Imagine growing up the youngest of 25 siblings born into a lower middle-class family, most of whom didn’t survive childhood. Yet, that’s the situation into which God sent St. Catherine of Siena in 1387 and who St. Pope Paul VI in 1970 named a doctor of the Church.
Today’s Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity provides the opportunity for us to recall a simple and illuminating image St. Catherine used to contemplate this mystery of the Catholic faith: A fish that’s born into, lives, and moves about in the sea. Being a creature of the water—a fish can’t subsist without it—the water enters into and passes through this creature. Yet, the fish hasn’t a clue about how important, powerful, and beneficial the water is that provides for its entire existence. Yet, despite this ignorance, the fish lives, swims, grows, multiplies, and dies in the water…that is, unless an angler happens to snatch the fish from its habitat.
Similarly, for human beings.
Each of us is born into, lives in, and moves about in the Most Holy Trinity. Each and every day, from the moment we awaken in the morning through the moment we fall asleep at night, the Most Holy Trinity enters into and passes through each of us. Yet, most of us haven’t a clue about how important, powerful, and beneficial the Most Holy Trinity is to our daily existence. Yet, despite this lack of awareness, most of us live, play, grow, multiply, and die not having an inkling on most days of how the Most Holy Trinity flows within and envelops us…that is, unless evil snatches us from our habitat.
In this way, each of us is like that fish of which St. Catherine of Siena wrote: We live and move throughout the world; we take in what the world offers; and, despite the fact God has endowed us with an intellect to understand how important, powerful, and beneficial the world is and can be, all of us live, play, grow, multiply, and eventually die—like that fish—simply being in and of the world. Yet, all the while, most of us remain woefully ignorant regarding the impact the world has upon us.
What St. Catherine didn’t mention is a very important aspect of the life of a fish: Fish tend not to live solitary lives but in schools.
This fact actually helps us to understand better why the Church proposes today’s Solemnity for us to contemplate: To become more consciously aware each day that we live in and of the Most Holy Trinity. It’s the important, powerful, and beneficial force from which we’ve come and towards which we’re headed. When we’re consciously aware that we live in communion with the Most Holy Trinity, we also grasp better the fact that we live not in isolation from the Godhead but in communion its three divine persons.
Moreover, that communion extends to the other people God has placed into our midst. We aren’t solitary individuals but members of communities. That fact raises to conscious awareness how life in and of this world isn’t “all about me” but “all about us,” with the mystery of the Holy Trinity providing us insight concerning the true nature of family and family life as well as how living in and of this world without this conscious awareness is destructive to both family and family life.
One God of three distinct persons who live in perfect community provides an exemplar for how to be a family and live family life...however many persons God has constituted this community of love.
For example, God has comprised some families of three persons—a mom, dad, and their only child—while God has comprised other families of four and maybe even six persons—a mom, dad, and their two or four children. Then, too, God has comprised some families of fourteen persons—a mom, dad, and their “cheaper by the dozen” children. And, that’s to say nothing about St. Catherine of Siena’s family which God comprised of twenty seven children!
In this basic social unit, human beings learn how the greatest and most abiding happiness is experienced when its members live not for themselves as solitary individuals but as cherished and valued members of a community of persons who experience God’s loving plan for them as they live in and of the family for one another. While parents cooperate with the God in begetting human beings as distinct individuals—the trinity of God, husband, and wife is at work when any child is created—God places those human beings into a family where, over time, they learn how everything that’s truly worthwhile in life is accomplished not as solitary individuals “do their own thing” but as each member participates in accomplishing what brings true and abiding happiness to all, each in his or her own unique way. After all, what are holidays without family? What are birthdays, graduations, weddings, anniversaries, and funerals without family? What is achieving success if it’s not shared with family?
Viewed from this perspective, there’s nothing more destructive to a family than rugged individualism where each member goes his or her own way with little if any communion among its other members. “Facetime,” “Zoom” video conferences, and Skype chatrooms to celebrate holidays and mark important milestones in the lives of family members just don’t cut the mustard. In our own experience, consider what has happened over the past six decades as the nuclear family eroded, where spending holidays away from families has become the norm, and there are no real cross-generational relationships characterized by experience, understanding, misunderstanding, forgiveness, and love. Then, too, consider how COVID disrupted family life and the feelings of disorientation and loss the disease spawned because holidays and important milestones weren’t able to be celebrated as families.
Our credal belief in the Most Holy Trinity isn’t some mythological fantasy or mere philosophical speculation. Neither is it an abstract, theological formulation that’s detached from daily life and can go be ignored with little if any impact upon life itself. Yes, like sea’s depths in which schools of fish live and move and have their being yet of which those fish remain ignorant, so also the Most Holy Trinity is an unfathomable mystery of our faith that the human mind is incapable of grasping in its totality but all too many of us conveniently choose to ignore.
That said, this mystery of our faith speaks directly to the heart because its essence is Divine Love. The Most Holy Trinity is an experience that even an infant grasps intuitively when cuddled by his or her parents, reminding us that it’s the heart not the mind that best assists us to navigate our way in this world, to be of this world, and to experience abiding happiness in this world.
How?
By contemplating the Creator, the Savior, and the Sustainer of life—the one Godhead—and experiencing how the Most Holy Trinity moves everything in pure, infinite, and eternal love. As Pope Francis has noted:
The Trinity is a communion of divine Persons who are one with the other, one for the other, one in the other. This communion is the life of God, the mystery of love of the Living God.
Important as contemplating and experiencing this teaching of our Catholic faith is for our life in and of this world, that represents only half of what today’s Solemnity is all about. The other half entails accepting and witnessing to its life by living with and for others. When the power of God’s love dwells in our hearts and we witness to it, this is how our lives reflect the splendor and love that unites the Most Holy Trinity, three Persons in one God. And, in this way and as Jesus taught, we make disciples of all nations beginning first in our families and daily family life.
For this reason, it’s important never to forget what St. Paul reminded us about in today’s epistle:
…the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
That represents our challenge from this week’s scripture readings: To take seriously the truth of the Most Holy Trinity by living it with and for others, especially in our homes.
To make this mystery of our Catholic faith more concrete this week, upon awaking each morning conduct this memento mori: Mark yourself with the “Sign of the Cross”—“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” Call to mind your need for God and then offer praise to the Most Holy Trinity by praying the “Glory Be”—“Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. Amen.” Then, progressing in and through each day, recall the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity and repeat that memento mori—making the “Sign of the Cross” and praising the Godhead with a “Glory Be” frequently...and the more, the better!
This spiritual discipline will awaken within each of us a greater awareness of this great mystery of our Catholic faith. It also will also assist us to awaken from being “sleepy” Catholics and to become “WOKE” Catholics who don’t waste our time living a “telescope faith” looking for the God somewhere up in the sky. Instead, we will be rooting our day more consciously in what Isaiah prophesied on Christmas Eve—“He shall be named ‘Emmanuel,’ which means ‘God is with us’,” one “God” in three divine persons—the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the Creator, Savior, and Sustainer.
We will know we are becoming “WOKE” Catholics this week as we bring to fulfillment in the lives of others and make more concrete what the Risen Lord promised his disciples: “I will be with you…until the end of time.” Moreover, as the Holy Spirit works in and through us this week, this is how each of us will experience what we heard in today’s first reading from the Book of Proverbs:
I [was] beside [God] as his craftsman and I was his delight day by day, playing before him all the while, playing on the surface of his earth; and I found delight in the human race.
Comments
Post a Comment