Every year on the Sunday after Pentecost, we celebrate the mystery of the Trinity. Using human concepts and words, we describe God as a Trinity in order to better understand who God is. Ultimately, while these words and concepts do the best job they can, they are far from being perfect. To explore this mystery, I want to begin with a story that I suspect many husbands and wives can relate to.
On the night of their anniversary, one husband, determined to show his wife how much he loved her, took her to an elegant restaurant for an intimate candlelight dinner. As she sipped champagne, he recited romantic verses, telling her he would climb the highest mountains, swim the deepest oceans, even cross burning deserts for her; how he would slay dragons to protect her; how he longed to sit under her window and sing beautiful love songs to her in the moonlight.
She listened to him go on and on about his immense love for her. The poetry, however, came to an abrupt halt when she asked, “OK, but will you do the dishes for me?”
Such is the love God has for us; a love celebrated not just in song and story but also in the ordinary ways of life as well. Since the dawn of creation, God has acted with love, not abandoning or forgetting his people, motivated by an unconditional love that we cannot fully comprehend.
Even more incomprehensible is the mystery we celebrate today, our belief that there are three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but only one God. The Trinity is a mystery that Scripture does not prove. The triune nature of God is the principle mystery of our faith, yet how this can be, we really do not know. All we can do is accept the Holy Trinity as a revelation and apply this mystery to our lives and how might we do that?
Hardly a week goes by when we do not experience some fear, anxiety, or apprehension. When that happens, we can find ourselves hurt, angry, intimidated by others and if these feelings persist, we could find ourselves living in a house of fear, rather than one of love.
How often, for example, are we misunderstood because what we said is not what the person, who was “presumably listening” heard? A parishioner showed me a sign: “My wife said I never listen. At least I think that’s what she said.”
This to me is the concern Jesus resonates in the gospel when he says to Nicodemus that those who do not believe in the Son of God are condemned. They remain trapped in a house of fear because they feel unloved. Those who believe in Christ know God loves them and they in turn choose to build a house of love. With the Trinity as our example, we gradually move from a house built of fear to one built of love.
In the hall you may have noticed a marble top table with three legs; I have often used it to describe the sacrament of marriage to engaged couples. Anyone looking at the table would agree that if I remove one leg, the remaining legs could not support the marble top. I then caution them, if they diminish the importance of any one of the three partners in marriage, husband, wife or God, their marriage could easily collapse. All three are essential for a thriving marriage.
The table also reminds me that God is a union of three persons in an intimate relationship with one another. The Trinity celebrates the truth that one person cannot exist without the other two. The Father cannot be a father without a son; the Son would have no existence without his father; and the Spirit is the bond of love between them.
Fr. Karl Rahner, one of the greatest Catholic theologians of the last century, liked to define the Trinity not as three persons but as three ways in which God expresses himself; the Father as the creator, the Son, who in the person of Jesus, invites us to see God as an intimate parent and not as a distant deity. And as the Spirit, God is conveyed to us in the form of happiness, contentment, inspiration, awe, and intuition. That gift of the Spirit from the Creator and the Redeemer gives us an intimate link with God.
Rather than try to solve the mystery of the Trinity, let us ask how open are we to pondering why God created us to begin with; the mystery of God loving us, desiring to be part of our lives, to live in our hearts, to be one with us, the mystery of a God who cares for us like a loving parent, who lays down his life for us like a best friend, who fills our hearts like a lover who will never be refused. In turn, God calls us to love.
As we heard in the first reading from Exodus, the Lord is “a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity.” Moses, describing us as being a “stiff-necked people, pleads for God to pardon our sins. Despite the fact that God is often second fiddle to other more important issues in our lives, God continually calls us back into a loving relationship and does this each time we celebrate the sacraments of reconciliation and Eucharist.
The aim of this feast is not to comprehend the mystery of the Trinity but to live the example our Triune God provides for us to follow. The Trinity invites us to share in the work of God’s unfolding love; the work of forgiveness and reconciling, of gracious listening and building community among all God’s people. Yes, three persons in one God, each in his own way, enable us to go forth from our houses of fear toward God’s house of love.