Amongst the books on the Trinity written over the past 40 years, God For Us by Catherine Lacugna is one of the most creative and fresh.
The last paragraph is a fine summary of why Christian theology is Trinitarian, what is at stake and why in our preaching and pastoral practice the reality of the Triune God is allowed to inform, inspire and underwrite with the grace of God, the life and spirituality of the Christian community. I've rendered it as a prose poem, which is how it reads anyway:
The doctrine of the Trinity succeeds
when it illumines God's nearness to us
in Christ and the Spirit.
But it fails if the divine persons are imprisoned in an intradivine realm,
or if the doctrine of the Trinity is relegated
to a purely formal place in speculative theology.
In the end God can only seem farther away than ever.
Preaching and pastoral practice will have to fight a constant battle
to convince us,
to provide assurances,
to make the case
that God is indeed present amongst us,
does inded care for us,
will indeed hear our prayer,
and will be lovingly disposed to respond.
If, on the other hand,
we affirm that the very nature of God
is to seek out the deepest possible communion and friendship
with every last creature,
and if through the doctrine of the Trinity
we do our best to articulate the mystery of God for us,
then preaching and pastoral practice
will fit naturally with the particulars of the Christian life.
Ecclesial life,
sacramental life,
ethical life,
and sexual life
will be seen clearly as forms of trinitarian life:
living God's life with one another.
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