The whole liturgical cycle can be compressed into
one sentence: The Father sends the Son into the world (Advent and Christmas),
and the Son returns to the right hand of the Father (Easter and Ascension),
from where the Son now sends the Holy Spirit (Pentecost -- last Sunday). The completed liturgical cycle (last Sunday)
gives us Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
So the feast of the Mystery of the Trinity (today)
is well positioned here at the "end of the line."
"Mystery" is one of those good words that need rehabilitation. In theology, “mystery” doesn’t mean something that’s unintelligible or meaningless. On the contrary, in theology “mystery” is something that’s packed with an ocean of meaning, and so it defies being grasped. Who can grasp an ocean? In theology “mystery” is such an ocean of meaning that one can never say “I’ve got it all figured out” or “I’ve got it all down pat” or “Here’s the last word on it.”
Mystery is what we experience in certain privileged moments of our lives, moments which bring us to the edges of our human existence and have us gazing off into the Beyond. Mystery is that quiet voice in things which says, “There’s more here than meets the eye.” That privileged moment might be an encounter with some human being of heroic and extraordinary goodness, or a breath-taking panoramic scene, or the birth of one’s infant, etc. All religion is based upon this experience of mystery.
Non-mystery
The opposite of mystery is “non-mystery” (for want of a better word). Non-mystery is that loud voice all around us in our daily lives that keeps saying, “What you see is all there is” or “What you see is what you get.” Another name for the non-mystery in our lives might be ennui, boredom, ho-hum.
While mystery is wrapped up in certain privileged moments of life, non-mystery is smeared all over the twenty-four hours of our day and the seven days of our week. The non-mystery in our lives really turns out to be a kind of chant: “What you see is all there is, is all there is, is all there is.” By week’s end that constant beat upon our human psyches wears us down and exhausts us. Maybe that’s what sends us some of us running here to the Sunday Assembly, hoping to hear again the refreshing voice of mystery: ”There’s more here than meets the eye.” That voice reaches a summit in the privileged moment of Consecration and Elevation. Raised on high, the Eucharistic Bread announces mystery: “There’s more here than what you see. Take that home with you, and when the week ahead keeps telling you that `What you see is all there is, don’t believe it.’”
Theology is the human attempt to
"grasp" God, and
“Trinity” is theology: the human
attempt of us Christians to “grasp” God. But God is mystery: “the more here
than meets the eye.” God is the “more-here” than the mind can conceive of; the
“more-here” than the mouth can speak of; the “more-here” than the theologian’s
pen can write of. So there’s a tension between mystery on the one hand and
theology on the other; they pull in opposite directions. Mystery says God cannot be grasped, and
theology (Trinity) says, “That might be true, but I’m going to try anyway.”
It’s simply our intelligent human natures refusing to give up.
But at the end of the day, all good theologians know that they really can’t grasp God. St. Thomas Aquinas, that great theologian, who ruled the church from the thirteenth century till Vatican II, wrote volumes upon volumes of theology, but at the end of his life, he looked upon it all and exclaimed, "Nihil est!" "It's nothing!" Although the Protestant theologian Karl Barth had for his bottom-line "Deus totaliter aliter" ("God is totally other,” totally other than what we say, think, or imagine of God), still he proceeded to write volume upon volume about the "involuminous and unwordable" God. But he, too, at the end of the day and in the sunset of his life, said, "The angels are laughing at old Karl Barth for trying to grasp God." And he too laughed at himself because that's what good theologians do.
Though we can’t grasp the Mystery of God, we always have in our
midst those who pretend to do so. They have God down pat. They know all the "divine
minutiae," all God's petty peeves, and shabby likes and dislikes (which
can't stand nuns without veils and priests without collars and women without
hats on). They know which marriages God considers valid and which ones invalid.
They know that God prefers the Council of Trent to Vatican II, and Latin mass over
English or Spanish or Italian mass.
They are so privy to God as to know even God's "sexual
preference" which can’t countenance "female altar boys" or
female priests; so privy to God as to know God’s asexual bias, which can’t
ordain married people. They have God down so pat that God looks exactly like
us: just as obsessed with sexual moralism as we are. And they have God as mean and revengeful as we are: concocting AIDS to get even with immoral
sinners. They even know the very gender of God (God is a he). When you know that much about God, you have indeed obscenely
disrobed the body of God, and have stripped God naked of mystery.
When you know all that about God, you have “grasped” the Mystery of God,
and by grasping it you have destroyed it.
The Mystery grasps us.
We
don't grasp the Mystery; it's the Mystery that grasps us. In eleventh century
there was a historic theological dispute (war, we can say) over the Trinity.
The "burning" issue at the time was this: Does the Holy Spirit proceed equally immediately from the Father and the Son ("ex Patre Filioque procedit")?
