Feast of the Holy Trinity 'C'

Sunday June 3, 2007

Say not that God is in my heart but that I am in the heart of God!

In the words of the ‘penny catechism’—the old Baltimore version: Question 1: “Who is God?” Response: “God is the supreme being who made all things and keeps them in existence.” Question 2: “Where is God?” Response: “God is everywhere.” Question 3: “How many persons are there in God?” Response: “In God there are three divine persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.”

Somehow that never did it for me. It’s too sterile!

The Trinity is not a doctrine to be explained but a mystery to be lived. In fact, “Trinity” is a term that early Christians would not have recognized and the doctrine of the Trinity as such is not found in Scripture.

The theological definition of the Trinity was the result of four centuries of discussion and debate among early theologians known as the “Church Fathers” and in some circles appropriately as the “Church Fathers and Mothers” as they attempted to explain the inner life of God as it was manifested in creation, then in Christ—the living Word and wisdom of God in human form and ultimately in the followers of Christ who Paul calls the Body of Christ—people animated by the Spirit of Christ, animators of the living Word of God.

Saint Augustine was one of those early “fathers” who tried to master the understanding of the inner life of God. Legend has it that Augustine was walking along the beach wrestling with the mystery of the Trinity when he came across a little boy who was using a shell to scoop ocean water into a bucket. Augustine asked him what he was trying to do. And the boy said he was going to scoop the whole ocean into his bucket. Augustine said, “You’ll never be able to do that; the ocean is too big.” And the boy responded: “I’ll get it done before you solve the mystery of the Trinity.”

Although preachers may feel compelled to unpack the doctrine, they would do better to write poetry. tell stories and sing songs that enable believers to ponder the reality of God’s life breathing within in us and in all creation.

Wisdom resides in the depth of God’s mind and heart but is evident on city streets in the compassion of one human being for another. Jesus is God’s wisdom in human form and God’s spirit is the animating force that binds us to God and bonds us to one another. The life of the Christian is rooted in the love of God for all humanity and that’s what we call living the Trinitarian life of God.

Last Friday I had the opportunity to attend a wedding in a Greek Orthodox Church. It has been many years since I attended the Divine Liturgy of the Oriental or Eastern Rite. The Eastern Rite has preserved many rituals and traditions that the Western Rite has abandoned over time since the Great Western Schism. A sense of awe combined with a deep reverence for the sacred in all things has been preserved in the ancient liturgical rites that seems to satisfy a thirst in the human soul for an experience of the transcendent. Though much of the ritual was “Greek” to me—literally so—I still could not help but sense the presence of the divine in the rhythmic cadence of the litanies and repetition of the Kyrie eleisons by the cantor.

We westerners want everything, even our liturgies, efficient and effective. How long will Mass take, Father? Will this late afternoon Mass ‘count’ for tomorrow? I like to ‘get it over with on Saturday evening’ so I don’t ‘have to go’ on Sunday. Efficiency in liturgy is no guarantee of effectiveness. In fact efficient liturgies can be quite barbaric. I call it ‘text book liturgies’—turning pages instead of celebrating the themes. On these terms, a short liturgy can seem endless, a long liturgy celebrated with meaning can seem all too brief.

It is within this context that some ‘westerners’ wish to restore Latin to our liturgy. But it is also true that the language of the Eastern Rites was the common language of the people at the outset. A sense of awe and reverence at worship? Yes! Through the restoration of a dead language? An emphatic no! It would in fact be a tragic mistake to assign that kind of power to the use of a dead language.

The proposed revisions in the translation of the Sacramentary (the altar missal used by the priest celebrant are a literal translation of the old ecclesiastical Latin and I may say so, an abomination of the truly beautiful and inclusive poetic English that was proposed by the original ICEL commission that was charged by Pope Paul VI with the revision.

It is not the language but the rhythm of the ritual combined with the faith of the assembly that speaks the language of God. Last week we celebrated Pentecost—the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles after which the people all heard them speaking in their own native language about the power of God’s overflowing love. The language of true love is universal and enduring.

There is a spiritual crisis in our world and in our Church due in some measure to the loss or at least the lessening of a sense of the sacred. It is reflected in our failure to reverence life in all its forms, in our lack of concern for the environment, in our blindness to the presence of God in people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds and evidenced in a particular way by an increasing vulgarity in the entertainment industry and the lack of respect for the dignity of oneself as a chiild of God.

Saint Paul said, “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” Although given to us at Baptism and reinforced at Confirmation, the initial surge of God’s Spirit came to us at the first moment of our existence. In the book of Genesis do we not read that we were created in the image of God? Did we not learn the earliest edition of our catechism that we were in the mind and heart of God before we came into being? Then say not only God is in my heart but rather that I am also in the heart of God!

I have two suggestions for your consideration this week.

1. Begin the day in your ‘prayer chair’ every day. Take at least five minutes or if possible, twenty. If you can’t begin the day there, then end it in the same way. Do both if possible. Focus on the divine presence of God within the core of your being—in absolute silence; no words.

2. Live every day in the present without being preoccupied with the past or the future.

I guarantee you will come to know that you are indeed in the heart of God and you will see God’s face in creation and in your neighbor. And that will make a difference in your life and in the lives of everyone else—even across the globe!

Guaranteed!

Please click header ‘Editorial / Op Ed’ for an excellent reprint of an article from COMMONWEAL Magazine entitled, “You Converted to What?”

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