Traveling with the Trinity

The Holy Trinity has always confused me. Three Divine Persons in One God?

What?

Before I chose Christianity, I believed in God. God is one, and that’s that. One and done. Easy. But understanding the nature of God, who God is, should never be easy. As St. Augustine said, “If you understand, it is not God.”[i]

So, I’m confused by the Holy Trinity — exactly as I’m supposed to be.

After choosing Christianity, I just accepted the Trinity as a Mystery and tried not to think about it much. When I prayed, I prayed to God. No names or images or concepts. If I tried to think of praying to God the Father (even while praying the “Our Father”), or pray to Jesus, or try to think of what the Holy Spirit is and pray to It, I mean, Him… more confusion.

To whom am I supposed to pray?

Sometimes, at Mass, I have felt that I am doing some kind of spiritual gymnastics. First we address this Person of the Trinity, then that One, or maybe the Other — to whom are we praying? God, of course, but which Divine Person? All of Them, of course, but… what? Christianity is all about Jesus, and I know that I need to continue growing a personal relationship with Him, but we don’t always pray to Jesus at Mass. Do we? If not, why not?

While listening to The Catechism in a Year podcast with Fr. Mike Schmitz, I was taught that all the prayers of the Holy Mass are directed toward God the Father.

“Great,” I thought. “More confusion.”

If I had had an intimate familiarity with the Bible, however, I might not have been so confused. Of course, at Mass we direct our prayers to God the Father. That’s what Jesus did — that’s what Jesus perpetually does. Throughout Sacred Scripture, Jesus speaks of the Father and directs us toward the Father. This should be obvious from The Lord’s Prayer (The Our Father), but it’s also quite clear in all of Jesus’s words. “Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect”[ii]… “By this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples”[iii]… “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. But of that day or hour, no one knows…only the Father.”[iv]

So both the Bible and the Mass show direction to God the Father.

I may have continued in my confusion, however, if there hadn’t been, thankfully, earlier in the Catechism, a lovely explanation of the Holy Trinity and Creation.

From, Through, In

Everything that exists in Creation comes from God the Father, through God the Son, in God the Holy Spirit. This makes sense to me, because the Catechism also teaches and reminds that God is the Source (Father) who creates by speaking God’s Word (Son) with God’s Breath (Holy Spirit). God’s Plan (Father) is for God’s Word (Son) to be made Flesh, to suffer, die, and rise for us, so then we receive God’s Spirit (Holy Spirit).

Okay… that may have been very confusing. Let’s simply remember, since we just celebrated Pentecost, as well as Trinity Sunday, that we are given the Holy Spirit. God the Holy Spirit is active within each of us and within the whole Church. We are living in the Holy Spirit.

So, when we pray the great prayer of the Liturgy, we, as creatures, are kind of doing the reverse of what we understand about Creation. Our prayers go to the Father (the opposite of from, going back to Him), through the Son, in the Holy Spirit.

And remember, of course, the Divine Persons are all the one and the same God. Remembering that is not to make it easier to understand, but to make it more difficult to understand. Because “If you understand, it is not God.”

All of this started me thinking about an analogy for how I am to pray and to live here and now, and ultimately how I will get to Heaven.

Spiritual Traveling

God the Father is our Source and destination. We want to seek, find, and do the Father’s will here and now in this life, and return to the Father who is in Heaven at the end of our lives’ journeys. God the Father is the destination now and forever. To Him we pray and hope to return.

But how do we get there? How do we discern and do the Father’s will and get to Heaven?

Through God the Son.

So the analogy is like this. God the Father is the destination, and Jesus, God the Son, is the way — Jesus is the Way, He said so Himself.[v]

So imagine that you have a place to which you want to go and there is a road to get you there. Jesus is like that road bringing you to your destination. Excellent! So, all we have to do is walk along that road, to follow that road and we will get where we want to go.

Can you walk this road? Well … I can’t, but can I use a wheelchair to travel this road? I suppose we could try to go on our own power (or our wheelchairs’ limited power), but we won’t get very far. The road to the destination is lifelong, not one that we can travel on our own. Like any road, it’s better to use a highly powered vehicle to get us to the end. And that’s the Holy Spirit.

Yes, I may be saying that the Holy Spirit is like a car, but bear with me. (Perhaps, the Holy Spirit is more like the car keys or even the car engine? Anyway…) The Holy Spirit drives us to seek the Father’s heart through the Son, for Jesus makes such a journey possible. The Holy Spirit is powerful, and that power of God compels us and even propels us on our journey to follow Jesus in doing the Father’s will and get to Heaven. In the Acts of the Apostles and some of the Epistles, we clearly see how important the Holy Spirit is.

This analogy is certainly not the greatest, but it’s helping me. And that’s what analogies are supposed to do, what images and even words are supposed to do: get us to an understanding of something. This analogy is not perfect, so, no, I do not understand. But I feel encouraged, inspired, and even more embraced by the Mystery of the Holy Trinity.

We could go further. The roadmap is like the Bible and, if we don’t do very well with reading maps, then the Catechism and Magisterium are there to help us, being very good with directions. The sacraments are like the very fuel that we need to keep going, the mechanical repairs that we need to stay in good, working shape, and maybe even like upgrades to different vehicles (marriage gets us a minivan, holy orders make a person a pace car.) And so on.

Helpful? Maybe. Full understanding? Definitely not.

Thank God.

© 2025 Christina Chase

---

Feature image courtesy of my dad © 2014 Dan Chase

[i] St. Augustine, Confessions

[ii] Matthew 5:48

[iii] John 15:8

[iv] Mark 13:31-32

[v] John 14:6