Trinity Sunday was a few weeks ago … but I have been busy. For whatever it is worth, here is my reflection on the Trinitarian nature of God. Ruthie went to the Saturday evening, 5 pm Mass on that weekend. If you recall, it was beastly hot, 100 degrees and the humidity was tropical. Fr George Grafsky was presiding that evening at St Wenceslaus and his homily was imply this. “Read Deacon Bob’s reflection in the bulletin. It is the best understanding of the Trinity I have read.” When Ruthie told me what Fr George had said, I was both flattered and a little shaken-up, simply because I don’t think I, along with most theologians alive or canonized have ever gotten an adequate grasp of this great Divine Mystery (though it is nice to stand in the shadows of most of these theologians). Here is the article I wrote:
Trinity Sunday, a day when many homilies border on heresy. We know more about the atmosphere on a faraway planet, like Mars or Jupiter, than that which we know about the Trinitarian nature of God.
In my grad school days at the St Paul Seminary, I had a number of classes taught by theologians. When they would speak, it was as if their minds were able to draw knowledge from spiritual dimensions in otherworldly planes of existence not generally accessible to most of us day to day people. I would ask them a question, and there would be a pause as they searched these other dimensions of knowledge before answering. I remember attempting to read the great Catholic theologian, Fr Karl Rahner’s definition on the “Economic Trinity.” Rahner was a German theologian and he wrote in the German language. It is true that what is expressed in one language is not always directly translatable in another. Case in point, what Rahner wrote in German about the Economic Trinity was very difficult to understand in English. I attempted many times to understand his definition of the Economic Trinity (Note: the Economic Trinity is not a Walmart special, 3 natures of God for the price of one) but to no avail.
So here is my, hopefully, non-heretical, non-understanding of the Trinitarian nature of God. In the Hebrew Testament, we hear about a one, powerful God who breathes upon the waters of the abyss and life was created. The Hebrew Testament writers call the breath of God, Ruah, that is, the Spirit of God. God’s voice speaks to and through the prophets to the people of Israel. The writers of the Hebrew Testament call God’s voice, the Logos or God’s Word. In the first chapter of John’s Gospel, the Word of God is identified as Jesus, God incarnate. Just as in our human body, our breath and our voice are inseparable and one with our body, so the Holy Spirit, the breath of God, and Jesus, the Word of God, are in separable and one in God. The bottom line is this. Jesus taught that God is a Trinity, one God and three natures: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. If that is good enough for Jesus, it is good enough for us.
