Love's Ensemble for Trinity Sunday

“God is love”.  So St. John tells us.  On Trinity Sunday, the Church celebrates the great mystery that has been pondered, debated, proclaimed, and adored for two millennia.  God is a relationship of love and we, all undeserving, have been drawn into the very embrace of this relationship.  After so much has been said and written, what more is there to say?  Or will there ever be an end to what could be said?  St. Thomas Aquinas, that great medieval scholar, after producing perhaps the greatest works of speculative theology, came at the end of his life to the complete silence of adoration before the God he had tried so hard to explain.  Not that explaining is bad; it is just that experience is better.  St. Thomas did say that even though we can never fully understand God, we can fully love Him.  Even in human love, all words fall short before the reality of one’s beloved.  What can we say then, of the Divine Beloved and of His love for us?  Perhaps music comes closer to expressing the inexpressible.  One of our Sisters uses the imagery of music to attempt to describe her experience of God:

Love’s Ensemble

My heart is a harp for Love to play.

It fingers all foolish thought away,

For melody has more to say.

Love blows a tone, oh, so low,

Through open mouth of oboe soul,

Sounding the depths Leviathan roams.

But let my trembling chords be still,

And vibrant, hollowed spaces fill,

Then strike! My bell of being thrill.