End of the school-year activities dominate our calendar at this time of the year, in late May and on into early June. Just this week there was the last soccer game of the spring season, a final music concert, and a senior art show that foreshadows a coming high school graduation. Having a large family that lives close by naturally translates into a tangle of different relationships with a variety of needs, concerns, and obligations. I am a mother, a wife, a sister, a grandmother, as well as a cousin, an aunt, and an “in-law.” Compounding the familial connections, I am also a neighbor, a friend, a community member, a citizen, and a customer. I am one individual with many separate, as well as interconnected, different yet similar, affiliations with others. If I include the connections I have with my pets, the wildlife that I see daily, and all growing things, my personal web of involvement grows exponentially.
Friday was the one day this week that my husband and I had no obligations and no outside appointments or invitations on our calendar. We made a tentative plan to take care of some things we needed to do, but then, there was an early morning phone call that shifted our priorities for the day. Relationships come with strings attached – strings that I would not want to cut – which require some response, often on a moment’s notice. It is an integral part of being alive in a living, loving, web of life.
This Sunday the Church takes time out of the sequence of scripture to reflect on the Holy Trinity. The Gospel is from Matthew, 28:16-20 since Mark did not clearly refer to the Trinity. (We are in the year of Mark.) From the beginnings of the church, theologians and scholars have struggled to hold tightly to monotheism while recognizing Jesus as the Christ, the only Son of God, who is also God, and who sent the Advocate or Holy Spirit who is also sent from God the Creator of everything that is. It took hundreds of years for the church to clarify and agree on the meaning of the Trinity which the Catechism of the church declares is “The most fundamental and essential teaching in the ‘hierarchy of truths of faith.’” (Catechism #234) There are many volumes of theological treatises, if a person is interested in academic study, which address the Trinity using concepts like person, substance, essence, being, and relationality, while dismissing “isms” like Arianism, modalism, and subordinationism. However, I suspect, that none of that effects in the least the way that Christians live their lives. Most followers simply accept that there is one God and use the terms God, Creator, Father, Mother, Jesus, Word, Son, and Holy Spirit interchangeably.
Tomas Halik, the author of The Afternoon of Christianity: The Courage to Change, (Notre Dame Press, 2024) writes: “If theology is to be taken seriously as a necessary part of serving people, it must be a contextual theology, reflecting the experience of faith and its presence in people’s lives and in society. It must reflect on faith in the context of culture and historical change, and thus also in dialogue with the sciences that concern themselves with human beings, culture, society, and history.” (pg. 20) Catholics have long understood that theology comes from reflection on Scripture as well as Tradition. Halik makes the point that theology must also include the place where humans encounter the Divine, within history, within the collective experience of humanity. Faith is expressed in the way that people live their lives, in the way they relate to others, in the art they create, their politics, and use or misuse of nature. It is not a recitation of articles of faith or a creed. It is lived. Without human experience theology is extraneous to faith.
This leads me to ponder the many ways that the Holy One is experienced within human lives and within culture as an extension of human society. I sincerely believe that ‘three’ is not enough, although I am willing to understand the Holy Trinity as representing the entirety of the ways that God is known. “Public theologians strive to comment competently, intelligibly, and credibly on events in public life, society, and culture. Inspired by the biblical prophets, they perceive the changes in the world as God’s self-expression in history.” (ibid. pg.23) For this reason, it makes sense for people to gather together to consider current events, the signs of our time, and to reflect on how and where God is being expressed. This is not the same as declaring a hurricane to be God’s judgement on a law that one does not like. It requires humility, rather than an arrogance that leads to certainty and judgement, and an openness to change. To reflect on God within human experience requires looking outside of the Church for Divine expression as well as inside. The Holy One has never been compelled to abide by the Church’s rules for who or what is included.
Pondering how God might be expressed in culture made me think about a movie I saw many years ago, “Saving Grace,” starring Tim Conti (not to be confused with other Saving Grace movies!). The story was about a Pope, who never wanted to be Pope, who was accidentally locked out of the Vatican gates. The locked gate seemed to him to be a sign urging him to go out among the people. As a result, he ended up in a small village where real people in real time needed help to make their village viable. The Pope of the story was a man of the people. I remember feeling inspired that a story about a Pope that could sincerely relate to ordinary people had been created. It made me hopeful that such a Pope could one day exist. When Francis became Pope, and as I learned more about him, retrospectively “Saving Grace” seemed very prescient, like a dream of God expressed within our culture.
I have experienced the Holy One in many forms and in many places in my life. Some are surprising, and others to be expected, but always the same God challenging, comforting, or loving me. Don’t let the Trinity become too small. Our God cannot be constrained
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