May 30, 2010
Most Holy Trinity
On Friday I picked up Richard at the airport. He is a priest friend for 39 years. I drove him to Albany. On the way we stopped at the Shrine of the North American Martyrs in Auriesville, New York. Here Isaac Jogues and his Jesuit companions shed their blood. The missioners had to learn the Mohawk language and then acquire a facility to speak about God to Native Americans who mistrusted their presence in the village. While we were there I noticed people from Japan visiting the shrine. The place of torture and suffering has become a sacred place to pray and encounter God.
How do we say something about God? Today is the feast of the Holy Trinity. We celebrate a core belief: God is One yet three persons -- Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Every time we make the sign of the cross, every time we say the Apostles Creed or the Nicene Creed, we are using a symbolic gesture or words that point to a mystery beyond our comprehension. Jesus speaks of God with ease and intimacy. It is more difficult for us to image unity/oneness and community/relationship in God.
You may be familiar with a bestseller: "The Shack" by William Young. It is a story of Mack, a loving husband and father, having a conversation with God at the place, the shack, where his daughter, Missy, was murdered. The novel is unsettling because of the "great sadness" and how the author depicts God revealing him/herself as three persons. I'll read just a portion of the conversation between God (Papa) and Mack. Mack asks: "But what difference does it make that there are three of you, and you are one God?" God responds: "It makes all the difference in the world! We are not three gods, and we are not talking about one god with three attitudes, like a man who is a husband, father and worker. I am one God and three persons, and each of the three is fully and entirely the one. What's important is this: If I were simply One God and only One Person, then you would find yourself in this Creation without something wonderful, without something essential even. And I would be utterly other than I am." Mack asks: "And we would be without...?" God says: "Love and relationship. All love and relationship is possible for you only because it already exists within Me, within God myself. Love is not the limitation; love is the flying. I am love."
In receiving the revelation of God as Trinity, we are discovering something essential and wonderful about ourselves. We are a community with variety of personalities and diversity of gifts yet one in Christ. We are called to love. We are made in the image and likeness of God.
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