A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint John. Our lord said to Nicodemus, this is part of a long discourse. Yes, God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him may not die but may have life eternal. God did not send the son into the world to condemn the world, but rather that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him avoids condemnation, but whoever does not believe is already condemned for not believing in the name of god's only son.
And this is the gospel, the good news of the lord. Father, this is the intro at the opening prayer of this mass for the holy trinity. Take it if it's not the whole thing. Father, you sent your word, logos, son, to bring us truth and your spirit to make us holy. Help us to worship you, one god, three persons.
In the name of the father and of the son and the holy spirit, amen. Well, that keynotes, what we're doing here this morning, we're we're joining in the holy sacrifice of the mass. That's what we're doing. But we have a focus on god this morning as trinity, as three and one. Well, everybody knows that there's no reality can be one and three simultaneously.
So there you have the problem. You know the great objection of the of Muslim of Islam to Christianity is that we're polytheists, That we have three gods, the father, the son, and the holy spirit, holy ghost, or whatever you call it. And and I can easily understand how they get that idea, of course. And yet, we are not of that more or not. In other words, my friends, as we join together here in trying to talk about the trinity, remember, we're up against something we do not understand.
And I'm not up here this morning to explain it or to defend it. I'm simply going to present the facts. But as my old friend, GK Chesterton said, Gilbert Keith, a mystery is not a model. A mystery is not a model. We are not saying one is three and three are one.
That's crazy. And to be a Christian doesn't mean you have to be crazy. Although some Christians are crazy like other people. So the first point is that I wanna lay that as simply as I can before you. We are dealing here with the nature, with the essence, with the being of the the fundamental concept of god almighty.
And whether we like it or not, if you read the New Testament, if you accept the new test I mean, all of the New Testament, the epistles, the acts, revelation, the gospels, you can't avoid this idea that god is talking about three somethings. But let me tell you the word trinity is never used in the New Testament. The word trinity. What you have is the appealing to what is a trinity. Now let me give you just for you just remember, in the in the New Testament, the references to the holy spirit in English are at least 85, just in the New Testament.
And that means the acts, the epistles, and the gospels. There are over 85 references to holy spirit in those exact words, not counting all the other references to the holy spirit in other words. So we can't escape this fact, f a c t, that in the gospels, in the acts, in the epistles, there are three somethings identified with one god. We can't escape it. Now the problem is when you talk about it, you have to use words whether you're Greek or Latin, Spanish or English.
Some people are still speaking English in this world. But let me give you four instances of how the holy how the New Testament talks about the trinity. As I say, they never used the word. Our Lord never explained it. The first one is from John.
That's our Lord speaking at the last supper. He says, our Lord is speaking and speaking to Philip. If you know me, Philip, then you will also know my father. I want you to keep in mind here this inclusive language problem. How are you going to use inclusive language here?
But it's it's they're trying to do it, of course, but it can't be done. Not if you're faithful to the word of god. So our lord says to Philip, if you know me, you'll also know my father. So Philip says, master, show us your father. Good question.
A good good idea. And our lord replied, have I been with you for so long a time and you still do not know me? If you love me, you will keep my commandments and I will ask the father, and he will give you another advocate. Three, me, the father, and an advocate. And this advocate will be with you always, the spirit of truth, logos, truth, which the world cannot accept.
But you know it because it remains with you and will be in you. That's the way that's I don't know any English word to say to express this idea. That here you have the concept of a trinity and the one god and yet you have this triunity. You can't escape it. Take this.
Christ is speaking again. When the counselor when the counselor comes, whom I shall send you from the father. Notice three, me, the father, and a counselor. The spirit of truth who proceeds from the father, he will bear witness to me. Now that's Saint John and his the his gospel is the last of the four.
But take the first letter of Peter. This is his salutations. It's the opening of his first letter. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the chosen sojourners of the dispersion. In the foreknowledge of god the father through sanctification by the spirit for obedience and sprinkling with the blood of Jesus Christ.
Three, you can't you see, you can't escape it. Take Saint Paul. This, of course, is from his second letter to the Corinthians. And he's and this is his salutation to them. The grace of the lord Jesus Christ and the love of god and the fellowship of the holy spirit be with you all.
