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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