside me, Christ to win me,

Christ to comfort and restore me,

Christ beneath me, Christ above me,

Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,

Christ in hearts of all that love me,

Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

I bind unto myself today,

The strong name of the Trinity:

By invocation of the same,

The Three in One and One in Three,

Of Whom all nature hath creation,

Eternal Father, Spirit, Word:

Praise to the Lord of my salvation --

Salvation is of Christ the Lord!