Trinity Sunday, C June 12, 2022
Fr. Alexander Albert St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. This is how we’re baptized, how we begin and end everything. It’s so ingrained in us Catholics that we instinctively respond to it. It’s one of my favorite ways to quiet down a room full of Catholics – just shout it out and by the end, most people in the room have done the sign of the Cross and are now at least pretending to pay attention.
But what does it mean? Truly, do we understand this “name” that we use for everything we are and do? [pause] That’s a trick question. I ask like you’re supposed to say “yes,” but the truth is that claiming to understand the Trinity is proof that you don’t understand. By its very nature, the mystery of the Trinity is just that: a mystery. Not like a mystery novel with a clever solution at the end, but something mysterious in itself – beyond understanding. And it’s not just any mystery, but this is the central mystery of the faith. Yes, Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection are the heart of our redemption, but the Trinity is who and what God is. Everything is founded on this truth. Without the Trinity, there is no incarnation of Jesus, no salvation, no existence at all.
To be a mystery, however, means there must be something we can think about, talk about… something we can apprehend even if we’ll never comprehend it. That’s the goal: to get some idea of the mystery of the Trinity and then to see what this mystery means for our daily lives.
It’s starts with a simple act of faith. There is only one God. Period. One. At the same time, that God is Three Divine Persons. The Father is completely God. The Son is completely God. The Holy Spirit is completely God. One God. Three Persons. Take it on faith; trust in Jesus, knowing that God should be beyond our limited reason.
Here’s an analogy that might help, so long as you don’t take it too literally. A human mind is one. But the one human mind has memory, reason, and will. They are all your mind, but they are not the same thing. Your memory is not just a collection of past events. It’s the awareness of yourself as something with a past and present. In your self-awareness and memory, you are aware of your ability to reason and think. You are also aware of your ability to make choices and act.
At the same time, when you think and reason about something, it includes memory of things you’re thinking about and it includes the choice to think. You use your will and memory in your thinking. Finally, when you make a choice, that choice includes the memories and thoughts that led up to that decision. One mind, but the three realities of memory, thinking, and willing. Each one is the mind and involves the others, but there is a difference. The Trinity is like that, but also unlike it. It is an analogy, not an exact comparison.
Each person is fully God, but each person is also not the other person. Another way to talk about this is to ask two different questions: What is it? The One God. Who is it? Three Divine persons.
If this makes your brain hurt a little, good, you’re probably doing something right. If it seems easy, then you’re missing something. Either way, the point is that we can’t figure it out. It has to be an act of faith. That is the first application to life. When it comes to knowing, loving, and worshipping God, we need faith. Put negatively, the mystery of the Trinity means we should avoid worshipping our own idea of God. We all know people who do this… we’ve all done it ourselves in some way – people who have their own version of what God is like. It might be a well-thought out answer, but it’s ultimately based on their own conclusions. “I think God is like…” Often enough, if you look closely, you’ll find them describing some aspects of themselves…
Once we accept the lie that we can come to our own conclusions about God, we’ve already gone astray. We probably have some truth, but that’s no excuse. Once upon a time, no one knew and a best guess was fine. But God has revealed himself. He is a Trinity, a mystery of One God, Three Persons. To know, love, and worship God means submitting to something outside our own ideas. The 1st life lesson is that really following God requires obedience and humility. Everything else is some form of idolatry. We should be baffled by the Trinity at least a little and then rejoice in submitting our minds to that experience of limitation. God is infinitely beyond us. Really worshipping him means encountering that infinity and being overwhelmed, responding the only way we can: with a humble “I believe, I trust, I love.” This is why the Catholic Church is a must. It’s the external guide to make sure we’re worshipping the actual true God and not our own imagination.
The second life lesson is what it means to be a person. Since Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are each fully God, the thing that makes them distinct is not their nature – their “whatness” – it is their relationship to each other. Human personhood is not a brain – that’s just one part of what we are. Who we are is found only in relationship. Adam names the animals, but he did not have a name for himself… he did not really know himself as a person until he saw Eve. The existence of another person is what enables us to recognize our own personhood.
Who are you? So and so’s daughter or son, their sibling, their mother or father, friends of him or her. It’s not their opinions of you that matter, but the fact that you exist in a network of other persons is what points you to your own personhood. Ultimately, the relationship that truly matters – the foundation of your personhood and identity – is with the one God who is three divine persons… in whose image we are made.
This is why we talked about the connection between identity, confirmation, and the Holy Spirit last week. These are truths beyond us, things we “cannot bear now” as Jesus says in the Gospel. But having received the Spirit, we are equipped to submit to this mystery not just as an idea, but as the very foundation of who we are as persons. It should also inform every other relationship. Other people are not obstacles to your personhood, but places to encounter it. Like mirrors, truly encountering others… loving them can show you yourself.
So, acknowledge the mystery of the Trinity, embrace it with humble faith, then live in the love in whose image you have been made. A love that does not seek itself by find itself precisely in being given.