Most Holy Trinity

At the heart of Christianity is a great mystery--the Most Holy Trinity.  It's not a mystery to be solved, but one before which we stand with humble faith.  St. Augustine once said that if we could understand this mystery of God who is one yet three Persons, we would not be talking about God any more.  "Si comprehendis, non deus est."

Throughout history people have tried to help us better appreciate this mystery.  As he catechized the Irish people, St. Patrick showed them a three-leaf shamrock to illustrate that God is both one and three.  But such a physical illustration makes it seem as though God can be divided into parts. Our faith, though, tells us that where one Person of the Trinity is all three are present.  This is known as "circumincession."

Rublev's famous icon of the Trinity, based on Abraham's encounter with three angelic beings (Genesis 18: 1-15), is one of the most beautiful representations of the Trinity, but it can also be misleading as it depicts three individuals.  Western art follows a similar path, showing the Trinity as Jesus with a cross, and the Father as an old, white-haired man, and the Holy Spirit as a dove.

Perhaps St. Ignatius Loyola is more helpful.  He once had a vision of the Holy Trinity as three keys of an organ or a piano being played together and creating one perfect harmony.

We believe that God is one and three because Jesus said so.  We see this especially in John's Gospel. Pope Francis said: "Jesus revealed this mystery to us. He spoke to us of God as the Father; he spoke to us of the Spirit; and he spoke to us of himself as the Son of God."  We believe because Jesus promised to send "the Spirit of truth" who "will guide you to all truth" (John 16: 13). The Spirit continues to teach us through the Scriptures and the Church.

Pope Francis went on to speak of the practical implications of this great mystery.  "Today's solemnity, while making us contemplate the amazing mystery from which we come and toward which we are going, renews for us the mission of living in communion with God and living in communion among ourselves on the model of the divine communion."

In other words, because our origin is from God who made us in the divine image and likeness, we're made by and for love--union with God and the communion of saints.  We are not isolated individuals. No one sins alone, nor is anyone saved alone.  From our ancestral parents to the present, what one person made in God's image does affects the whole.  This is why we all inherit the sin of Adam and Eve.

Pope Francis went on to say:  "The Trinity is the communion of Divine Persons who are one with the others, one for the others, one in the others: this communion is the life of God, the mystery of the love of the living God."

Again, since we are made in the image of God who is a Trinity of Love, we are called to live in communion with others.  As Pope Francis put it: "We are called to live not as one without the others, above or against the others, but one with the others, for the others, and in the others" [emphasis in the original]. We know what it means to live with others and for others, but what can it mean to live "in the others?"  One way of looking at this is through St. Paul's teaching on the Body of Christ. He writes: "God has so constructed the body ... so that there may be no division in the body, but that the parts may have the same concern for one another. If one part suffers, all the parts suffer with it; if one part is honored, all the parts share its joy" (1 Cor. 12: 24-26).  This is the meaning of compassion.  We live "in" others when we see things through their eyes and experience the pain and joy that they experience.

Pope Francis continues: "This means to accept and witness in harmony the beauty of the Gospel; experiencing love for one another and for all, sharing joy and suffering, learning to ask and grant forgiveness. In a word, we have been entrusted with the task of building church communities which increasingly become families, capable of reflecting the splendor of the Trinity and evangelizing not only with words but with the power of the love of God that lives within us" [emphasis in original].

This is the work of the Holy Spirit which theologians tell us is the love between the Father and the Son.  St. Paul wrote that "the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us" (Rom. 5: 5).

Ultimately the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the mystery of love.  God is, by nature, Love.  Before creation God was a perfect communion of love, but it is the nature of love to share.  God chose to share existence, life, and love with human beings.  Though God was perfectly happy, God wanted, as it were, to have "playmates" (see Proverbs 8: 30-31).  God wanted to share the delight of existence, life, and love with creatures made in the image and likeness of the Trinity.  God created and "found delight in the human race" (Proverbs 8: 31).

All this raises several questions to use as we reflect on our day:

• How did I reflect the love of the Trinity today?
• How did I live with, for, and in others today? 
• How did I give delight to God today? 

The Holy Spirit, the Reconciler

I celebrated Mass this morning for the Sisters of St. Francis at Clare Hall today. Here is my homily:

In today’s gospel (John 20: 19-23), Jesus confronts the fear of the apostles on the evening of his resurrection. They had huddled together behind locked doors, afraid that they would be crucified next. And, no doubt, they were afraid when Jesus suddenly appeared before their eyes. Is he a ghost? Has he returned to condemn them for abandoning him in his hour of need? Jesus said, “Peace be with you,” and showed them his wounds, the signs of his everlasting love. He repeated, “Peace be with you.”

