Genesis 1:1 – 2:4; Psalm
8; II
Corinthians 13: 11-13; Matthew
28: 16-20
A homily by Fr. Gene
Tucker, given at The
Cathedral Church of St. Paul, Springfield, Illinois on Sunday, June 15, 2014.
“GRASPING THE MYSTERY OF THE TRINITY”
(Homily text: Matthew 28: 16–20)
As human
beings go about their various interests and occupations, very often a phrase or
statement will arise which captures a basic truth about the subject at hand.
For
example, during the period of my life that I was a professional singer, I
taught voice at a private school, and at the college level. A statement that I used with my students to
try to show them that the process of singing was a complex undertaking was this
statement:
“Trying to
learn to sing is a little bit like trying to grab onto a cloud….by the time you
think you’ve gotten hold of it, you realize there’s a lot you haven’t yet
grasped.”
We could
easily adapt this saying to the matter of trying to understand the mystery of
the Holy Trinity.
Perhaps we
could adapt it by saying: “Trying to
understand the mystery of God as the God who is three in one is a little bit
like trying to grab onto a cloud. Just
about the time we think we’ve gotten a grasp on this mystery, we realize
there’s a lot we still don’t understand.”
Welcome to
the difficult task of trying to wrap our finite, human minds around the
awesomeness of God! This task is one
that we can make an attempt at, one that we can get ourselves around (at least
a little), and one that we will have to be content to say that there’s going to
be a whole lot about understanding God that will have to wait until we see Him
face-to-face someday.
Undertaking
the task of trying to explain the mystery of the Holy Trinity is risky
business. But – those risks aside – we
need to at least make an attempt at understanding God, the God whom we worship
as three persons in one substance.
Let’s begin
with the very word “Trinity”. If we look
at a concordance of the Bible, we quickly find that the word “Trinity” doesn’t
appear at all in the biblical text. In fact, the word itself was apparently
coined by Theophilus of Antioch at about the year 180 AD. The word’s origins are easy to see: “Tri” = three, and “unity” = one.
But this
fact isn’t to say that Trinitarian language doesn’t appear in the Bible. In fact, it does. For example, consider our gospel reading for
today, from Matthew 28. I will quote
only verses 19 and 20, which read: “Go
therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that
I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
Similarly,
St. Paul closes his second letter to the Corinthians by saying this: The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the
love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.”
The next
concern that arises is the mystery of how God could be Three Persons, but with
One Substance.
Christianity
stands on the foundation of the revelation of God as the one, true and only
God, as God revealed Himself to the Israelites in ancient times. Indeed, even today in Jewish synagogues
around the world, the “Sh’ma” is recited, which says “Sh’ma Yisrael, Adonai
eloheynu, Adonai echod.” Translated,
this means: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord
our God, the Lord is one.”
But when
Jesus Christ came, He called God His Father, and said that “He and the Father
are one.”
Reflecting
on this and other statements that the Lord made, the Church began to understand
that the Son was of the “same substance” with the Father.
At this
point, one of the early Church Fathers, Tertullian (c. 150 – c. 225 AD) helped
the process of understanding along by describing the relationship between the
Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit as being “God, who has one being, in three
persons”.
So it was
God’s revelation of Himself, in the person of Jesus Christ, that was the
entryway into understanding more of the relationship of the Father and the Son. In time, the Church would come to understand
that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are united, being of one
substance, and manifested in three persons.
Eventually,
the understanding of the reality of the one God, made known in three persons, was
incorporated into the words of the Nicene Creed,
which we will say together in a moment.
Wow! Trying to understand this mystery might make
our heads spin just a little.
As much as
we may wish we could understand all of this mystery, we will have to be
content, as we said a moment ago, with understanding only some of it. Indeed, this process is a little bit like
trying to grab onto a cloud.
Nevertheless,
we can apply some important meanings to our Christian lives.
Let’s
mention only two possibilities:
- The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are
bound together by ties of love, theologians tell us. We are caught up in this wonderful
relationship of love by the fact that the Father sent the Son to take on our
humanity. We are, therefore, drawn into
the very inner life of God as we see that life reflected in Jesus Christ. For it is Jesus Christ who has revealed the
inner workings of God to us, and it is Jesus Christ who draws us into this
wonderful life of God.
- We encounter all three persons of the Holy
Trinity whenever we encounter just one.
For example, we ask God the Father through God the Son to receive our
prayers, as Scripture tells us we are to do.
But we would do well to remember that the Holy Spirit is also present as
we present our prayers, assisting us to pray with right intention. In a similar fashion, we might remind
ourselves that when the Holy Spirit descends upon us to enlighten us, or to
convict us of sin, God the Father and God the Son are also present in this
action. Because of our finite, human
minds, it is sometimes difficult to remember that we never encounter only one
person of the Trinity. We always
encounter all three. Theologians call
the tendency to think of God in only one person at a time modalism, meaning that we are thinking that we are experiencing God
in only one “mode” at a time.
Perhaps
what we’ve said here is enough to say at the moment about the mystery of God as
we know Him in the reality of the one God who is made known in three
persons. After all, many seminary
professors warn their would-be preachers that this subject can easily lead a
person off into heresy. So a word of
caution is in order for anyone who would meditate on this subject, or who would
venture to preach about it.
These words
and reflections are offered in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of
the Holy Spirit. May they find favor in
the sight of the one God who is three persons.
AMEN.
