Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity
One of the great blessings of technology is the ability to keep in touch with people that we would otherwise not see. It can be notoriously difficult for priests to meet up with friends sometimes because of the nature of our vocation. I have one friend who has lived in Ann Arbor for the past four years. But even though we’ve been only 45 minutes to an hour away from each other, we’re generally doing pretty well if we can meet up twice a year. So we rely on texting to catch up and see how each other’s doing. Technology is certainly great for that.
Today we celebrate a communion of Divine Persons as we celebrate the Most Holy Trinity. God is one. But God is three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. How that works is beyond us. Our finite minds cannot totally understand an infinite God. But we do have some access to understand who God is. God demonstrated His one-ness throughout the Old Testament. The great prayer of faith of the Jews called the shema from Deuteronomy is: Adonai Elohim, Adonai ehad (The Lord is God, the Lord is one). But in the New Testament, God also revealed that, while He is one, He is also Three Divine Persons, a communion of Persons, a communion of love. That is why St. Paul can talk about Jesus as Lord (a reference to His divinity), and speak of the Holy Spirit in the same way that St. Paul speaks about God. We hear that in the greeting at Mass, which comes from St. Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” The Holy Spirit is also on equal footing with God the Father and God the Son in the command to baptize that Jesus gives at the end of the Gospel according to Matthew: “[baptize] them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”
But even though the Trinity is based in Scripture, the Church has unpacked what it means to be one God and three Persons for two millennia. In fact, the first term to speak about God’s three Persons was trias, a Greek word, used by Theophilus of Antioch in 180. That word would later be translated into the Latin word trinitas, from which we get our English word Trinity, and was used by Tertullian who died in the early 3rd century. Many of the first Ecumenical Councils starting in 325 were about how Jesus and the Holy Spirit are God.
I brought up technology at the beginning of my homily because, as good as it is to help people keep in touch, it cannot create communion. Communion can only happen in the presence of the other. God the Father does not text God the Son. Their outpouring of deep and abiding love does not happen by technology, and so neither can ours. We can stay in touch with each other, but we do not have communion with each other by text, FaceTime, or SnapChat.
We are created in the image and likeness of God, and so we also have a desire built within us to have communion with others. This communion can be the communion of faith, the communion of family, the communion of husband and wife, and the communion of friends. Each communion has its own rules and expressions of love, but they are all forms of communion. And we all need these to be a happy, holy, and wholesome human being. And this is where our challenge is as modern people, especially the young: we seek communion through technology, but we cannot find it there. As good as texting my friend from Ann Arbor is, it doesn’t even come close to actually spending time with him.
But if we don’t realize that technology doesn’t really fulfill that need, then we can put ourselves in a vicious circle or seeking communion in a way that will never give us communion. Why do so many people (especially young people) act as if they’re glued to their phones? Because they want communion, and they think staying in touch will meet that need, but they’re never quite satisfied. It’s like setting up a treadmill at the starting line of a track meet. Running is still happening, but you’re getting nowhere.
Pornography is an even more evil expression of this phenomenon. A man or woman desires the communion that is proper between a husband and wife. But seeking it in a video with a stranger or strangers only mimics that communion, cheapens it, and in the end, does not fulfill the desire of the heart. And so a man or woman can easily get sucked in to seeking communion when that communion can never come through pornography.
Technology is not inherently evil. It does allow people to stay in touch and keep updated on each other’s lives. But it never creates communion, and because we are created in the image of a Triune God, that’s what our hearts desire most of all.
So how do we fill that need? One way is time-tested: have a meal with each other. Have a weekly family meal, or meals with friends. Even the sacrifice of Jesus in the Mass is in the context of the Last Supper–a meal. These are the ways that we find communion. There are other ways, too, but simply by having a weekly or occasional meal, especially as a family, can satisfy that need for communion and keep us from trying to seek it in artificial ways. Does it take a little more work than a text? Yes, but love always takes a little more work than simply affection.
Be who God has created you to be: a person created in His image and likeness; a person created for communion with Him and with others.