Fear divides people and leads to conflict and war. The Original Sin had its roots in fear. Our ancestral parents were afraid that God had not told them the truth about the trees in their garden. Could they really trust God? Wouldn’t it be better to get control, to have power, so that they would not have to depend on God?

Fear led to mistrust which led to rebellion. The result was immediate: separation and alienation from God and each other. Division.

Jesus came to take away sin and division. He came to reconcile humanity to God and to one another, to bring unity amidst diversity instead of division. He sent the Holy Spirit to continue this work of reconciliation and peace-making.

As a result, there are many different tongues or languages but one message. There are many parts but one body. There are many different gifts, forms of service, and workings but “the same Spirit,” “the same Lord,” “the same God” (see the second reading, 1 Corinthians 12: 3-7, 12-13).  Notice the Trinitarian formula: Spirit, Lord, God, or Holy Spirit, Lord Jesus, God the Father.  The Holy Trinity is the source of unity in diversity because this is God’s very nature—a Communion of Divine Persons.  Three and One, as we will celebrate next Sunday on the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity.

Humanity is made in the image and likeness of God who is diverse and one.  Human beings are not isolated individuals.  Fear and sin isolate and divide.  The Holy Spirit renews the image of God in humanity and brings about the communion of persons, making the many parts into one body. 

Jesus commissions the apostles in the gospel to continue his work of reconciliation and peace-making: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”  He empowers the Church to overcome sin that divides, breathing on the apostles and saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.” 

What does this retention of sin mean?  Reconciliation is a two-way street. One who has been hurt badly may extend forgiveness to the offending party, but if the other does not admit the wrong, accept responsibility for it, recognize the need for forgiveness and receive it from the one extending it, then reconciliation has not occurred. The sin is retained.  Forgiveness was extended but not accepted.

We must, like God, be always ready to forgive. And when the forgiveness we extend is not received, we must continue to pray, sacrifice, and make reparation, as Jesus did. We must do all we can to repair the damage that sin has caused, the division.

This is what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit. This is what it means to carry on Jesus’ work of reconciliation and peace-making.

Trinity Sunday

I celebrated Mass this morning at the Newman Center at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.  Here's what I said:

Last year, on this feast of the Most Holy Trinity, Pope Benedict said the following:  "Today we are celebrating the Feast of the Blessed Trinity, the Feast of God, of the center of our faith: God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. When one thinks of the Trinity, one usually thinks of the aspect of the mystery: they are Three and they are One, one God in three Persons. Actually God in his greatness cannot be anything but a mystery for us...."
 There is a problem with that word "mystery."  We tend to think of Sherlock Holmes and murder or crime shows with mysteries that can be solved when enough clues are discovered.  The mysteries of our faith, including the great mystery of the Holy Trinity, are not mysteries like these.  They cannot be "solved" nor completely understood.  St. Augustine said that when it comes to God, "si comprehendis, non Deus est."  If you think you can understand the mystery that is God, you're no longer talking about God. 

But, Pope Benedict finished the above sentence with these words: "yet he revealed himself. We can know him in his Son and thus also know the Father and the Holy Spirit."
 God is not a mathematical problem to be solved nor do we come to know a person by dissecting him or her.  We come to know a person as that person reveals him or herself to us.  That's what God has done through creation and the history of the Chosen People recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures.  There Israel, and all of us, come to know God in a way that was radically new, in a way that no other religion came to know God.  God revealed himself as a loving Father.  Then the Father sent the Son, as Pope Benedict often says, as "the human face of God."  Jesus is the fullest revelation of God.  Jesus taught his disciples and us to pray as he did, calling God "Abba," Aramaic for Daddy or Pappa."  We are to call God "our Father" when we pray.  Jesus promised at the Last Supper that he and the Father would come to be one with us (see John 14:  9-11, 23).  He also promised to send the Holy Spirit to be with us and in us (see John: 14: 16-17).  This Holy Spirit came at Pentecost, the day we commemorated last Sunday, and at each of our baptisms.  Jesus told the disciples and us in today's Gospel to go and baptize people "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." 

Though God has revealed himself to us in Jesus and through the Holy Spirit, the mystery remains.  God is more than we can understand.  Throughout history missionaries and theologians have tried to help people better understand the mystery of the Trinity with images and analogies.  St. Patrick famously used a shamrock to show that God is one and God is three.  But such images limp.  God cannot be divided the way a shamrock can.  Where one Person of the Blessed Trinity is, the three Persons are. 

Practically speaking, what does all this mean for us in our daily lives?  Besides the fact that God has revealed himself as a Trinity, why is this belief important?

