Holy Trinity : 26 May 2002

A detail from a painting by Giovanni Cimabue, in the lower level of the Basilica at Assisi.

The National Shrine of Saint Francis of Assisi in San Francisco

Homilies from the National Shrine
of Saint Francis of Assisi

THE SOLEMNITY OF THE MOST HOLY TRINITY
26 MAY 2002

[Exodus 34:4–6, 8–9; 2 Corinthians 13:11–13; John 3:16–18]

IN COLLEGE, I studied Scholastic metaphysics from a Belgian monk, who had completed his doctorate at Louvain between the wars. Later, as a Benedictine missionary in China, he taught the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas at a theological institute that had been founded there for the clerical formation of native Chinese seminarians. Not surprisingly, when the Communists took control of the land, they imprisoned and tortured him, not for his Thomism, but because he was a Catholic priest. By the time that I came to know him, he had snow-white hair that made him look transfigured and, being a francophone Belgian, he spoke English with a pronounced French accent that made him sound a bit like Hercule Poirot. During our seminar in rational psychology, he once remarked, “I do not believe in God. I know God exists! Rather, I believe in the Trinity.”

Now there’s an interesting statement from a man who had suffered both psychological torment and bodily injury on account of his Catholic faith. Although he phrases it in a provocative way, the monk’s observation is really quite orthodox. For two millenia, the Church has proclaimed that we can arrive at the knowledge of God through the use of the senses and of reason, but we can never know that God is one Divine Being in three Divine Persons: Father, Son and Holy Ghost. We have no other access to the Holy Trinity except faith. Thus, the recognition of the one God as a Trinity of Persons requires willing consent to what would otherwise be an utterly preposterous claim, were it not that Christ Himself reveals the mystery to us.

To speak of the human encounter with God, whether intellectual or experiential, is to speak the language of mystery. That is why the unseen Lawgiver on Sinai ironically reveals Himself in a cloud when Moses, heeding the LORD’s command, approaches Him with the tablets hewn of stone (Ex 34: 5). Today’s reading from the Old Testament comes midway between two better known passages of Exodus. The first episode recounts the moment in which Moses asks not to behold God’s glory. God says to him, “I will make all my beauty pass before you, and in your presence I will pronounce my name, LORD…. But my face you cannot see, for no man sees me and lives” (Ex 33: 19). Then the LORD God places Moses into the cleft of the rock and covers him with His hand as His glory passes by. What Moses beholds is not the face of God, but His backside, that is, the ironic manifestation of God’s glory (cf. Ex 33: 22ff).

Likewise, the cloud in today’s Scripture covers the LORD’s glory and thus gives Moses access to the inaccessible. Moses, however, is under no illusions about the implicit danger of approaching the living God; he is both obedient and terrified. So, Moses bows down in worship. Even his language expresses the anxious contingency of the human condition: “If I find favor with You… pardon our wickedness and sins and receive us as Your own” (Ex 43: 9). God’s response to Moses constitutes the second of the two better known episodes to which I referred earlier: namely, the promise of the Covenant and the gift of the Ten Commandments. While there is nothing particularly ambiguous about the language of Sinaitic Law, both Covenant and Commandment, like the earlier view of the backside of the LORD’s glory, are nonetheless shrouded in mystery. They proceed from the same cloud that both reveals and conceals the God who speaks to Moses. Righteousness, then is still intimately bound into the experience of belief in God. That is why persons who lose their faith, often lose their moral compass as well. Likewise, unrighteous persons who care little for God’s Commandments, risk the loss of their faith.

All this talk of Commandments, of sin, and of righteousness seems to stray from the central task of parsing the Triune Godhead that is implied by the solemn feast we celebrate today—as if any preacher would dare to explain the Trinity. A group of second-graders came on a field trip to the National Shrine recently, and afterwards it dawned on me that I have no richer explanation of the Trinity for you than I had for them, in spite of the greater resources of language and experience that you and I share as adults.

But in spite of the seemingly extra-topical character of discourse on sin and grace in the context of the Holy Trinity, I have come to believe that the universality of God’s salvific will is so central to the Biblical doctrine of God that it cannot be far removed from our discussion of God’s Triune nature. In the opening verses of Genesis, we already see in the act of creation the activity of the Trinity: God the Father designs the heavens and the earth, the Holy Spirit manifests the creative power of God still to be unleashed upon the void, and the Word of God is spoken, thus calling forth everything out of nothing (cf. Gen 1: 1-3). Creation, as the Franciscan Saint Bonaventure remarks, bears the imprint of the creative genius of the Trinity.

But Genesis is more than just a cosmology, it’s also a theodicy, that is, a vindication of God’s justice in spite of the overwhelming presence of evil in the world. The Triune God that creates the world doesn’t make evil, but ironically, evil is only possible because He gives free will to angels and to men. From the very design of creation, the Father recognized this implicit irony and yet He spoke His Divine Word and called forth the power of His Divine Spirit and so initiated creation just the same. Why? Or rather, why not first tinker a little bit with the blueprint? Why not omit free will so as to avoid all possibility of angelic rebellion or human sin? In omitting freedom, however, the Creator would in effect eliminate the possibility for love. Yet love is the very nature of the Triune Godhead, the eternal community of the Father perfectly loving the Son and the Son perfectly loving the Father, and their mutual love being so perfect that it is Itself a person, the Holy Spirit. Love fuels creation because God is love, but it takes faith to access God’s love when we are confronted with the evil, the sorrow, the sickness, and the mortality of this world.

Jesus speaks explicitly of God’s love for the world in his conversation with Nicodemus (Jn 3: 16-17). In the language of John’s Gospel, the term “world” means something like “sinful and unredeemed humanity.” So our Lord is really saying that “God so loved sinful and unredeemed humanity that He sent His only Son that sinful and unredeemed humanity might have eternal life.” Jesus cannot help but speak of the mystery of salvation except in terms of His relationship to the Father, a relationship that is love, a love that is a person: namely, the Holy Spirit.

Now this famous remark of Jesus to Nicodemus comes woven into the baptismal discourse on faith in the Fourth Gospel. Baptism, which can only be administered through the Trinitarian formula, “I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” is precisely the sacrament through which the Father pours out His saving love upon the repentant sinner. But it is also the sacrament through which Christ comes to dwell through grace in the person who is baptized. Finally, it is the sacrament which draws all the baptized into fellowship with one another as members of the Body of Christ, given new life by the Holy Spirit.

Now at last Moses’ hope that God will dwell in His people and pardon their wickedness comes to its fulfilment. And this is why Saint Paul can say with such confidence to the Corinthians, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of the Father and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all!” Amen.

Friar Francisco Nahoe, OFM Conv.
THE NATIONAL SHRINE OF SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI
Pax Christi et bonum