Feast Of The Most Holy Trinity
Fr. Mark Gatto
Preached: May 26, 2024
I do not understand the Trinity. It is a mystery that is beyond my ability to grasp or explain. But, I am not just going to sit down and say nothing. Though I cannot say that I understand the Trinity, I can say “I love the Trinity.” A lover does not say that he or she understands their lover, their love remains a mystery beyond the ability to grasp or explain. In the same way, with the mystery of God, it is better not to say that I understand the mystery of God. It is better to say, I love the mystery of God. So, what does that mean for us when we discuss the Dogma of the Holy Trinity, one of the most important and central teachings of Christianity?
For 2000 years, the great thinkers and theologians of Christianity have tried to understand and provide good explanations for the Trinity. They have used many images, words, concepts. Some have been helpful, but they all fall short and fail to capture the full mystery.
St. Thomas Aquinas was one of the greatest thinkers in human history and one of the greatest theologians in our Catholic tradition. He wrote enormous volumes to explain the faith, including the Trinity. But, there is a story about Aquinas that near the end of his life, he stopped all his writing. In prayer he had a profound experience of the mystery of God so far beyond anything he could write. On his deathbed he is reported to have pointed to all of his books and said, “After what I have experienced, all that is just straw.” He could write no more because the distance between our world of words and the mystery of God overwhelmed him.”
It is good and important for us to study, read, learn, meditate on our faith. Use your minds, use your reason. But, in the end, it is not knowing about God or about our faith that is most important. What you must do is fall in love. The Trinity is about a God with whom we can fall in love.
St. Paul reminds us that in Jesus we are sons and daughters of God. He says we cry out, “Abba.” Fall in love with the God who is Trinity.
The Catholic faith is not primarily a set of ideas, or teachings, or a philosophy. Our Catholic faith is about falling in love with God, to be embraced in the communion of God, the Holy Trinity. We do not understand the mystery of the Trinity, we experience and know it deep inside. Just as we do not understand any deep love with someone in a purely rational way, rather we experience it and know it deep inside.
So, what does that mean for how we approach the dogma of the Trinity? First of all, it is best seen in poetry, in artwork, in liturgy. It remains beyond our rational minds, but is experienced in our hearts. Think of our traditional prayers. The Sign of the Cross. The Glory be. The Doxology at the end of the Eucharistic prayer at Mass “Through him, and with him, and in him, O God almighty Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honour is yours, for ever and ever.” Our Liturgy does not explain the Trinity but leads us into the centre of this mystery.
There was a brother monk who went to see Abba Moses, who was a wise and experienced monk. He begged him for a word. The Old Man said, “Go and sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.” I could spend some time teaching and speaking about the Trinity, and some of it might be useful to you. But, the most effective thing that I could do is convince each of you to go home and sit in quiet room by yourself for some time. There you might experience and meet the mystery of God, the Holy Trinity, in silence. You probably will not discover some intelligent explanation of the Trinity. But you might find yourself falling in love with the Trinity, the mystery of God.
The final words of Jesus to his disciples in the Gospel of Matthew were, “I am with you always, to the end of the age.” These are the words of God spoken to our hearts, they are the words of a lover.
