Fr. Anthony de Mello, one of my favorite spiritual writers, once said, “When you speak about reality, you are attempting to put the inexpressible into words, so your words are certain to be misunderstood.” He then illustrated his point with this example.
A village blacksmith found an apprentice willing to work hard for low pay. The smith immediately began instructing the lad. “When I take the metal out of the fire, I will lay it down on the anvil, and when I nod my head, you will hit it with the hammer.” The apprentice did precisely what he thought he was told. Needless to say, the next day he was the village blacksmith.
Sometimes we are victims of misunderstandings because what we said is not always heard by the other who was “listening.” How often, for example, have you as parents heard your children moan, “You just don’t understand me!” I imagine many husbands and wives feel their spouses really don’t understand them either. As precise as our language may be, we can easily fail to understand what the other person is endeavoring to say. Fortunately, one does not have to fully understand someone in order to love that person. In one of her letters, Flannery O’Connor wrote, “I love a great number of people, but I understand none of them.”
That could be said for how many of us feel about God. We love God, otherwise we would not be here on this beautiful sunny day but how readily do we understand God, especially the mystery of the Holy Trinity? From the beginning, Christians have recognized that God was not one being as evidenced in Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth when he wrote, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.”
Down through the ages, the greatest minds in church history have tried to comprehend the mystery of the Holy Trinity: we believe in one God, not three, yet this one God we believe in has three persons. How can there be three persons, each with a divine nature, each infinite, yet distinct from the other two, and still claim to be one God?
Amongst the first theologians to attempt an explanation of this mystery was St. Augustine. According to legend, as he was walking along the beach, he encountered a child pouring buckets of water from the sea into a hole dug in the sand. When asked what she was doing, the girl explained that she was going to put the whole sea into the hole. “But that isn’t possible,” St. Augustine protested, “The sea will never fit into that hole!” The little girl replied, “But it is easier to put the sea into this little hole than for you to understand the Holy Trinity!”
We have heard of or resonated with other images that explain the Trinity such as St. Patrick and his three leaf clover. Closer to home, you may have noticed the round table in the narthex that holds the statue of St. Anne. If I were to remove any one of the three legs, the remaining two legs would not support the marble top. Likewise, the Trinity celebrates the truth that one person cannot exist without the support of the other two. The Father cannot be a father without a son; the son would have no existence without the Father, and the Spirit is the bond of love between them.
In his letter, John gives us the best definition of God we can have, “God is love.” Since we are created in the image of God, the very nature of God implies that interpersonal relationships are very much a part of our being. We are shaped by the relationships in our lives.
Rather than picture God as some silent, bearded ancient overweight guru sitting on a distant mountain top, the more fitting image of God would be three friends closely interacting with one another.
If God is so close to us and loves us so dearly, why then is the world filled with so much misery, evil, misfortune, and injustice? Why are we left feeling as though there is so little goodness in our midst? The truth is the world is filled with much more love and goodness than we sometimes realize. The devil is doing whatever is possible to convince us that God does not exist or that God does not love us and some people are convinced of that, judging by the headlines that daily speak to us of tragedy, terror, violence, and events that disrupt the serenity of our times. However, keep in mind that headlines speak to us of the unusual, not the ordinary things that happen. In other words, there is much more love and good in our midst than we realize or appreciate.
In essence, the inexpressible mystery of the Holy Trinity celebrates the goodness and love to be found in all of our relationships, both human and divine. A monk at St. John’s once shared in class this observation, “There is enough good in the worst of us to remind us that we are all made in the image of God. Unfortunately, there is also enough malice in the best of us to confirm that we are only an image.”
What we notice depends on what we choose to see in others. When we train ourselves to look for the good in those around us, we will discover that God is very much in our midst. When we choose not to see the good in others, then we are opting not to look for God. Far from being impersonal, we can see that God is very personal, coming through to us in countless ways through the many relationships in our lives. No wonder, God is revealed to us as Trinity, three persons in one, for what better way is there to convey God’s true nature to us?