Sunday, May 26, 2013

Homily: Trinity Sunday 2013 - Trinity and Unity


We have come again to the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity.  I don’t know who dreads this Sunday more, the priests who have to attempt to explain this most mysterious of all Catholic Dogmas in a short homily, or the people, who have to listen to it. 

I think many priests on Trinity Sunday try, like Saint Patrick, to explain the nature of the Trinity with some analogy, like the three-leaf clover: the trinity is like three burning candles twisted together to have one flame, or like a three-stranded piece of rope.  Or the Trinity is like an egg, and the three persons are like the egg shell, an egg white and an egg yolk.  Some have said the Trinity is like Water which can come in three modes: ice, liquid, or steam, or a tree that has branches, leaves, and roots.

The problem with each of these analogies is that they are ultimately wrong, yes, even Saint Patrick’s use of the three-leaf clover.  To say that the Trinity is like some created thing will never fully explain the Trinity.  The three divine persons of the One Supreme Godhead –Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, are not three modes of God, three parts, three divisions, or three different masks that God wears, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, are not three separate entities, like three separate Gods or made of three different substances.  In fact, it’s easier to say what the Trinity is not, than what the Trinity is.

So, if we can’t use analogies to understand the Trinity, what is the point of Trinity Sunday and how can we even talk about the Trinity?

Pope Benedict said that one of the purposes of Trinitarian language—especially that which we have received from the Church Fathers--that God is One and Three, that the persons are consubstantial—is meant to confound us, it is meant to confuse us.  At very sacred moments in our Liturgical Worship, we use incense—we incense the book of the Gospels, we incense the altar, we incense the gifts.  Part of the use of incense is to symbolize that our prayers rise up to God.  But also, the smoke of the incense is to get in our eyes, to obfuscate, to cloud—to highlight that there is something going on in the liturgy that we can’t see, that there is something going on that is beyond human control, to emphasize that we are not in charge. 

Likewise, much of our language to explain the Trinity, are like incense, our praises rise up to God like incense, but they also highlight that we don’t define God, we can’t even come close.

Saint Augustine, who is one of the most profound reflectors on the Trinity said, “Si comprehendis, non est Desus” which means, “If you understand, it’s not God.”  The minute you say, yes, I got it now, that’s not God, says Augustine.  The Trinity is greater than human understanding, it is grasped by faith, and we confess it in our Creed that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

On the other hand, We were created in order to love God.  And an old proverb says, "You cannot love what you do not know."  God’s nature might be ultimately unknowable, but we must seek to know Him.  Just as you get to know someone by spending time with them, and doing work with them, so to, we seek to know God by spending more time with him in prayer, by reading what the great Church Fathers have written about him, and by spending time in his service.

God has revealed that He is Trinity to us because he wants us to know Him and he wants us to share His love.

The Opening Prayer of today’s Mass contains an important insight for what we are celebrating today, “grant us, we pray, that in professing the true faith, we may acknowledge the Trinity of eternal glory and adore your Unity, powerful in majesty.”  Trinity on one hand, Unity on the other.

But, notice how the prayer connects the notion of God’s threeness, his manyness, his plurality, with glory, on the one hand and his unity, his oneness, with his power, on the other  Glorious in Trinity, Powerful in Unity.
And here’s the connection with our life as Christians.  The Church is the most diverse institution on the planet, people of every race, language, and nation, covering the whole world.  As artists, and politicians, and parents, and priests, and virgins and religious, and architects, and thinkers, and workers, in so many different and varied ways, we give glory to God through our works and through our cooperation with Him in the unique situations of our lives.  The plurality of persons of the Trinity is glorious, and the Church, in her plurality can magnify his glory.

On the other hand, the power of the Church, comes from her unity.  And when is the Church the most powerful?  When she is united under the banner of the one faith.  When is she weakest?  When Christians stray from the faith, when they let divisions, and schisms, and heresies seek to remake and redefine the Church.  The divisions, schisms, heresies which have afflicted the Church since the early centuries are wounds to her unity and limit her power and her effectiveness as an instrument of the Gospel.

But when we face the evils of the world, together, united through the bond of charity and the grace of God, the Church is a powerful instrument of God which can move mountains and topple the most aggressive of foes. 

What this means for you and for me is that each of us has the vocation to nurture and develop our individual gifts and put them at the service of the Gospel, on the one hand, and on the other, profess the One faith in the One God, in order to stand strong against the wickedness and snares and temptations of the enemy, the flesh, and the world.  Families especially need to be places of unity and also places where our unique gifts are nurtured and developed, particularly the gifts for service.

Today, as we profess our faith in God, One and Three, who pours out his grace upon us, that we might become who He created us to be, let's ask God to stir up our desire to know him and love him, to manifest his greatness in the world for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

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