Trinity Sunday: The Heart of All
As much as in any previous generation, and perhaps even more so today,
it must be proclaimed clearly and simply: God exists.
He is not the invention of the human mind, but
its foundation.
He is not an imaginary substitute for fickle human
love, but the real source and fulfillment of all love.
He is not the enemy of human freedom but the ground
of its possibility and the horizon of its ultimate fulfillment.
He is not the pirate of human autonomy but its
captain and its mainstay.
He is not the naysayer of genuine scientific progress
but its architect and its guarantor.
He is not the spoiler of all that is beautiful
and joyful in human experience but its composer and conductor.
He is not the author of pain and sorrow but its
physician, its healer and so its destroyer.
God is not the enemy of humanity.
He would rather die than that his beloved humanity
should perish ...
The enemy of humanity is he who denies God, for
without God humanity is a mirage.
But we cannot know God unless he himself speaks
to us in words we can understand. Our minds are hardly able to know ourselves, so how could they claim of themselves to know
him?
And if they cannot know him, how can they reasonably
conclude of themselves that he does or does not exist?
It is not our minds which are the source of existence.
Because we can think of something does not mean it exists; because we cannot think of it does not mean that it does not exist.
The existence of God is not, then, a matter of
whether or not the mind can conceive of him. The only way we can know of his existence is either through signs of him or else
through his revealing of himself to us.
Philosophers and theologians have long discoursed
on signs of God in the world. They have brought many proofs of a more or less convincing nature: the order of the universe,
the nature of the human person, causality, humanity’s insatiable search for the eternal, and so on.
But God has not left us flip-flopping from one
idea to the next, from possibility to probability.
How could the human heart be satisfied with even
the most convincing idea of God?
Only a heart, not an idea, can speak to a heart.
Only through the heart is God ultimately accessible
to us and we to him.
But our hearts are not isolated; at least it is
not in their nature to be lonely. The heart of each of us exists within a network of hearts, beginning with family, extending
to friends, neighbors, nation and even humanity itself.
No
man is an island because his heart will not allow him to be so.
And how are we to think of the heart of God?
If God is to be the fulfillment of our humanity
in its intertwining of minds and hearts, is it possible that God himself can be a solitary heart, a lonely heart?
God himself has in fact revealed to us the intimate
truth of his own life by declaring himself to be, not a lonely heart, but a Trinity of hearts.
From the eternal recesses of his most sacred divinity,
God has erupted forth in an explosion of fire, the fire of his Triune heart. He has done it not in some distant galaxy, but
on our earth and in a way our heart can understand.
The focal point of that divine flame is the person
of the Son who clothed himself in our flesh to reveal the burning love of the Triune heart in the very human and sacred heart
he took to himself from the Virgin Mary.
By that union of himself with our humanity, the
Son of God merged the network of divine hearts with that of human hearts.
As he himself once said, “I have come to
bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were blazing already!”
His public life was the first flame, a flame which
became a blazing furnace when he died for us and poured out upon us the full content of the heart of God, through the fire
of Pentecost.
When we contemplate how the Trinity has revealed
itself to us through the life and death, through the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, we can look back in retrospect and
understand so much.
We can understand that the basic reality of our
humanity, in its uncontrollable search for love, for the union of hearts with other human beings, is but the image and reflection
of the reality of God as a communion of persons.
We can understand that our love, if true, both
fulfills our own identity and gives life to others, whether by life we mean new hope and reassurance, or the actual birth
of new human beings.
In the Trinity, the infinite exchange of life
and love between the persons who are God is likewise not a closed circle, but open to new life.
That new life was the creation of the universe
itself for the sake of humanity, for the billions of human beings that the great adventure of history would bring to birth.
Just as the structure of a great oak tree, with
all its features and characteristics, is already contained in the tiny seed from which it springs forth, so the human race
in all the richness and complexity of its spiritual and physical make-up blossoms from the seed of the Trinity planted within
it.
The great St. Augustine saw the reflection of the Trinity in the structure
of the human spirit: the heart or will represents the Father; the mind represents the Son; and the memory represents the Holy
Spirit.
Another saint spoke of the Trinity in terms of
human speech: the voice represents the Father; the word itself represents the Son; the breath represents the Spirit.
Yet another saint spoke of the Trinity and the
shamrock, but I can’t recall his name ...
Indeed, how could the Blessed Trinity not leave
within us, in every aspect of our being as individuals and as humanity, the mark of his own being?
Because science can trace our existence back to
bio-chemical interactions, does not mean that we are the random product of those elements.
Science can describe, but it cannot define the
meaning of what it describes.
Science cannot put the human spirit under a microscope;
it cannot dissect human love, loyalty or suffering.
Science is a servant of humanity, not its master,
nor should it be a tool in the hands of the powerful to control and dominate the weak.
The ultimate meaning of human life belongs to
what is ultimate in human life. For long, dark centuries that ultimate was seen to be death.
But with the resurrection of Jesus, that ultimate
has been revealed to be the loving heart of the Triune God.
Today is not a day to get a sore head by trying
to crack the puzzle of the Trinity. It is a day for our hearts to swell with eternal hope and joy and, through acts of adoration
and love, to enter the heart of the Triune God, the final goal and resting place of human history itself.
Msgr. Peter Magee
Sunday, June 11th,
2006
Annunciation, DC: Vigil Mass,
5.30 pm
