The Homily

The Most Holy Trinity

Sunday, May 30, 2010
Proverbs 8: 22-31 + Psalm 8 + Romans 5: 1-5 + John 16: 12-15
Audio version of homily

People who cannot live with the experience of not knowing everything
have a difficult time with the Christian faith and experience of God.
I think that is why some people are so marginal with our faith tradition
which is so steeped in mystery, wonder, and awe.
There is a young boy in our school who delights in performing magic tricks.
He is already to show me another one.
Something happens between us when he is finished with his performance.
I always gasp in wonder and praise at his abilities to trick my eye.
Then there always comes an uncomfortable moment
when I think we wants me to say “How did you do that?”
I never do say that
partly because I don’t care,
and partly because I want to respect his skills.
I feel as though he has every right even at his age to know something I do not.

There is something in our culture that abhors not knowing.
There is something in our culture that insists
that if there is something we cannot understand science will figure it out
and if science does not,
then we made it up and it is simply a projection imagination and it is not real.
We are living a time when “mystery” is simply not tolerated nor accepted
as an explanation for anything.
The consequence of this is that we come to the sacred liturgy
with only one expectation: to get something out of it.
Standing in awe in the presence of God
moved by the beauty of music and word,
the smell of incense and candle has no place in our expectations.

Our public debates about the dignity of the human person
always revolve around issues of choice, convenience, and cost
rather than around the unrepeatable and irreducible value of a man or woman made in the image and likeness of God.
And so we do not look at one another or even at strangers
with any sense of wonder, awe, or respect
until we decide they don’t want something we have
or may not take something we want.
Consequently we find ourselves in the quicksand of debate
over immigration and health care,
and we talk of rights and privileges and entitlements
as though the sum of a human person was just a number of chromosomes
that can be reproduced in a Petri dish.
No wonder. No awe. No mystery.

I enjoy reading mystery novels, but not to figure out before the end who did it.
I enjoy them because they are involving,
and they draw me into the adventure and the relationships,
the details, and the risk of wondering and imagining.
The pursuit of the bad guy is consuming and involving.
There is no rest until the bad guy is brought to justice.

The mysteries of the Christian faith are just the same.
There could be a way of describing the Catholic religion as a “great pursuit.”
There is no doubt that this religion is involving and consuming.
It can envelope our whole life.
These Christian mysteries tease us into pursuit and raise our curiosity
like the little tricks of that fifth grader,
that bring us to awe and wonder.
After all, what’s the point of faith, of believing, and of trust,
if we already know everything there is to know.
Happily we never get to the bottom of these mysteries.
If we did, our faith and the religion in which we express it would be over.
Removing a sense of mystery creates an artificial sense of mastery
which inevitably leads us to look around and say: “Is this all there is?”

We baptized believers in Christ have been brought by our baptism into a mystery.
The beauty of the earth, a sunset, the ocean or a summer breeze,
the beauty of a lover’s face or a child’s smile does not need nor require an explanation: only a response of awe and love.

So it is with God on this Sunday we call “Trinity.”
The being of God is best experienced and named: a mystery.
Our minds in this age and culture want to explain and sometimes defend this God who is revealed to us as Father, Son, and Spirit.
It might be better to forget figuring it out
and put our minds to better tasks of solving more immediate problems.
If we did, we might recover some of the wonder and awe and sense of mystery that makes life and all our brothers and sisters who share this life
a lot more interesting, engaging, and fun.

— Fr. Boyer