The Holy Trinity ... Explained

About a month ago, I attempted to explain the mystery of the Holy Trinity to our newly-minted six year old. Princess just could not get it. She ended up in tears, unable to understand, even with the use of a shamrock sketch, that there are 3 persons, but only 1 God.

This morning, her Lent workbook included a copy of St. Patrick's famous shamrock lesson. Again, we went over the three persons in the one God, and she wrote each name on a shamrock leaf.

"I don't understand, Mommy. How can there be only one God if there's three?"

I thought about it for a minute.

"Let's think about it differently. There are different ways I can refer to you, right? I can call you Princess. Or, I can call you my daughter. Or, I can call you my middle child. Does that mean that there are three different people?"

"No, there's just me."

"Exactly. God is like that. We can call God our Father, the Creator of All. Or we can call God Jesus, who came to live on earth with us and died on the cross for us. Or we can call God the Holy Spirit, who comes to live inside each of us at our Baptisms. But there's still just one God. Does that make more sense?"

Big smile. "I think I get it, Mommy."

Not the deepest theological explanation; I'm sure our resident Seminarian would make some clarifying points. But, for my six-year-old, this explanation made a complex mystery seem easy-to-grasp.

Happy St. Patrick's Day to you all!