Every year on Holy Trinity Sunday I recall a homily from roughly thirty years ago: We were invited to spend some time in reflection on the three persons of the Trinity, discern with which one we had the weakest relationship, and to spend a year in prayer, study, and meditation to strengthen that relationship. I was somewhat surprised that my reflection\/discernment led me to the conclusion that my weakest relationship was with the Holy Spirit\u2014surprised, since my ministry has been largely in music and the liturgical arts, which had led me to presume that the source of artistic in-spirit-ation would be the person of the Trinity I\u2019d have the best relationship with. (Nor was it the Father\/Creator\u2014my spiritual life was very oriented toward the Word-made-Flesh\/God incarnate at the time.)<\/p>\n
I took the challenge to its next step and spent a year strengthening my relationship with the Holy Spirit through prayer, study, and some spiritual direction. It was such a fulfilling experience that I decided to begin a rotation of a person-per-year, a rotation I went through a number of times.
\nSince I received a good deal of my formal theological education\/formation during the 1980s, I\u2019d lived through the days when the matter of naming the persons of the Trinity was definitely on the front burner. I\u2019d been at any number of liturgies where we signed ourselves with the Creator-Redeemer-Sanctifier, or with the Divine Parent-Divine Child-Divine Spirit, and so on. Though this certainly opened me up to new ways of imaging\/imagining God, which enriched my spiritual life, it also had the unintended consequence of turning the persons of the Trinity into functionaries or categories. So, my exercise of developing personal relationships with the persons of the Trinity entered a second phase, through which I eventually deepened my understanding of their own inner relationships with each other, with creation, and with the human family. This phase turned out to be both necessary and beneficial.<\/p>\n