Holy Trinity Sunday

Marriage is the most convincing explanation of the Mystery of the Trinity.

I read a confession of a man, who get married:

I understood a little bit from the Mystery of the Holy Trinity when I get married. I love my wife, my wife loves me, and the personification of this mutual love is our child. I understood that God is like that, God is a Mutual Creative Love. I understood that He created us as a unity of creative lave, I understood that love is always directed toward two other persons, that love is always creative. I understood the homosexuals unions a empty of love because they cannot and they will never be creative, I understood the God can not be alone that He has to be a community of persons, and he created us as a community of persons.

The story is told of a priest sitting in an airport waiting for his flight. A fellow killing time struck up a conversation. Said he, "Father, I believe only what I can understand. So, I can't buy your Trinity. Perhaps you can explain it to me." The priest reluctantly put down The New York Times. "Do you see the sun out there?" "Yup." "OK, it's 80 million miles away from us right now. The rays coming through the window," said the priest, "are coming from the sun. The delightful heat we are enjoying on our bodies right now come from a combination of the sun and its rays. Do you understand that?" The fellow answered, "Sure, padre." "The Trinity," the priest went on, "is like that. God the Father is that blazing sun. The Son is the rays He sends down to us. Then both combine to send us the Holy Spirit who is the heat. If you understand the workings of the sun, its rays, and heat, why do you have difficulty believing the Trinity?" The man said something about catching a flight and was off.

The priest, a physics professor, picked up the Times with a broad smile. He doubted whether his recent guest understood the workings of the sun. He knew no one would ever comprehend the mystery of the Trinity this side of the grave. After all, why  does God have to tell us everything? In his experience, He tells us only on a need to know basis.

His favourite line from the Book of Job popped into his mind. "Can anyone penetrate the deep designs of God?" (11:7) As a scientist and a Catholic, he knew the answer to that question. Try to understand the Trinity and you become like a person staring, as someone said, into the noonday sun to better understand it.

Finally he put down the Times and recalled fondly his late Dogma professor in the seminary. When he came to the section on the Trinity in the textbook, he turned the pages quickly. The Dogma prof said, "Professor Thomas Aquinas, late of the University of Paris and the Albert Einstein of his day, didn't understand the Trinity. So, it is most unlikely that you blockheads will either. Just remember St Paul mentions the Trinity 30 times in his letters. Take it on faith and you'll muddle through somehow." He trusted that the professor and Thomas both now understood the Trinity perfectly.

He himself never had difficulty buying into a God who is passionately in love with us, a Son who was willing to die for us, and a Holy Spirit whose job it is to help us become saints like Thomas of Aquin and Paris.

He recalled the husband, who said when he became a father, he better understood the Trinity. When he and his wife had their son, they had evidence of their love for each other. There was the lover, the beloved, and the love, each distinct and yet one.

Belief in the Trinity demands acknowledging God’s infinite superiority in all areas including our rationality.  Adam and Eve refused to do that.  They pushed God aside, turned away from life and gave us death.  The Arians, including the modern day arians of the academia, do not have the humility to admit that man’s knowledge of the Divine is limited by the finite capability of the human mind. They do not have the humility to enter into mystery, the mystery of God.  I like to consider it this way: an eight year old cannot understand calculus.  He or she is incapable of that form of understanding.  But calculus still exists.  Most of our top high school students could not come to the theory of relativity, but it is a valid theory.  Because some knowledge is beyond us does not mean that it doesn’t exist.  What does exist is the pride and arrogance we all have to refuse to go beyond the limits of our minds and accept God’s mysteries. The trouble is that we humans are proud.  We would like to determine who God is, what He should be like, etc.  We try to fit him into our mental constructs.  In doing so, we are refusing to enter into mystery. 

Dom Julian, a Benedictine monk, wrote, “All that matters is that God is God, and I, I am only I.”

Jesus didn’t explicitly teach us about the Trinity. The theology of the Trinity comes out of the reflection of the early Church on the teaching of Jesus. They thought over what he said and under the influence of the Holy Spirit they began to understand the dynamics of the Trinity.

Jesus referred on many occasions to his Father and the closeness of his relationship with him. Moreover he taught us to speak to the Father in a very familiar and direct way.

Jesus also promises to send us his Spirit and refers even in this particular passage that he will be with us always, until the end of time. We understand that it is precisely through the Holy Spirit that Jesus is present to us.