Three. There you see, you can't avoid it. That's how the trinity is preached. And these texts could be multiplied odd and finite. As I say, there are 85 references in the New Testament just to the holy spirit.
And so there we there you have it. How do you handle it? Well, now don't get worried. I wanna talk about the cross and its significance as to what it says about the trinity. But I do wanna lay before you very briefly, but lay before you this problem and to try to show what Chesterton meant when he said, a mystery is not a model.
Now how do you deal with this? Now remember, we're talking about the Greek church. We're talking about what is called Asia Minor, modern Turkey. You're talking about eight hundred years, eight hundred years. The United States is just over a few hundred years.
You're talking about seven councils, seven general councils of the church, the first seven. And all mainline Christian religions except those seven councils. You have three in Constantinople up in the North. You have two in Nicea. You have one in Chalcedon, and then you have one in Ephesus.
Count them up. There's seven. They cover the space of three twenty five to 787, the eighth the eighth century. And all of these councils tried to come to some kind of a human formulation that you could converse, that you could communicate about the holy trinity. And they came to various ways.
You see what they were to the the primitive and the early Christians, what the problem was this, to insist upon the unity of god, that god is one. But at the same time, to face the facts of the New Testament which are absolutely inescapable, that you're talking about three somethings. God, the father, call I mean, there are different ways of referring to it a lot. But we say God the father, God the son, God the holy spirit or whatever words you wanna use. Certainly, a Greek never said that.
Now all these all these councils were in the Greek language. They were Greek. They were from a Greek culture for the most part. Therefore, they're they they have a lot of Greek philosophy in it because they're humans. You use what you've got.
And when you communicate, you use words. And here, of course, you bring in your nineteenth and your twentieth century logical positivists. We nobody in words can express the truth of god. Nobody. There's not a single proposition we can make which is uniquely true of god and anything else.
So get that straight. We do not have an adequate conception of god. We do not have an adequate image of god. You can't imagine god. I said, god.
His son Jesus Christ is another matter and you have to wreck so as soon as you talk about the trinity, you have to think of the incarnation because you have a similar problem that Jesus Christ is one person, born of the virgin Mary, walked down the street, nursed under her breast, died on the cross, rose from the dead. One person. And yet, we just have to say his god and and man. How do you hand how do you handle this? Well, in the thirteenth century, a man came along named Thomas Aquinas, who was seeped in the metaphysics of Aristotle.
Now he gave a phrase, an expression to this, but here is where we have an an absolute illustration of a great issue that several years ago was being controversially and very bitter discussed. That is, can you talk about a truly Christian philosophy if philosophy is of the mind and of mere nature? Whatever that may be, you have to admit that we have a real problem here. How do you talk about something as one and three? And that that and that is they're real.
That is not not just a mental distinction. Like you talk about John Smith as the captain and and John Smith the same man as a husband and a father. How do you do it? Well, Aquinas came up. Now before I go any farther, you don't have to be a Thomas to be a Catholic.
You don't have to be an Aristotelian to be a Catholic. Keep that in mind. Although his philosophy Thomism has become the philosophy of the Catholic church, at least some people still admit it. Of course, that's another thing is being thrown out with doctrine. Saint Thomas faced this issue that from a natural law, from a purely philosophical point of view, you cannot have three and one of the same person.
But philosophy is not everything. Philosophy is only what man can get alone. There's a higher truth. It's the truth of god's own revelation. And so when we and god's revelation in the New Testament are the gospels, the epistles, the book of the acts, revelation.
What do they tell us? They tell us you can have something which is both three and one. Well, now how do you express that? It's in in words that will keep the mystery from being a muddle. Here's the way Aquinas phrased it.
It's a distinction between nature on the one hand and person on the other. They are not only intellectually, ideally distinct, but we know from revelation from the from our from what we see in the New Testament with absolute clarity that there is a distinction between nature and person. That you can have three that you can have natures and that you can have per persons and that they are not only distinct in words and in concept, concept, but they are really distinct. That is in the reality. Distinct as a as a monkey is from a human being.
