Word to the Wise
Sunday, June 7, 2009 - The Most Holy Trinity
[Deuteronomy 4:32-34, 39-40; Romans 8:14-17; Matthew 28:16-20]All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.
In our secular Western culture, anything that cannot be measured or quantified is a mystery to us. Some mysteries are more mysterious than others! The feast of the Most Holy Trinity is designed to remind us of a truth that remains beyond our understanding even though church fathers and theologians and ecumencial councils have attempted to describe it. This truth is the very nature of God and how God acts in accord with that nature. We at least have a name for this truth: the Most Holy Trinity - Three Persons but One God. When I was in grade school, the sisters would repeat the legend of St. Patrick using the three-leaved clover to explain the Trinity. And they left it at that! Each Sunday we express our faith in this reality in the Nicene Creed, which says about all we CAN say. The gospel scripture today shows that the Church began thinking of God in a triune way early on, but it was not the highly developed language that such theologians as St. Athanasius or St. Thomas Aquinas woud eventually give us. Sometimes the best way to deal with mystery is in poetry. St. Thomas Aquinas did that in his hymn, Adoro Te. I find the words of the great spiritual writer, Madeleine L'Engle helpful. "The Trinity is trapped in neither time nor space. Before Abraham was, I am, cries the second person. I will be what I will be, shouts the first. And through the brilliant flame of the Spirit I know that the Christ on whose name I call was creating galaxies and snowflakes long before there were living beings naming the animals in the Garden." Perhaps all I can say in response to that is to make the Sign of the Cross: In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. AMEN"
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