Trinity Sunday and Ordinary Time

The Feast of Pentecost concludes the Lent, Holy Week & Easter cycle in the
Church year. The Sunday after Pentecost is the Feast of the Holy Trinity.

Trinity Sunday does not mark an event, something which God has done or is
doing, as at Christmas or Easter. Rather, it encourages us to focus on the very
nature of God, who and how God is, what God is like. The doctrine of the Trinity
has exercised scholars and theologians for centuries, and still confuses and
concerns people today: indeed, it is this doctrine which still separates Christians,
sadly sometimes painfully to our shame, from Jews and Moslems.

The Creed sets out that we believe in one God, who is at the same time Father,
Son and Holy Spirit – and while these are three distinct Persons, each divine,
there is only one God... This is not the place for a complicated discussion; rather
let us focus on one picture which may help us. A famous icon, the Rublev Trinity,
depicts three figures sat around three sides of a table; we look into the picture
from the fourth, vacant, side.

Each figure looks towards another in a mutually
deferring way, giving the sense of a link, between them: this is understood to be
a circle of love flowing to and fro between the figures (which represent Father,
Son and Holy Spirit). We are invited to enter into, to be caught up into this circle,
which is the very life and love of God.

The remaining Sundays of the Church's year – the number of Sundays may vary,
anywhere from 24 to 27, depending on when Easter occurs – are known as
Sundays after Trinity until the end of October, then Sundays before Advent,
concluding with Christ the King in late November. The cycle is also referred to as
Ordinary Time, so called to mark the activity of God in the midst of the
ordinariness of the church and human experience. In Ordinary Time Christians
celebrate the work of the Spirit given at Pentecost in imparting faith, hope, a
sharing of community, and an awareness of a purpose much greater than
themselves.