Feast of the Most Holy Trinity
“Brothers and sisters …. Mend your ways, encourage one another, agree with one another, live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you. Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the holy ones greet you. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.” 2 Cor.: 13: 11-13
There’s a somewhat dated story that’s told about an elderly Amish woman who went with her family to a shopping mall for the very first time. The Amish family was mesmerized by the hundreds of stores, the lights, and the food court. And then for the first time in her life, the old Amish woman saw an elevator. She watched as an elderly man approached the elevator doors and entered. The doors closed. A minute later, the doors opened and a handsome young man who resembled George Clooney, exited the elevator. The woman saw another elderly man get on, and a minute later saw a man who looked exactly like Brad Pitt step out. A third elderly man went in, and out came a Ryan Gosling look-alike. At this point, her daughter approached her and said: “Mom, isn’t this place great?” “Yes,” said the older Amish woman. “Now, quick, go get your father.”
Transformation.
That’s what our faith is supposed to be all about – being transformed into the likeness of Christ – being a people changed by the kind of God we claim a belief in.
The earliest disciples, the very first Christians, certainly did not understand God as being Three Persons in One. That concept of God took nearly 500 years to put into words that could begin to attempt to explain it.
What the earliest Christians did understand is what they experienced. And what they experienced was the man Jesus who died on a cross … and then rose from the dead! This reality alone shook them to the core of their being.
Who ever heard of such a thing happening?
Their lived experience changed them and radicalized each one of them so profoundly that they came to see Jesus as the very revelation of God in time.
Jesus, for them, was the face of God – what God looked like as a human being: loving, healing, caring, forgiving.
For them, God is our kind, merciful, and compassionate Father, and we are His children. Jesus is the Son of this Father. He re-presents the Father to the world. The Holy Spirit is Who the earliest disciples experienced at Pentecost – the One who breathed on them, energized them, animated them, drove them to begin the great project of creating a community of believers – which continues to this day.
And this brings us to where we are as a people right now.
Sadly, we find ourselves in a place as a country where the presence of that Trinity appears to be noticeably absent. Instead of compassion and healing and forgiving, we are surrounded by an atmosphere of fear and danger and heart wrenching division.
Cardinal Blasé Cupich, the archbishop of Chicago, put it powerfully when he wrote after the murder of George Floyd and its aftermath, “The past few nights I have watched in great personal pain as the pent-up anger of our people caught fire across our country. I saw the city where I was born, the cities where I have lived, the city I pastor now, catch embers from the city where I was educated and burn. Was I horrified at the violence? Yes. But was I surprised? No.”
“As the saying goes, if you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention. What did we expect when we learned that in Minneapolis, a city often hailed as a model of inclusivity, the price of a black life is a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill? When we added another name to the list of those murdered for being black of for caring about the marginalized?
“I will not pretend to speak with any authority about the challenges people of color experience in our society. I do not share the fear they put on when they and their children leave their homes every day. I do not know what it means to be ‘other.’ But I know there is a way to fix it.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has been called a great equalizer. It has been even more a great revealer of societal cancers as deadly as the virus. Health insecurity kills. Poverty poisons. We can and must make a society that views the soaring of a child’s potential with more joy than the soaring of a rocket.
“I stand ready to join religious, civic, labor and business leaders in coming together to launch a new effort to bring about recovery and reconciliation …. Together we need to take up the hard work of healing the deep wound that has afflicted our people since the first slave ships docked on this continent. And we need to start today.”
These words of the archbishop strongly reflect the very words the Church calls us to remember in the second reading we heard today from St. Paul in his letter to the Corinthians written some two thousand years ago:
“Brothers and sisters, … Mend your ways, encourage one another, agree with one another, live in peace, and the God of love will be with you. Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the holy ones greet you. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.”
Ted Wolgamot, Psy.D.
A Personal Note: These past two weeks have been sad ones for me. First, my brother, Bart, died after a lengthy illness. His loss will be felt deeply for some time – perhaps always for me. I want to thank those of you who sent personal notes. Please know your kindness is cherished by me.
This past weekend I experienced the loss of another person dear to me – a woman who helped our family of ten children out from the time I was a young child. Her name, like that of my mother’s, was Marguerite. She was so dear to all of us that she in effect became part of our family. Whenever we had family gatherings, Marguerite was invited and almost always came. She was one month short of a hundred years old when she went home to the Lord this past weekend!
A quick, but timely story, about Marguerite. When I graduated from St. Ambrose College in Davenport, Iowa in 1963, most of my family attended, including Marguerite. A problem arose, however. Marguerite was a black woman. No motel in Davenport would allow her entry. It took a threat from the priest who headed the school of Sociology at Ambrose to agree to let her to stay in a motel. They either allowed her, or he personally would picket! They reluctantly gave her permission to rent a room, but only with the understanding that she was labeled a “maid.” To her credit, she never once uttered a single word of dismay or anger. She, like all people of color, understood the depth of hatred and division that was endemic in the “land of the free and the home of the brave.” My parents, thankfully, were people who never judged anyone according to their skin color, their nationality, or their religion. They taught us to do the same. All the more reason for my being appalled at the inherent hatred – along with all the hidden insidious justifications – pervasive in much of our society.
May God have mercy on us!
Ted Wolgamot, Psy.D.
