The Most Holy Trinity

Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

Proverbs 8:22-31; Ps. 8; Rom. 5:1-5; Jn. 16:12-15

16 June 2019

Observing the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity this weekend we commemorate in the Sacred Liturgy the central and fundamental mystery that we receive and accept in faith.  The very being of God is the center and foundation of all we believe.  The mystery of the Holy Trinity expresses our faith in God Himself, how He exists – not just that He exists – what His inner life is like.  This aspect of our faith is something purely of God’s revelation, that is, His showing of Himself to us.  In other words, no human mind on its own would come up with the concept of a Trinity, that the one God exists as Three Persons, were it not for God revealing this about Himself.  When we profess faith in the Holy Trinity we mean that the being or substance of God is one and that His inner life is a communion of Divine Persons in relationship.  Each of the Persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) is equally and fully God.  In other words, they are completely equal in substance.  We do not believe in three divine substances, three gods, joined together.  We do not believe that the three Persons are a division of the divine substance, as if each Person is one-third God.  Rather, we profess belief that the substance of God is one and undivided and that the inner life of God, as revealed to us, is a perfect communion of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  It is God who shows this about Himself and reveals this truth to us.  It is what we learn from the Sacred Scriptures.  On the authority of God who makes Himself known we accept and profess faith that God is a unity in Trinity and a Trinity in unity.

I suggest that there is something in us that is not at ease with mystery.  We want answers to everything and we think we are owed such answers.  If this unease with mystery existed before our time, I think it has been exacerbated in our time by the ubiquitous presence of the Internet and smart phones.  At our finger tips are the answers to most everything in the world.  That availability puffs up our self-centered pride in our expectation that we should have all the answers.  And even more problematic is the related attitude that develops in us when something remains mysterious and is not immediately and easily understandable and discernible to us.  In the face of mystery not easily understood, that even more serious root problem is the tendency to consider the mystery itself as somehow of less value to me personally because I cannot understand it.  In other words, we might tend to view the mystery itself with more suspicion before we would first admit the limitations of our own mind.  The mystery is suspect; it can’t be my mind that is suspect.  This faulty proposition says answers should come easily and if I can’t understand or grasp something then maybe it’s not true or, perhaps more likely, it is viewed as having less value.  This faulty proposition says if I can’t understand something – and grasp it easily – it somehow lessens the value of my experience and isn’t beneficial or “real” to me.

But that is not how the wisdom of ancient thinkers operated.  And that ancient wisdom is the very foundation upon which we rest today.  In the face of questions about how God revealed Himself and what it means to believe in God, ancient thinkers pondered, and questioned, and had fierce debates, even physical fights, to stretch the limited mind to understand God and the world around them.  Their philosophy and theology is a rich deposit given to us and upon which we must rest to remain in the truth.  It is also a deposit we are duty bound not to change, but rather only to develop in continuity and to further expose the truth already contained in what we receive.  This is why Sacred Tradition in our faith is so vitally important and is not to be rejected except at our own peril.  Today’s first reading from the Book of Proverbs offers us a selection of ancient wisdom that impacts our understanding of the mystery of the Holy Trinity.  In the early Church and among the Fathers of the Church, it was widely held that Proverbs chapter 8 (our first reading) described in veiled and mysterious language the Second Person of the Trinity, the Son of God before the incarnation.  The “wisdom of God” is the subject and the one speaking in today’s first reading.  This wisdom of God is described as acting alongside and with the Lord God in actions that sound much like the story of creation in the Book of Genesis.  This wisdom of God that, as Proverbs says, is “possessed” or “begotten” or “beheld” existed with the Lord God before all things.  As this ancient wisdom was further explored and, later enlightened by the aid of Jesus’ promise of the Holy Spirit of truth, the New Testament in the First Letter to the Corinthians describes the incarnate Son of God in a way that should not surprise us.  St. Paul write, “Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:24).  No wonder in the Creed our Catholic faith is careful to say both what we do believe and what we do not believe when we say of the Son of God, “begotten, not made, consubstantial (meaning of the same substance) with the Father,” or as we hear in the Latin, “genitum, non factum, consubstantialem Patri.”  The same equal divinity of the Holy Spirit is revealed by Jesus in the selection of the Gospel we heard today.  Notice, Jesus does not speak of the Holy Spirit merely as a force, but as a Person with personal pronouns: “But when he comes…. he will guide you…. he will speak.”