Pope Benedict's homily of last year continues: "Instead today’s Liturgy draws our attention not so much to this mystery as to the reality of love that is contained in this first and supreme mystery of our faith. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are one because God is love and love is an absolute life-giving force; the unity created by love is a unity greater than a purely physical unity. The Father gives everything to the Son; the Son receives everything from the Father with gratitude; and the Holy Spirit is the fruit of this mutual love of the Father and the Son…."

In other words, another way of speaking about the mystery of the Trinity is to say, as St. John did in the First Letter that bears his name, "God is love" (see 1 John 4: 8 and 16).  God is a communion of persons, three yet one.  Now, in whose image have we been made?  We read in the first book of the Bible, Genesis, that humanity was made "in the image and likeness of God."  Each human person is made in the image and likeness of the Most Holy Trinity.  Our deepest identity is love.  We were made by love and for love.  We are not isolated individuals separated from one another.  We are made for communion.  Individualism is a lie that denies our very identity as persons made in the image and likeness of the Communion of Persons that is God.  Thus when Jesus taught us to pray he did not tell us to pray with the words "my Father," but "our Father." 

Both our first reading from Deuteronomy and our Gospel from Matthew tell us that a very practical implication of this is following God's commandments.  Thus we hear Moses say, "You must keep his statutes and commandments that I enjoin on you today," and after telling his disciples to baptize all people Jesus adds, "teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you."  These commandments are not something external to us.  They are not imposed upon us but are part of our very nature.  We're all familiar with the laws of nature.  One is gravity and as material beings we follow it.  We can rebel against it, launching ourselves off a height and trying to fly, but in doing so we end up hurting or killing ourselves.  Similarly, as living creatures we follow certain biological laws that are built right into us.  There are some things that are incompatible with our health and very life.  We call these poison.  We are free to drink it but if we do we suffer certain consequences for our foolish rebellion.  Moreover we are more than physical and biological creatures.  We are also spiritual beings who have certain spiritual laws built right into our nature.  These are the commandments which Jesus summed up in one word--love.  Love God and love your neighbor.  As beings made in the image and likeness of God who is love itself, we are made for love.  To rebel against this law of love, to sin, thinking that we are only hurting ourselves, leads to soul sickness and the possibility of eternal death--separation from God and the communion of saints. 

Celebrating the feast of the Most Holy Trinity reminds us of our own deepest identity--persons called to communion.  As we grow in love and in communion with God and one another, we reveal to the world the true nature of our Trinitarian God--love. 

The Prayer of Abraham

Last Friday night I gave a short talk at the Archdiocese of Milwaukee's monthly All-Night Vigil. My topic was based on the May 18 General Audience of Pope Benedict--Abraham and the Prayer of Intercession.

How did you learn to pray? What were your first prayers like?

I recall my mother kneeling with me beside my bed each night and praying for her and my father, for my sisters and other relatives, and for friends. Later, when I was tucked into bed, I might add a secret prayer--asking for something for myself, like a certain toy for Christmas. Sometimes I prayed in desperation, like the time my sister accidentally splashed dish water into Timmy the Turtle's bowl and he got very sick. I prayed that he would recover. He didn't.

When those prayers of desperation are not answered as we want, our faith is tested. That's especially true when we pray for important and good things--like the health of a loved one. When the loved one dies we ask: "Doesn't God hear?" "Doesn't God care?"

The answer is that God does hear every prayer and does care deeply for us, but sometimes the answer he gives to our prayers is the one that Jesus received in a garden called Gethsemane. Didn't the Father hear the prayer of his Beloved Son? Most certainly. Didn't the Father care for his Son? Yes. Then why? Why did the Father not take the cup of suffering and death away from his Son? Because God had a greater good in mind. It's truly hard to imagine, but God loved the sinful human race so much that he saved us through suffering and death, by sharing in our own suffering and death.

We're made in God's image and likeness. God is a Communion of Persons and as such God is Love Itself. Made in the image and likeness of Love, we're made by love and for love. That is our nature and our destiny. Through baptism we become children of the Father, brothers and sisters of Jesus, temples of the Holy Spirit. We are called to believe this and to act on it.

What does that mean, to act on this belief about our deepest identity? It means loving as God loves.

Do you love God? Do you have God's love in your heart? Do you share God's concern for the world?

This is what brings us here to the monthly All-Night Vigil. We come together to pray for the salvation of all. We do so like Abraham who, according to Chapter 18 of Genesis, begged God to save sinful Sodom and Gomorrah. As Pope Benedict said last May 18: "By voicing this prayer, Abraham was giving a voice to what God wanted." What God wanted was not destruction but salvation. God wanted to save those two cities and Abraham's prayer gave voice to God's desire. Abraham's prayer opened, as it were, a channel for God's merciful grace to enter those cities. Unfortunately, that grace did not find a welcome, for there was no one to receive it. All rejected it, clinging instead to evil.