Now here's where the crunch comes. When you talk about the trinity just bear with me another minute. When you talk about the trinity, you're talking about three persons but one nature. When you talk about Jesus Christ, you're talking about one person and two natures. You get it?
In other words, you're it's a real distinction between person and nature. That in God, three persons, one nature. In Jesus Christ and God incarnate, the second person of the blessed trinity, you have the one person, Jesus Christ, divine, but with a divine and human nature. And that the council Trent used that terminology. But remember, it is terminology.
You could say, I don't think anything of that. Throw it out. But you can't throw the New Testaments out in what it says about God being one and try you. You can't do it. The New Testament doesn't theorize.
It doesn't philosophize. It doesn't try to explain. It just talks about God the father, God the son, and god the holy spirit. And it does it it does it time and time and time again. I don't know how many quotations.
But now I wanna come to the cross. There is nothing more common I mean, the sign of the cross. There is nothing more common in Catholicism than people making the sign of the cross. We do it all the time. And here we are in complete union with our with the Orthodox Greek Church.
They use the sign of the cross just as much as we do with a slight tiny little difference, which is absolutely inconsequential. What I wanna ask you people, you make the sign of the cross often. And when you go to foreign countries, you see people doing it. This is the way to do it. That's the way a lot of us do it.
I'm not exaggerating this. What does it mean? Does it recall that font back there where you were baptized? Does it bring back into your active memory? Does it bring back to the present tense?
I mean, this moment that you are a son of god, you are a royal priesthood, that your sacrifice in this life is your sacrifice you join with a hierarchical priest. Do you get all of that when you dip your finger in that holy water which is a sacramental? It's not a sacrament. Do you or don't you? What happens?
Where I have seen time and again young fathers, young mothers take the hand of their child who can't begin to talk yet, can squeal and yell, but he can't talk, and take it and make it a sign of the cross with it before he can even talk. Many a child I've seen in in a family who can't talk make the sign of the cross when we say the blessing at the meal, many a time. The one of the things that impressed me terribly, even though I was only I'd just been ordained a few days. When I went over into the chancery over in Baltimore, the archdiocese of what Baltimore which included Washington, and I got my faculties. What was one of the most important faculties given to me as a young priest?
That with the simple sign of the cross, I could give a pleadery indulgence to a person who is dying. That struck me. See, death was terribly far away from me when I was 35, very far away. But that was one of the first things I got with my faculty along with the right to say hear confessions in the archdiocese of Baltimore. What does the sign you use the sign of the cross, but what does it mean to you?
I read I can't verify this, but I read some sometimes somewhere how in one monastery, the monks took several several minutes to make the sign of the cross. Now I challenge you to do this. Make the sign of the cross and take one minute to do it, and you will know how long a minute is. But try it. It's not too long to think about the annunciation, which is the incarnation of god becoming man, his life with us as a human being.
God, You can always talk about Christ as God is only one person. Then what happens? His public life. Think of that. Recall that.
Then think of what happens. He was a good man, but only good in the sense of God being good, not in the sense of the world. He was not a good man if all he was was a man who was good. He's God who was good. And then you think of the of the of what happened, his passion, his death, his resurrection.
You think of the early days of the church. You think of the martyrs. You think of mother satan up the road. This is all in the sign of the cross. Do you know that?
If you think about it, and if you think about it in these terms, the minute will not seem very long. No. It'll go like lightning. It'll go as fast as the years when you look back on your life whether they're 15 or 57 or 90 or a 100. Try it.
Don't go through empty motions. Don't be a vacuous Christian. Don't be an empty Catholic. Know what you're doing as far as you can know. I'm not saying you can solve the mystery of the trinity.
I'm saying what you have in the New Testament is indisputable. It's clear. It's concrete. It's individual. It appeals to your imagination, but it is not a philosophical discussion.
It's not an argument. There are no definitions. There are no explanations. But there's plenty in of inescapably plenty In the New Testament, presents god in some sense as being three and in another sense of being one only god. We are monotheists.
And with Saint Paul, we can pray to to god almighty. May the grace of Jesus Christ, the love of god, and the companionship of the holy spirit be with you all. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen.