Today is the solemnity of the Holy Trinity, which is the Catholic doctrine that God is one God composed of three persons. It is the teaching for which St. Patrick is most known using the shamrock to demonstrate it and it is the teaching for which this parish is named. I will also add it is the teaching most important for our time.
The Holy Trinity is really beyond our understanding and that is the point. We often try to understand it and, indeed, St. Patrick, demonstrating the three leaves for the one clover demonstrates a basic element of the Holy Trinity, however it is still beyond us.
The trinity teaches that God is three persons who together are all God and all equally God, not gods. So the Father is Fully God as is the Son and the Holy Spirit, but the Father is not the Son Nor the Holy Spirit, etc.
We are not what is known as modalists who believed that God was for a time the Father, then the Son and then the Holy Spirit. God is three persons and simultaneously one God.
The reason why this teaching is so important is that today, everything is assumedly explained by science, but there is huge flaw in that reasoning. The flaw is not in science and a true scientist will recognize it. The flaw is the belief that all that exists can be perceived and understood by the human being. It is an absurd statement, but it is the base understanding of atheism, which in turn often decides American political policy.
The Trinity teaches us what any good scientist, and there are plenty of them, also knows—the reality in which we exist is greater than our ability to perceive it. Our faith is about understanding that which is beyond our power to perceive.
So we have one God who is three persons, that doctrine gives us the door that leads us to a greater wisdom than those, who do not believe, can ever receive.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches the following:
All the faithful share in understanding and handing on revealed truth. They have received the anointing of the Holy Spirit, who instructs them and guides them into all truth.54 (737)
This trinity is part of revealed truth which is beyond the ability of human beings to fully comprehend by human reason alone. That revealed truth which comes to us from God in the Holy spirit gives us a wisdom beyond the ability of the unbelieving world itself to comprehend.
As we work out of that wisdom, we have a different morality because we work out of a different understanding of ourselves and our lives.
The person who understands the meaning of the Holy trinity, even if he cannot fully understand the mechanics of that doctrine, will understand a virtuous, moral life on many levels that is beyond the comprehension of the atheist elite..
The atheist teaches that you do not have to believe in God to be good but that does not mean that the atheist will understand that even if Marijuana is legal, smoking it is destructive not only physically but even to the deepest levels of our being. The person who truly understands revealed truths will also understand their reality, actions and consequences to a deeper level than the moral atheist will ever be able to know.
Sins have a destructive level within them that alter our spiritual self understanding and drive us into a destructive way of being even if those actions are legal.
To put it simply: The question is never is it legal for me to smoke marijuana or (name the sin here), it is: Will I be the person that I was created to be if I do? The answer is no. That will not be discussed by the atheist who teaches that one does not have to believe in God to do good. Because the atheist does not understand revealed truth. You have access to it, he or she does not.
That difference has consequences for our lives.
Cardinal Robert Sarah of West Guinea, speaking at the national Catholic prayer breakfast this week warned that here in the United States: “God is being eroded, eclipsed, liquidated,”
That means that our national attitude which rejects revealed truth for the natural truth of the poorly defined human understanding of the militant atheist has negative effects upon our nation.
He went on to say that this is creating wounded families and wounded members of families and is a door to the Satanic. Now that does sound a little bit extreme except that those who promote that anti-God agenda at the beginning of the millennium literally did so openly embracing the Satanic in the mission to destroy the Catholic Church and to change our country.
Cardinal Sarah warned that our country is in grave spiritual danger, and that produces grave physical danger by definition. Why? People are rejecting the revealed truths of our faith, for the natural truths that distort who we truly are. We are seeing the fruit of it in the headlines where there is a growing concern for the future of our country in light of our national dialog over the election.
People demanding that their will be the nation’s will are showing a hostility to those who are opposing them and that has brought concern by both parties of what our summer conventions will look like in Cleveland and Philadelphia.
The base of this concerns is a demand for what I can get for me in this world to make me happy the way I want to be happy.
if you understand the wisdom from revealed truth, you put yourself on a different track that leads you to seek joy at all times no matter what happens in your life. In the book Uniformity with God’s Will by St. Alphonsus Liguori, the Holy doctor teaches how to praise God in joy even in the worst of circumstances. St. Francis taught that if you could do that you could find real happiness.
This brings us back to the message of today’s solemnity. When we live in the revealed truth, as the saints teach, we learn how to live in God’s love wherever we may be. Meanwhile those who reject God and are seeking to force God out of our country will be seeking an elusive joy they can never find for they reject the revealed truth and revealed truth itself.
Today is the day to embrace our role as seekers of a wisdom only found above and outside the reach of those who even may try to be good, but reject the source of all that is good, true, wise, and that is love; the Holy Trinity who is one God in three persons.
God bless you,
Fr. Robert J Carr
Fr. Carr is member of the Segundo Elo of the Canção Nova Community. He is the pastor of Holy Trinity Quincy, MAand is the editor of this blog. He is the author of several books, blogs and hundreds of videos all of which you may find on Youtube. You can follow him on twitter as @frbobcarr and on Google plus as+FrRobertCarr. Thoughts, comments on the homily? Let us know at Facebook