Holy Trinity Sunday – 2005 (Year A)

 

To speak of God is to speak of the last why that the human mind and heart can ask. Why is God the Holy Trinity? Why is God at all? In the face of the impossibility of answering these questions, the human mind can dismiss them as meaningless, and with it perhaps dismiss God himself as meaningless.

But then the human mind should, if it is coherent, ask itself why God should not exist simply because it cannot explain why he does. Is it not possible that something exists beyond the grasp of the human mind, no matter how many whys we ask or answer? The human mind cannot even explain itself, so how can it claim to explain everything?

What the human mind distinguishes as possibility and impossibility does not mean that the impossible is unreal. Because the human mind can always ask why, does not mean that the human mind can always grasp the answer.

For the human mind to grasp what lies beyond its grasp, it needs the Beyond to come within its realm. The Beyond must itself show that it understands the human mind so as to make itself understandable to it, especially if that mind was created by the Beyond. Much as a doctor must use language a patient can understand to explain complicated medical procedures, the Beyond must reveal itself to the human mind if it desires the human mind to recognize it.

The unrelenting whys of human restlessness seek an ultimate answer which will give peace to the searching of the human mind and the human heart.

If the human mind considers that such an answer is to be found in itself, then it identifies that ultimate answer as the selfsame question it asks: it is the victory of intellectual narcissism. If, on the other hand, the human mind seeks the ultimate answer by saying that there is none, then nihilism has conquered.

The mind of the believing Christian is no less human than that of the non-Christian in both its questioning and in its search for answers. But the Christian mind and heart consider that they find their fulfillment, not in themselves and not in nothing, but in the Beyond coming to meet them in the person of Jesus Christ.

The encounter of the searching human mind and Jesus Christ revealing the Triune God produces faith. Faith does not eliminate reason, but brings reason to its fullest capacity both to ask and to be answered. The understanding of faith is reasonable, but it is not a reasonableness which the mind alone can grasp.

Much like the top of a great tree might burst through the roof of a building inside which it was planted, so the understanding of faith, while rooted in reason, goes beyond it, bursts through its highest ceiling. When Christ reveals to us the inner life and nature of God, he not only lifts our reason beyond its limits; he sets down new roots deep in our minds and hearts which welcome the roots of reason within us, strengthen them and make them more and more open to the logic of faith.

Of course, it is not our minds, for all their power and prowess, which constitute the deepest core of our dignity or identity as human beings. Moses had many conversations with Yahweh face to face, and probably asked him many things. The Jewish leaders debated with Jesus over the meaning of the law and the prophets, although they did not fully accept Jesus’ teaching.

Moses, after long years of service to Yahweh, did not ask him to explain the ultimate questions of his mind. Rather, he understood that it is not the mind which gives the human person his or her ultimate peace. No, he asks God to show him his glory, that is, to reveal to him who he was, not in concepts, but in the direct revelation of his intimate being, or what might also be called “the heart.”

Yahweh responds, not by telling him of the origins of the universe or the map of the human genome, but by revealing to Moses his Name. The revelation of someone’s name in the Bible means the unveiling of the intimacy of their own personal mystery. And that Name was, “The Lord, The Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Ex. 34:6).

For some reason, our first reading stops there, but the text of the Book of Exodus continues, “keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, yet by no means clearing the guilty, but visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the children and the children’s children, to the third and fourth generations” (Ex. 34:7).

For his part, Jesus, in responding to the well-intentioned and inquisitive Nicodemus, reprimands him for not understanding the things of “above.” In responding to his question about how the human being must be born again from above, Jesus echoes the words of Yahweh to Moses, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him” (Jn. 3:16-17).

The greatest questions of the human mind are the questions fed to it by the human heart. The world of positive and human sciences, of philosophy, arts and even theology, is surely of great benefit to man, and a great gift of God, but, as St. Paul writes, a time will come when all our knowing will cease.

What endures for ever, and on which we shall be judged, is love, not human love, but that love by which God so loved the world that he gave his only Son. Christ came not only to ennoble and elevate reason by divine faith, but also to elevate the heart by divine charity, the agape of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Who will love me to the end and beyond the end of my life? Who will remember me for ever with love in their heart? Who will so love me that even death will not stop him from bringing me to himself and rejoicing over me? Who will give recognition to my existence, my suffering and pain, my efforts to give and create, to love and serve, to rejoice in the beauty of men, creation and life?

It is questions such as these that the human being needs answered more than any scientific conundrum.

The answer, the only answer, given to men that will respond to these questions and deliver them from an otherwise logical despair, is the Blessed Trinity, whose immense and unutterable glory, life and love have reached out to us from the great Beyond in the humble, suffering and glorious servant, Jesus Christ the Lord.

In Jesus, the ultimate ground and destiny of human existence has been revealed. Faith, hope and love in him do not answer all our questions, but make many of them simply irrelevant, not because they do not have reason or interest or importance, but because it makes no sense to light matches when the light and warmth of the sun itself is ablaze and embraces you.

When the apostles are full of questions at the last Supper, Jesus says to them at one point, “On that day you will ask nothing of me” (Jn. 16:23a). That day is the Last Day. That Day is today.

Today, many people’s minds are full, but their hearts are empty. They know everything about anything, but they both fear love and no love. So many displace their hearts to their bodies and think that bodily intimacy will bring them happiness.

They live in the most terrible dichotomy of heart-wrenching longing for love and heartfelt fear of opening themselves to a lifelong commitment of the heart. In a certain sense, people who survive in the head or in their sexuality, live only on the surface of themselves, the edge of their full humanity.

It is the heart which is the heart of the matter. Head and heart must be integrated, talk to one another. The head must serve the heart. The heart has become the Cinderella of contemporary man, the dustbin and breeding ground of the bitterness, resentment and violence which close him to the Beyond.

Arguably, more than a United Nations Organization, we need a United Hearts Organization! The truth is that that organization exists, but we have trouble seeing it as such: I speak of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.

Almighty God, the Three in One, is Himself the “Heart of the heart” of the Church, of the one billion or so in one. He is the Foundation of the foundation of the Church, the Center of all its centers, the Pastor of pastors, the Life of its life.

As the great Beyond, the Trinity is, not the alienation of man from man, but the home and hearth of every soul. For the great Beyond is within us. With his power behind us, beneath us and within us, our mission as Catholics is to be missionaries of the heart. Centered on the heart of God himself, our mission cannot fail unless we refuse to let him be the answer to the ultimate why of our hearts.

Let us pray from the deepest heart of our own hearts that He who is above and beyond all, may reach down to those depths this day, fill us with his Triune glory and power, so that we may witness with fortitude to Yahweh, Yahweh, Yahweh, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the God of mercy and compassion, slow to anger and rich in faithfulness, who comes not to condemn but to save.

In so doing, the ultimate why of our own hearts, and of the hearts of many, will rest in peace.

 

Msgr. Peter Magee

Sunday, May 22^nd, 2006 – St. Matthew’s Cathedral, DC – 10.00 am