The solemn singing of the Trisagion, the thrice-holy hymn praising the Most Holy Trinity, is one of the most important and oldest of our Orthodox hymns. The story told about the origin of this hymn connects it to an earthquake that shook Constantinople sometime in 450AD. The earthquake proved catastrophic and people gathered in the streets and began praying, asking God to have mercy on them, singing Kyrie eleison or Lord, have mercy. During this tragedy a small boy came forward and said that, in a vision, he had heard the hymn of the angels gathered around the throne of God, singing what we today call the Trisagion: Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us. The people took up this chant and the aftershocks ceased. Based on the song of the angelic Seraphim heard by the Prophet Isaiah (6:5), by the end of the 6th century, the Trisagion had been incorporated into the text of the Liturgy. Today, the Trisagion constitutes the last part of the Great Doxology at Matins and should be part of every Orthodox Christian's morning and evening prayers. It is even sung in Greek and Latin on Holy Friday at St. Peter's Basilica in the Roman Catholic Church.
In the Orthodox tradition the Trisagion is primarily understood as a hymn to the Most Holy Trinity. St. John of Damascus (676 - 749 AD) wrote a whole book explaining the meaning of this hymn! This teaching is best summed up in a hymn written by the Emperor Leo the Wise (866 - 912 AD) for the feast of Pentecost, which we sing at Vespers on that day. "Come, peoples of all nations, and let us worship God in three persons: the Son in the Father, with the Holy Spirit. For the Father, before time began, begot the Son, co-eternal and co-reigning with Him; and the Holy Spirit was in the Father, and glorified with the Son; one power, one essence, one God, whom we all worship as we sing: Holy God, who created all things through the Son, with the co-operation of the Holy Spirit! Holy Mighty, through whom we have come to know the Father, and through whom the Holy Spirit came into the world! Holy Immortal, the Comforting Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and rests in the Son! Holy Trinity, glory to You!"
What does it mean for us to sing this ancient hymn and call God thrice-holy? First, it signifies that the God whom we worship is completely, totally and utterly transcendent. The one, true and living God stands outside the created universe of time and space as we know it. Because of this we can never fully grasp the divine Reality and must approach God in worship with a sense of reverence and awe. God is, as the Liturgy will later say in one of its prayers, "ineffable, beyond comprehension, invisible, beyond understanding, existing forever and always the same, You and Your only-begotten Son and Your Holy Spirit." In fact, St. John Chrysostom wrote a treatise entitled On the Incomprehensibility of God in which some of these very phrases are used to describe God. Yet, this utterly transcendent and holy God, the Creator of the universe whom we cannot even begin to comprehend, has chosen to reveal Himself to us as complete and total Love, Truth, Light and Life in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, the "Christ in whom the fullness of the Deity dwelt in bodily form" (Colossians 2:9). Second, because the Trisagion is based on the hymn of the angels, St. Nicholas Cabasilas (c. 1319- c. 1391) comments that in singing the Trisagion during the Liturgy "human beings and angels form one Church and one choir." During the celebration of the Liturgy, heaven and earth intersect and our worship here becomes an icon of the worship going on around the throne of God in heaven (Revelation 4:1-10). Third, to call God thrice-holy implies His absolute purity. For us human beings, this carries moral connotations, for "Your eyes are too pure to look upon evil and You cannot tolerate wrong" (Habakkuk 1:13). The holiness of God demands repentance: the cleansing and purification of one's mind and heart, and the consecration of one's life in love to Him. In the Old Testament, God said to the people of Israel through Moses, "Be holy because I, the Lord Your God, am holy" (Leviticus 19:2) prior to issuing the commandment to "love your neighbor as yourself" (19:19). And in the Sermon on the Mount, after the Lord Jesus tells us to love even our enemies, He concludes by issuing, in essence, the same challenge: "Be perfect, therefore, as your Father in heaven is perfect" (Matthew 5:48). This call by God for us to share in and reflect His holiness is the fundamental axiom of the Christian life. As Mother Teresa of Calcutta (1910 - 1997) has said, "As Christians, we have been created for great things. We have been created to be holy since we have been created in the image of God."
The Divine Liturgy of our Father among the Saints John Chrysostom (with Commentary and Notes)
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