Gospel Reflection
Solemnity of The Most Holy Trinity
15 June 2025, Church Year C
Beauty Beyond Comprehension
By Fr. Richard A. Miserendino


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At first glance, our Gospel for this Trinity Sunday seems only tangentially related to the mystery and doctrine we celebrate at Mass. For sure, the Trinity makes an appearance — Jesus the Son of God speaks to his disciples, promising the Spirit’s guidance and teaching to know the Father. Thus, all divine Persons of the Godhead are accounted for. But the passage still seems like it could be easily replaced by several others in the Gospels that speak of or illustrate the Trinity. As such, it’s worth asking: Why might the church put this passage forward for our consideration?

The key to unlocking the answer might be Jesus’ somewhat surprising statement: “I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now.” It turns out that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy or theology, especially regarding the Trinity.

This is profoundly good news from the Lord. There is so much goodness in God’s glory and providence that it would not be told or comprehended in a hundred thousand lifetimes. If Christ even found a way to break it all down and give it to us in one go, we couldn’t bear it, both in terms of our current spiritual maturity and our maximum capacity for understanding.

Some truths are difficult to bear until we grow into them. For instance, if you try telling young kids that someday they’ll enjoy foods other than pizza and chicken nuggets, you’re likely to get a wry look. Growing into maturity opens the way to bearing and enjoying things more fully. Other truths cannot be born because they simply extend beyond our capacity for comprehension in themselves, even if we devote our whole lives to them. Ask any astronomer whether they comprehend all the stars in the sky. They’ll tell you they only know a little about a few and they couldn’t bear to know all about all. Yet their love and interest remain undimmed.

The core mysteries of our faith, including the Trinity, have both aspects. We can never really completely know it in the sense that it both lies beyond the bounds of our comprehension and outside our spiritual maturity. All our analogies limp, all our sacred art loses something in translation. In fact, it’s even deeper and more inscrutable still. We can see the stars with our eyes even if we can’t count them all, but we can only know intimate details about God such as the Trinity if he reveals them and gives us the spiritual sight (in addition to maturity) to take it in.

And yet, this is still good news. Jesus himself has come to reveal the Father and lead us into that spiritual maturity and relationship, he sends his Spirit into our hearts and minds to enlighten them so that we are drawn more and more deeply into the wonder of who God is. That is how our Gospel fits. We’ll never be able to comprehend God, but we will be able to grow in union and love with him, which is infinitely better. Thank God for that. We should not lose focus — better is the relationship with the Lord than having an exhaustive and comprehensive file on him. Friendship is infinitely more valuable than mere facts.

Similarly, we can ask: would we rather have a God that is easily comprehensible? Could you imagine neatly explaining the nature of Almighty God in a single PowerPoint presentation? That the sublime mystery of eternal love at the heart of all existence could be packaged and explained away in 20 charts and diagrams? What a terrible and terribly underwhelming sense of God that would be.

Better by far is the mystery of the Trinity as we have it — tough to explain and wrap our minds around, living, vivid, alive in a love and creative power that is intelligible and yet true with a depth and inexhaustibility that we can never master. We know truths about God but can’t fully comprehend him. And yet God never stops broadening our understanding and drawing us nearer to him.

St. Ephrem puts it well (albeit in a slightly different source context): “The thirsty man rejoices when he drinks and is not downcast because he cannot empty the fountain. Rather let the fountain quench your thirst than have your thirst quench the fountain. Because if your thirst is quenched and the fountain is not exhausted, you can drink from it again whenever you are thirsty.” Come Holy Spirit and lead us to deeper union with the Trinity — that for which our soul truly thirsts — that which is inexhaustible truth, goodness and beauty beyond our comprehension.


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