Mystery, mystery, mystery

Trinity Sunday 2016

If you went to church today, chances are that you noticed that you homilist was struggling a bit with the homily, or else chose to speak about something other than Trinity. Fortunately for us, our homilist, Fr. Steven, gave a clear and well-organized homily, speaking about mainly how difficult it is to preach on Trinity Sunday.

It is difficult to preach about the Trinity. It’s difficult to speak about the Trinity. Sometimes it’s difficult to even think about the Trinity. I remember a story told to me when I was in grade school about St. Thomas Aquinas, the most brilliant theologian of them all, was walking on the beach on day thinking about the Trinity when he came upon a little boy who had dug a hole in the sand and kept filling it with water from the ocean. The Saint told the little boy that it would be impossible for him to fit the entire ocean into that little hole and the boy (who was actually an angel) turned to him and said, “I’ll get this done before you finish figuring out the Trinity.”

And yet, we live the Trinity all the time. Every time we bless ourselves entering or leaving the church or when a pitcher prepares to begin the ball game or when someone goes to take a dive off a high diving board. Parents trace the sign of the cross on their children’s foreheads (I borrowed this image from Fr. Steven). We pray to God the Father. We pray to God the Son, especially when we use the Jesus Prayer in our meditations. We pray for the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and sometimes say that a particular homily or a particular piece of music by the choir was filled with the Holy Spirit. One God, three persons, and each of the three persons has a particular identity for us. And yet they are all one God. And I’m going to let my explanation stop right there.

The doctrine of the Trinity is the central mystery of our Christian faith. We accept it through faith but we don’t fully understand it. And if we were to study it carefully over the course of a lifetime we would never come to the end of understanding it.

That is the meaning of mystery when we speak about it in spiritual terms. Not a puzzle to be solved, but rather a glimpse into the realm of reality that goes beyond thought. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, so far beyond my understanding, the Psalmist exclaims, and we can all say the same thing.

It is good to live a life filled with mystery. It is good for our humility, to be sure, since we tackle something that is so much greater than we are with such a limited understanding. It is also good for our sense of self: our lives in faith are so much greater than a life lived without faith, a life where a person only accepts what can be figured out and neatly packaged into one pigeon-hole of another. It is good for our souls, which are themselves mysterious—as we peek through the clouds of understanding to catch even the briefest glimpse of something more wonderful than everyday life, more precious than anything that can be counted, tasted, see, heard or touched.

This is the way God created us to be. Consider this, also: isn’t it true that the people who are in our lives, including our closest friends and even spouses, are themselves mysteries. We run into great danger when we mistakenly believe that we have them all figured out. We rob them of the greatest part of their existence when we think there is nothing more to discover.

May God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit bless you this day and draw you closer to himself. Amen.