mystery
Falling In Love With The Trinity
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.
I Am Not A Believer
Feast Of The Most Holy Trinity
Fr. Mark Gatto
Preached: June 4, 2023
I am not a believer! During a recent trip with family to Europe I noticed something among many of the people I met. Many would say “I am not a believer.” It is definitely a legitimate position to not believe, in fact, none of us should just believe anything. But, as I heard this I was wondering inside. What do you not believe? Saying that I am not a believer is not very helpful. Do you not believe in anything? What do you not believe in? Which image of God do you not believe in?
To say that I am not a believer is not very meaningful unless you clarify what you do not believe in. There are many images or ways of seeing God that I do not believe.
As Christians, our image of God must be rooted in the Holy Trinity. This is not actually one image of God, but a way of understanding the deep mystery of God. God is a communion of love. God is not a solitary figure, but a living reality of love and connection and relationship.
Therefore, any Christian vision of God should never see God as a terrifying dictator or as an overpowering figure wanting to control our lives. Our Christian vision of God should not be a frightening force whom we need to fear.
A Christian vision of God in the Holy Trinity sees God as a mystery of love. Actually the best description of God found in the early church and New Testament is simply, “God is love.” This is the God who intimately and passionately loves all creation and each one of us. A God, who in coming among us in Jesus, has invited each one of us to enter that communion of love that is the Holy Trinity. Jesus is God opening a door and inviting you in. God is saying to you, come in and join us.
The mystery of the Holy Trinity teaches us that every true experience of love that we have in this life is a glimpse into God. Each experience of true love is grace.
For this reason, any evangelization, any sharing of our faith, can never use fear or power or force to bring people into the faith. Evangelization cannot use manipulation to convince people to enter into the faith. Before we can evangelize any person we must first of all love them. We love them and then we can invite them into the mystery of the loving communion of God.
There have been many images used through the ages to try to express the mystery of the Holy Trinity. One of my favourites is by St. Columban who would compare the Trinity to the depth of the sea. We see only the surface of the sea and so much remains deep below.
Also, with the Trinity, we only glimpse the surface of God and there remains so much deep below the surface that we continue to discover throughout our lives. So much of God remains beyond our sight or experience.
St. Catherine of Siena said something similar in one of her prayers, “Eternal Trinity, you are like a deep sea, in which the more I seek, the more I find; and the more I find, the more I seek you.” Our language cannot express the mystery of the Trinity, there is always more that is beyond anything we can imagine.
I am not a believer. This statement is meaningless unless we clarify what it is that I do not believe. We Catholics when we express our faith in the Holy Trinity are really saying that we believe that God is the mystery of love. We believe that anything we say about God is just touching the surface and that there is so much below the surface that we can never fully grasp.
The sign of the cross says that I believe in the God that I cannot capture or grasp.
The Trinity: Diverse But United
Trinity Sunday
Fr. Paul Patrick, O.M.I.
Posted: May 29, 2021
- Intro:
Today we celebrate Trinity Sunday. This Sunday was formally added to the Church’s liturgical calendar in the year 1334 by Pope John XXII. It stands out among many of the other special days which we celebrate in the Church since it is not linked to any specific historical or theological event. It is instead a day not unlike a birthday: a day in which we celebrate a person and reflect on our relationship with them. In celebrating Trinity Sunday we celebrate God in 3 Persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit and reflect on our relationship with God.
- What is the Trinity?
It is important to realize that the Trinity is not a logical explanation of God. It is rather a description of who we know God to be. It is a mystery which we can appreciate, even while failing to understand it. The Church teaches us that God is 3 persons in one nature: in other words, that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit together are God. Anything more or less than that is mere speculation on our part.
- Relationship between the Trinity and the Church:
I had a Jesuit professor at the Gregorian University who used this quote from the French aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupery (b.1900) to help understand the relationship of the Trinity to the Church: “If you want to build a ship, don’t herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”
The relationship we as a living Church have with God in the Trinity is in some sense a longing to deepen and explore the unknown. This endless mystery draws us in and fascinates us. The desire to know and deepen our relationship with God is ultimately what drives our “shipbuilding” or our life of faith in the Church.
- What can meditating on the Trinity teach us?
In today’s Gospel according to St. Matthew, we read about the Great Commission (Mt 28:16-20). In this scene, the disciples are sent to all nations (cf. Mt 28:18). This command is preceded by a revelation (cf. Mt 28:17) and followed by a promise (cf. Mt 28:20) all of which are prefaced by the word “all” giving it universality. Jesus has been given all authority, the disciples are to preach the Gospel and make disciples of all nations, and Jesus will be with His followers through the Holy Spirit all the days.
This universality of the Trinity – which St. Paul speaks about in today’s 2nd reading allows us to recognize God as our Father and to recognize that just as the Trinity are diverse Persons, they are united by the bond of love (cf. Rm 8:14-17). This unity in the midst of diversity is what every baptized Christian is called to. We are all diverse and quite different as individuals, but we are all united and are all one people through our faith.
Thus, Trinity Sunday celebrates what we know to be true: God does not live in isolation but rather in a community of love, a community of relationship. God by His nature is not a recluse. The Trinity inspires us to develop a personal theology which does not run from others into isolation but rather one which seeks to build communion with society. Following the Most Holy Trinity leads us to a worldview which seeks not to retreat away from the world but rather enter into it, with a mind set on transforming what is dark and negative into light and truth through the power of love.