Is it an authentic value in our faith that we should know and grasp everything immediately, and do so easily?  Or is it actually good for us in the face of mystery to remember that we are not the topmost being, nor the topmost intellect in the created world?  The mysterious and somewhat cryptic words of Jesus in the Gospel certainly encourage humility and patience as he clearly says that his apostles cannot bear or understand now all that he has to say.  Jesus requires of them humility and patience to await the Holy Spirit when he comes.  The event of Pentecost and our reception of the Holy Spirit in the sacraments means we have now the benefit of the Holy Spirit to help us receive the truth of God as Trinity and the truth of other mysteries we profess.  Yet, there is still mystery and we must become comfortable with it.  If we fail to accept mystery and the reality of our own limitations we will actually impede God’s work in us and we will develop the false notion that places ourselves at the center of all things.  We are not meant for a one-time interaction with God by which we comprehend everything about Him.  We are meant for a lifetime of communion and growing relationship.  The Scriptures cannot be fully understood by us, and actually aren’t meant to be, as if we will ever remove all mystery.  In fact, the Scriptures are the living Word of God, made for a lifetime of reflection by which we continue to grasp more and more, if we will allow it.  It may surprise that even the Sacred Liturgy is not supposed to be immediately and easily understood on all levels.  In fact, immediately grasping and understanding everything about our worship is not an authentic Catholic principle of liturgy at all.  It is actually good that mystery remains in our worship.  Our experience of mystery in no way lessens the value of worship, unless we have made the mistake of thinking the focus of worship is ourselves and our preferences, instead of purely the worship that God is owed.  We come here to encounter mystery that transcends us, that is above and beyond us.

The central and fundamental mystery we encounter is the inner life of God, the Blessed Trinity, poured out for our creation and for our salvation.  In humility and patience we receive this faith.  Though it remains mystery we use our minds aided by the Holy Spirit of truth to seek to understand it more and more.  Rather than dismissing the mystery of the Holy Trinity as too complicated, or trivializing it as not relevant to our lives, we recognize this faith in the Holy Trinity is the very foundation of all we are from the simplest Sign of the Cross made with reverence and care, to the divine grace that comes in the Sacraments poured out from the Holy Trinity, to the final unveiling of the mystery of God we await in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Pentecost Sunday

Dominica Pentecostes

9 June 2019

This weekend we come to the climax and the conclusion of the holy season of paschaltide and the ascensiontide.  The season of Easter concludes with the Solemnity of Pentecost, the fulfillment of Jesus’ resurrection promise to send the Holy Spirit.

Just as we Christians in the New Covenant have an annual cycle of feasts, so did the Jews of the Old Covenant before us.  There were seven major festivals for the Jews.  Two of those Jewish festivals have come over into a new expression in the New Covenant and they find their place in our annual cycle of liturgical feasts.  One of those is Passover, which we celebrate at Easter.  The word “pascha,” coming into Latin from Greek, means “Passover” and it is the same word for “Easter.”  That’s why we make reference in our Catholic faith to the paschal (or Passover) mystery, the paschal (or Easter) candle, and the season of Easter as paschaltide.  The second of those Jewish festivals that comes over into the New Covenant is Pentecost.

The Christian imagery of fire to represent the Holy Spirit is so common such that we likely don’t think much about it.  Thus, in the Acts of the Apostles, when we hear that tongues of fire descended upon the apostles and disciples when they received the Holy Spirit, it sort of just seems right to us.  But we can have a deeper appreciation for the Holy Spirit as fire when we look into the Jewish understanding of Pentecost, which we have adopted.  Jewish Pentecost occurred 50 days after Passover, just as our Pentecost arrives 50 days after Easter.  Among the Jewish feasts it was one of three that required pilgrimage, a holy journey to observe the feast.  Over time the Jewish Pentecost, while remaining a harvest feast, took on a spiritual meaning as a celebration of God’s giving of the Law in the Sinai Covenant.  It is in this context of Pentecost as a Jewish celebration of God’s giving of the Law, the Ten Commandments, that we can have a deeper appreciation of why the Holy Spirit descends as tongues of fire.  Another way to highlight this is, why, for instance, didn’t the Holy Spirit descend as a dove at Pentecost, as He had upon Jesus at his baptism?  Listen to the account from the Book of Exodus about God’s giving of the Law on Mt. Sinai (an option for the first reading at the Vigil Mass of Pentecost).  Amid cosmic signs of thunder and lightning and thick cloud and a very loud trumpet blast, Moses brings the Israelites out of their camp to the base of the mountain to meet God.  The Book of Exodus says, “And Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire” (Ex. 19:16-18).  Out of that fire God speaks and Moses, on behalf of the people, goes up and receives the Ten Commandments.  So, notice the parallel: In the Old Covenant at Mt. Sinai, God descends in fire upon the Israelites who are composed of twelve tribes.  In the New Covenant account of Pentecost in Acts of the Apostles, God the Holy Spirit descends in fire upon the twelve Apostles who represent those twelve tribes, and likewise descends upon other disciples gathered with them.  This descent and its connection to God’s presence in fire on Mt. Sinai, we can say, is a revelation of the divinity of the Holy Spirit.  It likewise helps us understand that in our Christian observance, we have at Pentecost a new giving of the Law, a giving of the Law not on stone, but descending upon us, taking on flesh within us.  God’s law does not remain outside of us, but indwells within us.  Pentecost is an interior gift.  This interiority is a significant difference in our Christian observance of Pentecost.  We celebrate now the promise of Jesus fulfilled, namely that the Holy Spirit takes up residence within us and empowers us from within to live God’s commands.