God desires to save. This is why God sent the Blessed Virgin Mary to Fatima in 1917. When she appeared in July of that year, the Mother of God revealed to the three children a terrible scene--Hell. Photos of the children that were taken afterwards show how badly shaken they were. They committed themselves to praying, fasting, and offering sacrifices for the conversion and salvation of sinners. The youngest, Jacinta, was particularly moved by what she had seen. She did not want anyone to go to that place of definitive alienation from God.

We are not so innocent. At one time or another we have held on to anger, unforgiveness, bitterness, and hatred. You and I have probably wanted to see our enemies--personal, ethnic, or national--rot in hell.

Not Jesus. He came to save humanity so that no one would rot in hell. He prayed for his enemies who crucified him. The New Testament calls us to bless those who curse us, just as Jesus did.

This is the prayer that unites us to God. This is the prayer that unites us to one another each First Friday and Saturday. Over the years it has united many, some who are no longer with us physically. They are with us spiritually now in a powerful way, praying and interceding with and for us. Good and gentle and holy Father Redemptus is with us tonight, praying.

Our prayer is that God may have mercy on all and give to all the grace to be converted, to accept the salvation that Christ won for us on the cross. We strive to make this a pure prayer, a pure channel for God's merciful grace to enter the world, a channel not clogged by rancor or bitterness.

This is the meaning of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary. These Two Hearts suffered for love of humanity, for sinners. The Heart of Jesus was pierced on the cross. The Heart of Mary was pierced by the sword of sorrow that only a mother could feel watching her own flesh and blood suffer and die that way. These Two Hearts continue to suffer for hurting humanity. They suffer for the terrible pains and sorrow people inflict on one another. They suffer for the consequences of sin that lead to self-destruction. Their suffering moves us to pray and do penance for the salvation of all those who suffer and for all who cause suffering.

Let us close with the words with which Pope Benedict ended his General Audience of May 18:

Dear brothers and sisters, the prayer of intercession of Abraham, our father in the faith, teaches us to open our hearts ever wider to God's superabundant mercy so that in daily prayer we may know how to desire the salvation of humanity and ask for it with perseverance and with trust in the Lord who is great in love.

Feast of the Most Holy Trinity

Though I've not actually seen it, I imagine that this annual feast in honor the Most Holy Trinity brings many parish priests to tears. What can you say about this greatest mystery of the Christian faith? How can you talk about the very nature of God, a Mystery of Three and One? What does this mystery have to do with the daily lives of the congregation?

Yet, the Catechism of the Catholic Church #234 states: "The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of Christian faith and life." Notice, this mystery is not only central to our Christian faith--what we believe--but also to our life--how we are to live.

The mystery of the Trinity brought St. Ignatius Loyola to tears, but not because he felt helpless in the face of preaching. In his autobiography #28, speaking in the third person, he described it this way:

One day while saying the Office of Our Lady on the steps of the same monastery [of the Dominicans near Manresa, Spain], his understanding began to be elevated so that he saw the Most Holy Trinity in the form of three musical keys. This brought on so many tears and so much sobbing that he could not control himself. That morning, while going in a procession that set out from there, he could not hold back his tears until dinnertime; nor after eating could he stop talking about the Most Holy Trinity, using many comparisons in great variety and with much joy and consolation. As a result, the effect has remained with him throughout his life of experiencing great devotion while praying to the Most Holy Trinity.

What St. Ignatius shows us is that ultimately we are to approach God more with the heart than with the head. Our intellect will never be able to understand the mystery of the Trinity. We cannot dissect God like a piece of scientific data. We must, in the words of Catherine de Hueck Doherty, "fold up the wings of the intellect and descend into the heart." We must approach God with humility and love, allowing God to reveal Himself to us.

This is what Jesus told His disciples to do. Matthew Chapter 18 begins with the apostles arguing over which of them was the greatest. Jesus called a child over and said: "Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven." This echoes words of Jesus that appeared earlier, in Chapter 11, when Jesus prayed: "I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to the childlike."

These two passages are a call to conversion. We must "turn" away from our usual way of thinking in which we tend to say "I won't believe, I won't trust, unless I can understand," and become humbly receptive to what God reveals of Himself through the Scriptures and the Church. We are called to approach God not with suspicion and a "prove-it-to-me" attitude, but with love, the love of a child who is assured of the love of the parent and responds with trust, allowing him or herself to be led and even carried.

The Mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is an invitation to enter into the Love who is God, to be filled with a love that can bring you to tears, and to return that love with an offering of your entire self.