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.