Mass readings for the Solemnity of the Holy Trinity:
Proverbs 8.22-31 Psalm 8.3-8 Romans 5. 1-5 John 16.12-15
Last week I spoke of the relevance of Pentecost to us today in the face of challenging times, about how Pope Leo has summoned the Church to rally in the face of crises, present and looming; to be a community animated by the Holy Spirit that provides a model, an example of how to be in a changing world.
Today we celebrate the Holy Trinity; and again, this may raise the matter of relevance. I am leery of the matter of relevance with respect to the Church. The Church is not here to be relevant to the world save with respect to its redemption; we are here for the care of souls, for the spreading of the gospel, and so on. If anything, we are about reverence not relevance. In contemplating the trinity as something applicable to our lives as individuals and as communities, its relevance becomes obvious, leading us into greater reverence before a mystery that truly has the potential to save our communities, and have us flourish as individuals.
The danger for Christians is to treat today as a celebration of a theological achievement by the Church in the past; to fail to contemplate the mystery, and so find any application of it in our lives. The quick and easy takeaway from the teaching is that when we encounter God, as Creator, as Redeemer, as Comforter, these are all God. Christ in the Eucharist, God in the splendour of creation, the inspiration of the Holy Spirit all are God.
So? Nice to know, and so be able to explain this to non-Christians who are puzzled by our assertion that three are one and one is three. But there’s so much more.
I spent part of last week reading St. Augustine’s famous work, On the Trinity. In reflecting on it, I came to lament how so many fail to appreciate Augustine as one of the few who laid the intellectual foundations of Western Civilization. From his works such as The City of God, On Christian Doctrine, On the Trinity, and even his autobiography, The Confessions, they all propose a way of being as individuals and as community, and that vision of humanity has until recently shaped our expectations as to what a good, functioning society should look like and how it should behave. So, heeding what he has to say should go a long way to recovering what we are in real danger of losing.
In the opening chapters of the book, he makes the appeal to the reader to persist in a personal investigation into the Trinity. That’s you and me; and we don’t have to be professional theologians to do this, simply faithful.
In his great humility, Augustine apologizes for perhaps, not being as helpful to some as he would hope. If such is the case though, he says don’t give up. Find another guide to help you ascend to this truth about God, don’t forsake the view from the top of this mountain – it will change your life. Because if we can get there, and return there, the trinity will show us what a properly integrated individual looks like. From that spiritual place, the trinity demonstrates a perfect community for us to emulate.
Concerning you and I as individuals, Augustine is quick to point out that each of us is one person not three, but within us, as we can find in creation generally, there are trinitarian structures. Our minds, Augustine says, have a trinitarian structure: we have memory, understanding and love. Our memory is the things we know, our store of knowledge either from thinking back on a lifetime, or a weather report just heard on our car radio, the books we read, the lessons we’ve learned at school. Understanding is the appreciation of those memories and that knowledge according to the things we believe about the world and God. It is the interpretive frame we bring to all information we encounter. And then there is our love, which can be base and vulgar, but ideally it is the good impulse to act on our understanding for our own good and the good of others – and that love should be of Christ. This then leads us to nurture ourselves toward greater spiritual health and vitality on a continuing basis, just as we might tend a garden, and respond to weather reports warning of frost, heavy rain or coming drought, and so do what must be done to preserve it, and help it thrive.
But for this to work, each of these aspects of our mind must inform the other, just as we see in the relationship that exists among the three persons of the trinity who are present in and integral to every divine action.
Our proper motivation should be a desire for the good, that is the essence of divine love. This prompts us then to be honest about our memories and critical in examining what we think we know to ensure that we are being truthful. We have to be willing to examine our beliefs, because if to protect cherished convictions we choose to believe what is contrary to fact, then we corrupt what our intellect draws on, our understanding is flawed and we fail to love as we ought, even to the point of committing evil.
At the level of community, we can model our lives together as families, towns and cities, nations and as a world community according to the dynamic of the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And what is at work among them is not power, but love – that is the sincere desire for the good of the others. There is no domination of one person over another. No two combine against the one; neither is there cynical triangulation by one to compel another. Rather, there is cooperation, collaboration, community, communion. The immense power of God that brings everything into being does not do so for its own sake, but out of love, that is for the sake of creation, for flourishing of life. Community then is not to be the project of one person, or a ruling establishment; there should be no threats, no manipulation. There should be no tyrants, but neither rule of the mob. All exist in relationship to each other to serve the good of all. As soon as one is pitted against the other: the rulers against the people, for example, we know something’s not right. But all this calls for a sense of humility, a recognition of our human frailties and shortcomings and respect for others who are made in the image and likeness of God even as we know they fall short of his glory.
Today our civilization is threatened by those who have discarded the Christian ethos of building a society out of love, but rather see all of politics, economics and social life as reduced to a game of power. At the level of the individual, we see so many people who do not have healthy, integrated personalities in which emotion is balanced with reason, true critical thinking paired with respectful conversation, and so on. If our civilization has grown fragile, and people equally so, it is perhaps because they are no longer derived from God who as trinity shows us how to keep a productive equilibrium. To much of what forms us are mere human ideas, human concepts, all derived from our limited vision. St. Augustine in the closing passage of On the Trinity prays,
“[the] thoughts of man, since they are vain. Grant to me not to consent to them.”
No, indeed. Let’s rather receive what the spirit of Truth has given us as the Church, declared to us in the mystery of the Trinity. Consent to that, learn from it, let the Trinity give us insight into the God whose image we are made in, and so have us become what we behold – a community of cooperation and a communion of love.
Amen.