St. Augustine was walking along the seashore, thinking grand thoughts of God and His nature, when he spotted a small boy several yards ahead. The saint watched, puzzled. They boy was laboriously filling up a bucket with sea water only to rush over and empty its contents into a hole in the sand. When Augustine reached the child, he asked, "What are you doing?" The boy replied, "I'm putting the ocean into this hole." The theologian laughed. "How can you do that? Do you not see that your hole is small, while the ocean is so great? All the waters in the world could not fit in there!"
             Throughout the centuries, Christian theologians have labored over explaining the Blessed Trinity. Various analogies-everything from three-leaf clovers to the modern-day "communion of persons" proposition-have been developed. While such attempts are beneficial because they seek to simplify a complex mystery of the Christian faith, we should also be mindful that analogies are inadequate in their sufficiency. For, just as the little boy could not fit an ocean into his sand pit, so we cannot adequately put the Trinity into an analogy.
             Three classic analogies of the Blessed Trinity include St. Patrick's shamrock, St. Gregory of Nazianzus's picture of the Sun, and St. Augustine's analogy of the mind, intellect, and will. Let us look at each of these analogies and see how they make known the mystery of the Trinity.
             I. Saint Patrick: Three-Leafed Clover
             Saint Patrick was certainly creative in his catechesis. This beloved missionary to, and patron of, Ireland used a simple three-leafed clover to demonstrate the mystery of the Trinity. "His idea was that each of the three leaves on the shamrock clover was a part of the whole. The entire clover cannot be perceived or appreciated or known without all three leaves. Thus, a trinity of leaves makes the unity of a
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