Sip from a Fire Hydrant

Appreciating the simplicity and sophistication of the Holy Trinity

2 Corinthians 13:11-13

Brothers and sisters, rejoice.  Mend your ways, encourage one another, agree with one another, live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you. Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the holy ones greet you. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.

             One of the great things about the Catholic religion is that it is at once both simple and yet sophisticated.  It’s easy to understand and yet an inexhaustible mystery.  The basic tenets of Catholicism are so simple a small child can understand them.  That’s why Pope St. Pius X lowered the minimum age to receive Holy Communion to 7 years old?  He believed that by that so-called “age of reason” (7 years old) you could grasp what Catholicism is essentially about.  Did you hear about the 3 boys tempted to steal a watermelon?  They stood at the fence and one said: “Look at those beautiful watermelons!  Too bad we’re past the age of reason.  It would be a sin to steal.”  One boy replied, “I’m only 6!  Hold my hat, I’ll go get us one!”  So, maybe the age of reason should be 6.

             And yet, the Catholic faith is so vast and so mysterious that it has baffled the world’s most brilliant scholars and saints.  St. Thomas Aquinas wrote one of the most comprehensive books on Catholicism – still studied in seminaries today – called “The Summa Theologica.”  Shortly after he finished writing it he had a glimpse of the Beatific Vision, he saw the face of God, and declared, “Everything I have written is so much straw compared to what I have seen.”  The fullness of the faith blew his brain.  Scott Hahn once said that studying the faith is like “taking a sip from a fire hydrant.”    Don’t try that at home, folks!  The Christian faith is simple enough for a small child, but always remains more than we can comprehend.

            There is no better example of this simultaneous simplicity and sophistication than today’s feast of the Most Holy Trinity.  This central mystery of our faith is so simple that St. Patrick used a three-leaf clover to explain it.  He told the 5th century Irish people who hadn’t even heard of Jesus, and said: “Just as a cloverleaf has 3 leaves, so there are 3 persons of the Blessed Trinity: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.”  He continued, “At the same time the clover is one, single leaf, just like God is ultimately one God, not three Gods.”  St. Patrick was so successful in simplifying the faith, he converted all of Ireland.  Nevertheless, we cannot fully fathom how God can be 3 Persons while also remaining one God.  There comes a point in our journey of faith in which we must surrender trying to understand it all, and simply believe.  In other words, we believe in the Holy Trinity NOT because it makes perfect sense to us, but because God told us that deep secret of his identity.  It’s like when you really and deeply love someone and share with them some secret about you that no one else knows.  In the end, we don’t really “get it” about the Holy Trinity, and what we thought we got will turn out, I believe, just to be so much straw.

            Today’s feast of the Holy Trinity is not just “pie in the sky theology.”  It offers us some very practical lessons.  First, the Trinity reminds us we don’t have to kill ourselves trying to understand the faith completely, and unlock every mystery; you don’t have to run to every Marian apparition or attend every Bible study (but do attend some).  In other words, we can relax in our religion, slowly grasping spiritual truths one after another.  Have you heard what they say in India?  They ask: “How do you eat an elephant?”  The answer: “One bite at a time.”  (They don’t really say that in India, I just made that up).  But you see, our faith is digested one bite at a time, not all in one gulp. The Trinity teaches us we'll never gulp it all.

Second, the Trinity teaches us not to be too smart for own good, and think we can out-smart God.  But some people do think they're smarter than God.  St. Augustine, when he first read the Bible, scoffed at it and turned up his nose because it seemed beneath his intelligence.  Scripture lacked the rhetoric and erudition he expected from fine literature.  Do you know anyone who believes religion is for backward and unthinking people?  Know any 18 year olds who think that?  For all those who hold that science and psychology and sociology have replaced religion, I invite them to take a crack at explaining the Holy Trinity.  Good luck!  The mystery of the Trinity will always baffle the best brains.

               Thirdly, the Trinity is an eternal mystery, which means, God isn’t going anywhere – he’s eternal – and will wait for us to come to him.  The most famous resident of Fort Smith was Judge Isaac Parker, and he certainly took his time in coming to the Trinity.  Did you know that on his deathbed he converted to Catholicism and died in the good graces of the Church?  It didn’t hurt he had a very devout Irish Catholic wife, who probably used a clover to teach him about the Trinity!  My friends, sooner or later, we will all come face to face with the Holy Trinity; we will all have to take a sip from that fire hydrant.

             I’m reading the book called “The Cloud of Unknowing” these days.  A friend let me borrow it and said, "I didn’t really understand anything I read.”  I replied, “Isn’t that the point of the book, ‘not knowing’?”  The thesis of the book is that as we draw closer to God, the more we are engulfed in a cloud of complete unknowing.  We leave behind all knowledge and feelings and memories.  As we draw near the Most Holy Trinity, and look back at all we thought we knew, all the things that made us look so smart, I have a suspicion that may look a lot like straw.

            Praised be Jesus Christ!