Being empowered from within by the Holy Spirit of God, gives us another critical focus for Pentecost and what it means for us today.  At Pentecost the Apostles and other disciples, by receiving the Holy Spirit, are anointed and consecrated for mission, that is, to be sent out to continue proclaiming God’s kingdom in word and action, and to continue the saving work of Jesus.  I would say that Jesus’ accompanying action of breathing on the apostles and disciples as they receive the Holy Spirit highlights this sense of “going out,” this outward impulse and mission.  After all, breath comes from within and goes out from Jesus.  And breath can also move objects in its path.  Likewise, the early Church, and we who receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit at confirmation, are empowered from within, anointed and consecrated, moved and sent out to actually work for and share in the mission of Jesus.

On this Pentecost, to have a rich understanding of our own being sent out on mission, I want to highlight two words from the Gospel selection.  I’m going to bet they are not the words you might expect.  What two words?  The word “as” and the word “so.”  It seems like a preacher would have to work pretty hard to get something worth saying out of such seemingly inconsequential words, right?  But listen to how the words “as” and “so” feature in Jesus’ action of breathing and saying “Receive the Holy Spirit.”  Jesus says, “AS the Father has sent me, SO I send you” (Jn. 20:21).  Think about what those simple words reveal about what Jesus expects by giving the Holy Spirit, this new giving of the Law internally with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.  Let me flesh those words out and insert them in this context.  “As the Father has sent me,” OR “Just as,” OR “Just like,” OR “In the same manner as” the Father has sent me, Jesus says, “so I send you,” OR “even so,” OR “in the same way,” I send you.

Upon being anointed and consecrated by the descent of the Holy Spirit, with God’s Law dwelling within in them, the apostles and disciples on that first Christian Pentecost had a deeper share and responsibility for the mission of Jesus.  Do we consider that for ourselves?  God’s Law, God’s very self, the very Holy Spirit of God is not given to us such that we are just some nice box or receptacle to hold the Holy Spirit.  No, Jesus gives us his promise of the Holy Spirit to push us outward into mission, to greater responsibility for his own mission, a mission that is first in the mind of God the Father.  “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”  In the second reading, St. Paul wrote “To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit” (1 Cor. 12:7).  Do you take time to consider what gift of the manifestation of the Spirit has been given to you, and for what benefit?  Do we ask the Lord that in prayer?  Do we ask other members of Christ’s Body to help us identify that?  We should!  The Holy Spirit is given to us who belong to Christ.  It is not given so that we simply become a receptacle to contain it.  It is given so that we are transformed and more deeply conformed to Christ.  It is given so that we go out and transform the concrete reality of the places where we live, and move, and have our being (cf. Acts 17:28).  Do we view Pentecost, our own confirmation, and the gifts of the Spirit given in times of particular need… do we consider those gifts given to us as requiring an outward thrust, an outward mission?  We should!

The collect of this Mass (of Pentecost Day) makes an allusion to the “divine grace that was at work when the Gospel was first proclaimed.”  It makes that allusion because receiving the Holy Spirit in our time carries the implication that the Gospel must still be proclaimed here and now and that the Lord gives divine grace to do it.  Receive the Holy Spirit, aware that as the Father sent Jesus, even so he sends you!