Word to the Wise
Sunday, May 18, 2008 - The Most Holy Trinity
[Exodus 34:4B-6, 8-9; 2 Corinthians 13:11-13; John 3:16-18]The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you!
One might get the impression from the words that conclude St. Paul's Second Letter to the Corinthians (quoted, above, from the second scripture of today) that he was speaking of the Trinity in the way that the Church professes today. Those words do represent a first glimmering of the eventual understanding, just as those in the Gospel of Matthew, where Jesus commissions the disciples to baptize in the "name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." But it took nearly five centuries before the Church settled on a way of expressing in words the dogma of the Trinity, and even now, there are differences between us and our Orthodox brethren over some aspects of the dogma." Some theologians find it helpful to speak of the "immanent Trinity" (the very nature of God) and the "economic Trinity" (the way God works in the world). The Catechism of the Catholic Church speaks of "the divine economy" and states that we can know about God through the way in which God is revealed through scripture and even in creation. That the subject is difficult to communicate might be found in the claim of non-Christian faiths that we really worship three Gods and not just one. We Christians deny that claim but our "three in one and one in three" language leaves Islam and Judaism scratching their collective heads! The New Testament, especially the Gospel of John, gives us the basic elements, but it took all that time I have mentioned to find language that would "work," at least on an official level. On a catechetical or evangelizational level, the task is considerable. Legend has it that St. Patrick used the three-leaved clover as his model - but that might get a theologian in trouble nowadays for reasons too complicated for this preaching to go into. On a daily basis, we profess our faith in the Most Holy Trinity by making the Sign of the Cross. I begin the celebration of the Eucharist each day with those words from St. Paul quoted above. I baptize by using the words from the Gospel of Matthew. (The Vatican, in fact, recently ruled that ONLY those words may be used and not some other descriptive terms like "creator, redeemer and sanctifier - even if these words describe the "economy" of the Trinity.) When I bless something at the request of someone, I use the trinitarian formula. Religious art uses all kinds of triple symbols, most commonly the triangle, to express this faith. We express it in the doxology: "Glory be etc...." Spiritually, some folks find reflection on this divine mystery to be very important. Others recognize and accept it but then relegate it to the category of things too complicated to think about. Or we just say we don't need to know everything there is to know about God in order to love God or for God to love us! Ultimately, as St. Augustine put it, the Trinity "is not a lie but a mystery." This truth is at the center of our faith in God and it is at work in us every day. At least one day a year, the Church celebrates this mystery and intentionally calls our attention to it. Today's the day! AMEN
config
view
logs
3840.0 KB
55 ms
4