Or does the Holy Spirit proceed from the Father through the Son? What in
the world should all that mean in the first place? And what difference could it possibly make? Well, the Latin
Church added "filioque" (“and
the son”) to the ancient Nicene Creed, and that tore the Church, the
seamless Robe of Christ, into two pieces: the Latin Church and the Eastern
Church. And we’ve been mad at each other ever since.
A
recent article in The Wall Street journal, May 8, 2001, berates the religious
authorities of the Orthodox Church for being so mean and ugly to Pope John Paul
II in his recent pilgrimage into their
midst. The article makes the point there are better and more important things
to do ”than fussing over the fate of the filioque clause.”
Oh
foolish Church, this indeed is true:
you
might have "grasped" the Mystery of the Trinity,
but
it hasn't grasped you.
Take
that first class religious bigot of all times, the Rev. Paisley of Ireland. When the Pope made his pilgrimage to England
he stalked John Paul relentlessly every inch of the way, throwing sticks and
stones at him. And this he did "in the name of the Father and of the Son
and of the Holy Spirit." This he did in the name of "true
belief"! Make no mistake about it,
no one believes more orthodoxly in the Trinity than he does. And no one is more
filled with "faith-inspired" hate than he is. That holds true for the
born-again-Christian preacher demonstrating at Mat Shehard’s funeral. He sported a “faith-inspired-hate” sign, which read, “God hates fags and
buries them in hell.” What is said about Christian inspired hate holds true for Islamic and Judaic hate as well.
Oh
hate-filled religious bigots, indeed it's true:
you
might have "grasp" the Mystery of the Trinity,
but
it hasn't grasped you.
Our
theme runs in both directions. Take the case of Aaron Feuerstein, a Jewish CEO
and owner a mill in Methuen Mass, which turns out Polartex, a fabric used for
winter clothing. The mill burned down near Christmas in 1995. He didn’t grab
the insurance money and run. Rather he held on to all his 2000 employees, gave
them all a Christmas bonus, kept paying their health insurance and weekly wages
(15 dollars per hour) until the factory was rebuilt. Corporate America was
stunned by such insanity and abnormality, and named him CEO of the year. In a
sort of humble protest to the praise given him, this modern day saint who is
still in the Old Testament and who doesn’t know the first thing about Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit, quotes his prophet Micah who calls him, "to act
justly, with loving kindness, and to walk humbly with thy God" (Mic 6:8)
Oh
Jewish Aaron, indeed it's true:
you
might not grasp the Mystery of the Trinity,
but
it surely has grasped you.
Or
the case of the young black clerk (“black” is part of the story) at the check
out counter at the old Pick and Save on Capitol Drive. As I am checking out my
groceries very early in the morning, and he perceives my grief that I had to
put my dog, Tina, to sleep, he whips out his
wallet, opens the cash registers, and pays for my groceries. A young
black man doing blue-collar work in a white shirt, not making 100 dollars an
hour, is paying for my groceries!
Oh
simple Vernon, indeed it's true:
you
might not grasp one
single
iota about the Mystery of the Trinity,
but
it surely has grasped you.
Conclusion
Silence
Whenever the world's great religions (Islamic,
Judaic, Christian) are all taken up with themselves; whenever they are all
busy gazing
away at away their belly buttons; whenever they are all nervously preoccupied
in telling their own peculiar story, but are not listening to anybody else’s;
whenever they are vociferously setting forth their own peculiar explanation of
their God, but are not listening to anybody else’s, -- they all eventually start shouting at each other, and all
eventually are at “holy war.” But when the great religions are intent upon the
mystery of their God, they all fall silent, and they all become one.
A Buddhist wisdom
says, "Who speaks really does
not know.” The lesser the Mystery of God has grasped us, the more we pretend to know about God, and the
more we have to say about God. Listen to the TV evangelists going on and on and
on about God, not even coming up for air sometimes. And as they go on and on
and on, they exhaust the mystery of God and us as well.
The second half of the
Buddhist proverb says, “Who knows does not speak.” When the Mystery of
God has indeed grasped us, then we all fall silent. Before the Mystery of God,
religion and we are at our best when we are silent; when we are humbly avowing
that we don’t know what to say (call it “holy agnosticism”). Before the Mystery of God, religion and we
are at our worst when we are obscenely disrobing the body of God with a lot of
human mumbo-jumbo. And we are at our best when we cover it up in “A Cloud of Unknowing" and hide it in a
veil of incense, as we used to do in the “old” days. Remember the incense? Oh
where has all the incense gone? We're at our best when we speak to the Mystery
not in words but in Tongues. For as long as the Mystery hasn't grasped us,
there’s nothing worthwhile that words will say. But when the Mystery has indeed
grasped us, that aren’t any words to say it.