Homily: Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity – Cycle A
As a former engineer, my brain is
wired for science. What I mean by this
is that it is wired in such a way that, when I see something that I don’t
understand, I automatically begin to wonder about it and try to figure it
out. Quite frankly, most of us are wired
for science in some way: usually in a very practical way. Here’s what I mean.
Say that you enter a room with which you are
unfamiliar. It’s a little bit warm in
the room and you observe that there is a ceiling fan. You know a thing or two about ceiling fans,
but you’ve never turned on this particular fan, so you set yourself to figuring
out how to turn it on. You think, “Maybe
the wall switch will turn it on”, and so you flip the wall switches. If that doesn’t work you think, “Maybe I need
to pull the chain on the fan to turn it on”, and so you reach up and pull the
chain. If that doesn’t work you think,
“Maybe there’s a combination of the wall switches and the chain that need to be
aligned to turn it on”, and so you begin to turn switches on and off, pulling
the chain at each setting. If that still
doesn’t work, we think… what? That it’s
broken… of course! You’ve observed,
hypothesized, tested each hypothesis and observed some more, and when you’ve
run out of hypotheses you draw a conclusion.
That, my friends, is science; and we do it almost every day.
As much as I love science,
because I love figuring out how to make things work, I do have one big problem
with it. You see, the problem with
science is that it equates perception with reality. In other words, science makes conclusions
about reality based solely on what it can perceive. In my example above, we concluded that the
fan was broken because no switches or combination of switches would start it
spinning. We made a conclusion about
reality based solely on what we observed.
The reality, however, could be that the fan functions perfectly well,
but that the switch may be broken or maybe there wasn’t any electricity wasn’t
flowing to the system. In other words,
there could be factors beyond our perception that could contribute to the
reality. Science does not always admit
these factors and so sometimes draws incorrect conclusions about reality.
For people of faith there is
no other proof of the limitations of science than when we think about God. Imagine for a moment that you didn’t know
much about God (and let’s assume that you at least give credence to the fact
that there is a God: that is, an all-powerful, all-knowing creator of the
universe). What would you do to figure
out more about him? Well, you’d observe,
I suppose: you’d listen to what people said or wrote about him. Then you might hypothesize about what he’d be
like, followed by observing to see if you’re hypothesis was correct.
Doing that you’d find out that
people say that God is loving, kind, and merciful; that he has the power to
control everything that happens in the universe; that nothing happens without
his knowing about it and either making it happen or, at least, permitting it to
happen. Then you’d say, “Well, if that’s
the case, then things should be pretty good around me. People ought to be living in harmony with one
another and there should be peace, because a God of love and kindness, who can
control what happens in the world, would surely desire there to be love and
kindness throughout the world.” Having
formed your hypothesis, you then observe the world and what would you see? Love and kindness in many places, for sure;
but also hatred, violence, and discord in as many, if not more places. Having observed this, your conclusion might
be: “God is not who people say he is, because what I perceive does not conform
to that proposed reality.”
This
is the error that many people in our society make today: they perceive a world
broken and disharmonious and they conclude that, if God is who people say that
he is, then he wouldn’t allow the world to be like this. But since the world is this way, then God
must not be who people say that he is. Rather,
he must be (at best) a mythical creature meant to make people feel better about
living in this broken world or a weak God: a deity who can (perhaps) create,
but cannot control the universe. In
either case, the conclusion leaves people with no reason to believe in him.
The problem with this, of
course, is that there are factors outside of one’s perception that contribute
to the reality. In other words, the reality
of God is greater than our perception.
Thinking purely theoretically, we can somewhat easily conclude that
there must be a God: an all-powerful being—the uncreated creator—who created
all things. Just imagine trying to
figure out how any one of us got here (that is, to exist). You’d begin walking down the sequence of
causes and would quickly realize that, ultimately, “nothing” never begets
“something”, but that in order for there to be “something”, there had to be
something first—a something that didn’t rely on another something to bring it
into existence. This “something”—this
creator which itself is uncreated—is what (Saint Thomas Aquinas tells us) we
call “God”. See, no bible quotes needed,
just theoretical speculation and we can conclude that something akin to who we
call “God” must exist in order for anything in the universe to exist.
In
order to know that God is benevolent, however—that is, from a perfectly
theoretical standpoint—we would have to do a lot more work. To see that all creation works towards the
propagation of life, instead of against it, and that this propagation is a good
thing, could lead us to conclude that God is good: or, at least, has the good
of creation in mind. But to know God as
we know him, as loving, kind, and merciful, or, as we celebrate him today, as a
communion of persons, is something that we can know only if he, himself, has
revealed it to us.
Thankfully, this is something
that he has revealed to us; and it is not something that he has revealed solely
by some sort of divine declaration (even though he has done that). Rather, he has revealed this to us also by
his actions. In the book of Exodus, we
read that God declared himself before Moses to be “a merciful and gracious God,
slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity” and God proved this as time
and again he spared the Israelite people from destruction, even though they had
repeatedly offended him. So gracious and
merciful is he—and so deeply in love of his creation—that, as we read in the
Gospel, God eventually “gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in him
might not perish but might have eternal life.”
In doing so, he not only proved, once again, that what he said about
himself is true, but he also revealed an incredible truth: that he is a
communion of persons within himself. And
how do we know that Jesus truly is the Son of God and, thus, God himself? Not just because he said so, but also because
of the works that he did: healing the sick, driving out demons, raising the
dead, and most prominently, of course, raising himself from the dead.
Thus, the celebration that we
come to today: the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity. Today we are able to know and, thus, celebrate
who God is in himself: not because we somehow perceive this with our senses;
but rather because of the gift of Faith that has been placed in our hearts and
because of the works that he has worked in the past (and continues to work
today) that go beyond our ability to test scientifically. In celebrating God as Trinity, we not only
celebrate who he is, but also what that means for us. We know that God is Love and so is a
community of persons. Because of this we
know that, when God creates, he creates in love. We know that, having created human beings to
be persons, like himself, he created us solely so that we might share in his
divine life, which is love. Finally, we
know that, when we turned away from him in sin, he did not shun us, but rather
came close to us, becoming one of us in his Son who would make atonement for
our sins and, thus, make it possible for us to share in the divine life once
again: that is, to find the peace and harmony with him and one another for
which our hearts constantly long.
And so, my brothers and
sisters, as we celebrate today who God is in himself, let us rejoice also in
who we are in him: beloved sons and daughters destined to spend eternity with him. This joy cannot be complete, though, if we
try to hoard it for ourselves and neglect our neighbor; and in times like these
when it is clear that disharmony and hatred is causing so many of our neighbors
to suffer, we cannot stand idlily by. Therefore,
let us also commit ourselves to follow the admonition of Saint Paul to the
Corinthians and “mend our ways, encourage one another, agree with one another,
and live in peace” so that “the God of love and peace will be with us” and all
those scientific skeptics might begin to see the truth that we proclaim: that
the reality of God does match up to who he has revealed himself to be, that he cares
about each and every one of us, and that he desires that each and every one of
us dwell with him in eternal light, happiness, and peace.
My brothers and sisters, out community desperately needs
this witness! Let us seek to be the image of God in which we were
created and work to build in our place a communion of persons whose love brings
harmony and peace to the world.
Given at Saint Mary’s Cathedral: Lafayette,
IN – June 7th, 2020
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