June 4, 2023
Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, June 4, 2023 – Exodus 34:4B-6, 8-9; 2 Corinthians 13:11-13; John 3:16-18
The choir didn’t know it, but they committed a heresy when they were singing the Alleluia. The heresy is right here in the book. It says, “Glory to the Father, [comma] the Son and the Holy Spirit.” That’s an ancient heresy called modalism. You cannot use a comma between the Father and the Son. You must use the word and. You say to yourself, well po-tay-to, po-tah-to, who cares?
Well, apparently, a long time ago somebody did care, and they pointed out that it seems to suggest that there’s only one God, but he changes form from time to time from being a Father to being the Son to being the Holy Spirit. That’s not what our doctrine is. Which just indicates how difficult it is to understand the Blessed Trinity. Well, of course it’s hard to understand. It’s a mystery.
For example, the song “How Great Thou Art” – which we really like and sing quite often here – means to be a praise of God, but it gets itself all mixed up. Because, for two verses, it talks about God in a generic form, except it keeps calling Him, “Our Saviour God.” Then, for the second two verses, it switches to
singing about Christ and forgets all about the Father.
One reason we love the shamrock so much is because, according to legend, St. Patrick used it to convert the pagan king of Ireland, by showing him a metaphor for the Blessed Trinity. He said the shamrock is three leaves on one stem. But if you look closely, it’s really not. It’s a stem with three leaves above it. The three leaves are dependent on the stem. They do not exist each independently on it’s own. And so, the metaphor kind of falls apart a little bit.
But there’s another metaphor that’s closer to capturing the essence. And it comes from the Cappadocian church. The what? The Cappadocian church. You know, we don’t pay much attention to our brothers and sisters in the Eastern rites of Catholicism, but their traditions are much more ancient than those of the Latin rite. Cappadocia is present day Turkey. Imagine that some of the most important doctrine of the Catholic church comes from Turkey, of all places!
But there were a bunch of bishops in Cappadocia who were all related to one another. Two of them were brothers and one was a near relative. Gregory of Nyssa, Basil, and Gregory of Nazianzus. And the three of them tackled this problem of the Blessed Trinity. And they said, “Imagine it this way, if you can. The Blessed Trinity is a dance. Not like the dances they have today where people dance man and woman together, but rather a little bit more like the Jewish hora. They said, “Imagine God, himself, is the dance, but the dancers in the dance are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And they’re in a circle and they open their arms and fling each other out into creation. And then pull each other back in, and as they pull each other back in, they pull us in with them. And then they fling themselves out again for more creative love and they pull themselves back in again.” It’s very romantic, and it’s just a metaphor, but it captures the dynamism of the three persons interacting in the Blessed Trinity, each one of them God.
I’m going to give you some homework to do. In the first chapter of the Book of Genesis, the writer of that myth builds up the tension and excitement of the world coming to be until the last day, when God says to God, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” And God made man, in God’s image and likeness. Male and female he created them. And God said to them, “Be fertile. Fill the earth and subdue it.” Not subdue it in the sense of ruin it. But subdue it in the sense of bring it to its own completion. Bring its purpose out.
In order for the human species – and the whole earth, as a matter of fact – to be created in the image and likeness of God, the whole earth must be trinitarian. That means that all around us, and among us, and within us, there is always trinity.
So, your homework is to find trinity in your life this week. It won’t take you very long to find it.