Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity
One
of my favorite classes at Sacred Heart Major Seminary was Theology of the
Trinity.
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| Bishop John Quinn, Bishop of Winona, MN |
Besides being a great subject to study (you can never go wrong learning more about God), I also enjoyed the class because of the professor, Bishop John Quinn, who was at the time an auxiliary bishop of Detroit, and is now Bishop of the Diocese of Winona, Minnesota. He taught well, but also became a mentor to me, and a kind of friend, with whom I still keep in touch today with an occasional letter or email. In that class we learned about the different images that were used to describe the Trinity: The Sun (s-u-n) Itself (God the Father), the Light of the Sun (Jesus), and the Warmth of the Sun’s Rays (God the Holy Spirit); the Root (God the Father), the Shoot (Jesus), and the Fruit (God the Holy Spirit); and many others. But what was key to describing the Most Holy Trinity was the understanding that God was not simply a monad, but a Communion of Persons.
Our
belief in One God, yet Three Persons, distinguishes us from the other two major
monotheistic religious of the world: Judaism and Islam. They both hold, with us, that God is One,
based upon the words of Deuteronomy: “Shema
Yisrael: Adonai Elohim, Adonai Echad”: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is God,
the Lord is One.” And yet,
throughout the Gospels, Jesus makes clear that He and the Father are One, not
just in some metaphorical sense, but in the core of their Being, shown when
Jesus forgives sins, something which only God could do. That is why the Sanhedrin condemns
Jesus for blasphemy, for claiming to be God. And in today’s Gospel, Jesus affirms the role of the Holy
Spirit, who is God, as continuing His work.
But
while we can talk until the end of time about the Trinity, seeking to
understand more fully who God really is, we experience the Trinity in our
everyday lives. For, if God is a
Communion of Persons, and we are created in the image and likeness of God, then
we too are called to be a communion of persons. And we know this from the beginning. We know, as the Book of Genesis states,
that it is not good for the man to be alone. It is not good for us to lack communion. We have, built within ourselves, a
desire to know another and to be known by another, and to pour ourselves out
for another, just as God is known in His fullness by the Trinity of Persons,
and shares that knowledge with each Divine Person, and each Divine Person pours
out all of who He is to each other.
First
and foremost, our desire for communion leads us to desire God. St. Augustine rightly said in his Confessions, “You have made us for
yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” Each person, even the most hardened
atheist, has a desire for communion with that Communion of Persons in the Trinity. We want to be connected to the infinite. And whether we are single, ordained,
consecrated men and women, or married, there is an aspect of our desire for
communion that can only be filled by God.
And when we try to fill that with someone else, even a best friend or a
spouse, we are perpetually frustrated, because they are finite, and we desire
communion with the infinite.
But
we do also desire communion with each other. For many here, that life of communion is fulfilled in a
special way through marriage, which is itself a symbol, something which points
to another, of the communion of the Trinity: each spouse pours their life out
to the other, which is always open to new life, just as the Father and Son pour
themselves out to each other, in a love which is so strong that it spirates, or
breathes forth, the Holy Spirit.
That is why Jesus, and therefore the Church, teaches that divorce cannot
be a possibility, because marriage is called to make visible the invisible
total union of God, which will never be divided or broken up. My dear married couples, you are the
way that we witness what the love of the Trinity is meant to look like. What an exalted vocation!! For those who promise celibacy or take
a vow of chastity or virginity, that spousal union is lived out with God, which
then allows us to share that infinite love of God with you, whom we are called
to serve.
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| Sts. Gregory (l) and Basil (r) |
But
all of us, no matter what our vocation, are also blessed with the communion of
friendship. In that platonic
union, we are also able to pour ourselves out to another, such that sometimes
friends become like another self.
What a great blessing to be able to have a person who accepts us as we
are, but also calls us to the heights of holiness and virtue, with whom we can
be open and honest. Two of
Christianity’s greatest friends, Sts. Basil and Gregory Nazianzen, lived this
out, though they had their very rough patches. St. Gregory wrote on the anniversary of the death of St.
Basil, “We seemed to be two bodies with a single spirit. Though we cannot believe those who
claim that ‘everything is contained in everything,’ yet you must believe that
in our case each of us was in the other and with the other.” We can each experience something akin
to that in our trusted friends.
What
we celebrate today, the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, is not some
far-removed doctrine which has nothing to do with our life. It is a defining part of who we are as
Christians, and it is built into the very nature of our being. May the Eucharist, though which we have
communion with Jesus, and therefore communion with the entire Trinity, draw us
each day deeper into the communion which is the basis for all others: the
Communion of Divine Persons in the Most Holy Trinity.
