The Holy Trinity: Source of Christian Community

The God we worship, the Holy Trinity, is the perfect community of love, unity and service. The Church and every Christian family is called to imitate the life of the Trinity, to be a community of love, unity and service in the world. During the 10:15 Mass on September 16, we blessed three reproductions of a famous 15th century Russian icon of the Holy Trinity. These blessed icons have been placed in each of our worship spaces and the main entrance of the school to remind us that we are called to be one faith community patterned on the communal life of our God.

In the coming months I will be referring to this icon and its meaning for us as we become a new parish, one community of faith in Jesus Christ. In recent years, icons have become more common in the life and worship of both Catholics and Protestants. But for many of us the icon remains an unfamiliar form of religious art. And so I offer this introduction to icons in general and the icon of the Holy Trinity in particular.

What is an icon?
In the realm of the sacred (as distinct from the realm of the personal computer), the word “icon” has been used for centuries to refer to images of holy subjects painted on wood. The painting and veneration of icons is an ancient tradition well-developed by the third century AD and brought to full flower later in the Orthodox Christian churches of eastern Europe.

Icon painting follows a set of rules that are very different from the more realistic and humanistic art traditions of the West. Iconographers follow ancient rules and prototypes when they paint icons. Their goal is to faithfully render the sacred images, not to express their own artistic creativity. The process is akin to the translation of Holy Scripture. In fact they are more properly said to “write” icons rather than to “paint” them. Form and color depend not upon the imagination of the artist but upon venerable traditions handed down for generations.

The Origins of this Image
Christianity has struggled to understand and to interpret the Holy Trinity both in words and in pictures throughout its history. The only representation to stand the test of time is this one, presenting the Trinity symbolically represented by the three mysterious visitors to Abraham and Sarah described in Genesis, Chapter 18.

Earlier icons of the Three Visitors at the Oaks of Mamre were more realistic but in the fifteenth century, the monk and iconographer Andrei Rublev created the simplified and beautiful pattern you see in our reproduction. The original is now in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.

Theology and Symbolism
The basic geometric form of this composition is the circle, uniting the three figures in a flowing pattern. The three visitors are depicted as angels, signifying that they belong to heaven rather than to earth. Their faces are essentially identical, representing the equality of the three Persons of the Holy Trinity. They are also essentially gender neutral in appearance.

The angel on the left (Father/Creator) is wearing a cloak of indefinite hue, symbolic of the impossibility of portraying God in visible form. The hand gesture, the simple holding out one finger signifies the first person of the Trinity. Above this angel is a building, symbolic of the Church and worship of God.

The angel in the center (Son/Redeemer) is wearing a dark reddish purple tunic and a dark blue cloak, which are the customary garments for Christ in most icons. The color of the tunic is symbolic both of Christ’s human blood and His royal status. The blue signifies the mystery of His divine nature. Above this angel is a tree, the Oak of Mamre mentioned in the Genesis account but also symbolic of Christ’s crucifixion.

The angel on the right (Holy Spirit/Advocate) is dressed in a green cloak, traditionally the color of life and renewal, and a blue tunic of divine mystery. Above this third figure is a mountain, symbolic in iconography of the spiritual journey, or spiritual ascent toward salvation.

On the table is a dish containing the meat Abraham prepared for his guests. It rests at the focus of the circular arrangement as a symbol of the Holy Eucharist, the continuing renewal of the Covenant between God and humans. On the front of the table is a small, rectangular hole. This symbolizes the “narrow door” to salvation (Gospel of Luke 13:24).