In 1583, a painting a was completed for a chapel of the new seminary that had been established in Rome some four years earlier. That seminary is known today, as then, as the Venerable English College.

The painting is known now, as then, as The Martyrs’ Picture.

And it is not because it depicts St. Thomas Becket and St. Edmund, who were both martyrs. It’s because it was the last image the students would see before heading home on the English Mission from the 16th century onwards.

For 44 of those men, this was to their martyrdom. The painting is called The Martyrs’ Picture in honor of them—painted three years after the very first martyr, St. Ralph Sherwin, went to his death in 1580.

A Te Deum was sung before this picture when news reached Rome of the martyrdom of one of the students. And a Te Deum is still sung every year in memorial of the martyrs who witnessed the love of God expressed in that painting before they went on mission to prove it with their love.

The main image is then of the Most Holy Trinity because the College church is dedicated to the Most Holy Trinity. And it is a “Mercy Seat” image, which was popular in the late Medieval period into the early 17th century.

This “Mercy Seat” image has, unusually, a depiction of God the Father, who is bedecked in a beautiful brocade coat. And He holds His dead Son in His arms, in the style of a Crucifix. And in between them, the Holy Spirit, in the form of a dove. It is an intriguing, but dangerous depiction of the undepictable. It’s dangerous because the Trinity is a mystery not easily stated, and not easily stated simply. And because it’s not easily stated simply, it’s even harder to paint.

But it’s an intriguing image, because we must be able to say something about that mystery. The Sacred Trinity is a mystery, and not a riddle. And when words fail us, that’s where art comes in. Our language quickly reaches its limits when we are attempting to describe the essence of God Himself. This should’t be surprising, because the Holy Trinity is Who God Is. It is Who He Is at the deepest level of His being.

And the Most Holy Trinity is revealed to us, not to tease us, but because we need to know about It. And not just priests in fine robes, giving sermons, but you, also, need to know about it—so that you can give an account of it to people you may meet.

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Each title presents a challenge to us, because of language. It is a challenge to our understanding, one we need to observe attentively, unless we are to make significant errors as to Who God Is—starting with the Third Person.

To describe the Third Person as the Holy Spirit is so familiar to us. But the danger of this title is that it seems to make a distinction between the Third Person and the first Two. Because all Three Persons of the Most Blessed Trinity are pure spirit by nature—all of them.

The Father is spirit, the Son is spirit. And the Holy Spirit is, of course, spirit.  They are uncreated. And They are immaterial—that is to say, They are not “stuff.” They’re not physical—any of Them. None of the Three Persons pertains to matter.

So, to call the Third Person “the Holy Spirit” leads us to the danger of thinking that the other Two are not spirit. Or even worse, Heaven forfend, that the other Two are somehow not Holy.

Turning to the Second Person: To describe the Second Person as “Son” is true. It is His nature to be a son. But the word “son” evokes the material and the subordinate. All men alive are sons, and they have fathers. And their  relationship of son to father is one of inferior to superior. The word, therefore,  has a weight of preconception that is dangerous when describing Persons of the Trinity Who are consubstantial—of the same stuff—and co-eternal—of the same time—and utterly equal, one to the other, in their Godhead.

The Son is not inferior to the Father in His divinity.

And a third complication concerning the First Person: To describe the First Person as “Father” has two attendant challenges. The first is that many people do not have a good experience of their (earthly) fathers. For many, it was decidedly “mixed” at best. So, to endow the First Person of the Trinity with all of that emotional baggage can cause a difficulty in comprehension for some.

And furthermore, the whole nature of the “type” of a Father presupposes a priority in time that is not true for the First Person of the Trinity. There was never a time when the First Person of the Trinity was alone. There was never a time when it was just the Father on His own. The Three Persons, then, have a distinction between their origin and their relation, one to the other.

The Father is eternally Unbegotten. The Son is eternally Begotten. And the Spirit is eternally Proceeding.

What this means is that the Father is the source of all that is, including God.

The Son—the Eternally Begotten One—is the Word of the Father.

The Spirit is the Power of God.

But They are all of these things at the very same time, and have been from all eternity.

The Father, from all Eternity, is eternally begetting the Son.

The Son, from all Eternity, is eternally being begotten.

And the Holy Spirit, from all Eternity, is eternally proceeding from both of Them.

For you and I, who use the language of “Father” and “Son”—indeed, who use any language at all—there is a preconception of a “before” and an “after.”

But in God, in Himself, there is no “before” and there is no “after.” There is only, ever, a “now.”

The distinction, then, among the Persons, is in our relation to Them—to help us understand more deeply Who God Is in Himself.

The distinction of the Fatherhood of the First Person is because He is the Source and the Origin of all things. That is to say—in layman’s terms—God is a “Thinker.” His contemplation of Good is the source of all Creation.

The distinction of the Second Person is the Son—Who is characterized by Obedience, and in being Word. Which is to say—and to reveal—that God is a “Speaker.”

And the distinction of the Holy Spirit is to be “Change.” To move Creation  ever deeper and ever closer to God Himself. That is to say, in layman’s terms, that God is a “Doer.”

The image in the seminary chapel is one in which the central feature that draws the eye is the dying Lord. And for the first student of the English College to suffer martyrdom for the Faith, his final words were:

“Jesu, Jesu, Jesu, esto mihi Jesus!”

Which is, “O Jesus, O Jesus, O Jesus!—Be to me a Jesus!”

Which is the same thing as saying, “Be to me a God Who saves!”

Of course, you have probably heard me say a million times, the Holy Name means, “God saves.”

But the only way that St. Ralph Sherwin would have known that God is a God Who Saves is by having a full and complete understanding of Who God Is in His nature as a Trinity.

That’s why we need art—to make up for the defects of our language. So that those who struggle to express the Sacred Trinity in words might be able to express It instead in Love.