Trinity Sunday – Year B
God in Three: Our experience of the Divine
At the recommendation of a friend of mine, some years back, I ventured into reading The Shack. With over 10 million copies in print, and raising a lot of questions among the churches, the book had become controversial. Here is the story-line in brief:
Mack, the main character of the story, receives an invitation from ‘Papa’ to visit the shack – a hut in the forest. From his scanty religious background, Mack knows that Papa is God himself. Four years prior to this invitation, Mack had lost his daughter Missy from a camping site. Since then he had been overcome by, what he calls, “The Great Sadness.” He decides to respond to the invitation and spend the weekend at the shack. What he encounters at the shack are the manifestations of the three persons of the Trinity. God the Father takes the form of an African American woman, who calls herself Elousia, or just ‘Papa’; The Son is a Middle-Eastern carpenter; and the Holy Spirit physically manifests itself as an Asian woman named Sarayu. In that encounter with the Trinity, Mack is helped to deal with “The Great Sadness” of the loss of his daughter, and to forgive the killer of his daughter. And in the process, Mack learns a few hard lessons about God, suffering, and life itself. His daughter is not brought back to life, but the Trinity restores life and wisdom to Mack.
To me, this is a modern parable. Every analogy has its limitation, particularly those that talk about God. For sure, The Shack has its problem areas! According to legend, St. Patrick used the 3-leaved shamrock to explain the Holy Trinity to the Irish people. I suppose, even the shamrock does not capture the mystery of the Trinity adequately. So are all analogies. They are limited. But what I liked most about The Shack is that it invites us to experience God in a different light, and to enjoy the fruits of that experience in terms of wisdom and wellbeing. This is the invitation of the feast of today. This is the invitation of the Trinity: to experience Him as the Living God, as one who creates us, seeks us out, and enlightens us.
The key point is: our belief in God as Trinity is not just a line in the Bible, nor is it a mere answer to a question in the catechism. Our belief in God is an invitation to experience. And Trinity is the way we experience God the mystery, in His different dimensions. We might lose the significance of the mystery of the Trinity, if we just fossilise that mystery in a dogma and think we know it all. This complacency is what was challenged by the legendary story of St. Augustine walking on the beach and finding the young boy trying to pour the entire ocean into a tiny hole on the shore. What this legend and, in a limited sense, The Shack, are trying to do is to invite us to be open to the varieties of ways we experience God. The Trinity is a model that captures the three ways God has been experienced in history, or the three ways He has revealed Himself. It also reminds of the three ways in which we – as individuals and communities – might experience Him today.
In this reflection, I would like to narrate my own personal story of how I have experienced the three dimensions of God – the three persons of the Trinity. And I invite you to become aware of how you have experienced God. To me this has happened in stages. I am not claiming that this is how you might experience the Triune God. I am taking the courage to share my experience just to invite you acknowledge your own experiences of God.
1. First experience: God was there
When I was 18, I had already entered the Salesian novitiate with the intention of becoming a religious/priest. During that year, preparing myself to make the vows in the religious order, we were taken through a week long exercise called, The Intensive Journal (of Ira Progoff). For eight days we were in complete silence, helped by different techniques we had to systematically write down the different experiences of our life, right from our earliest memories of childhood. [For instance, I remember writing one of my earliest memories of looking at the tall gothic spire of our parish church and perceiving it moving, and wondering why it was not falling over me. Of course, it was the chain of clouds that was moving!] On the last day of the Intensive Journal, we had to make a statement about our life up until that point in our lives. And I remember, writing something to this sense: “The events of my life have been like tiles on a mosaic. There is a unity. It is God who sustains this unity. Yes, God was there. God is in my life!” This was the first personal statement that I ever consciously made about God. I was eighteen. That statement formed the basis for my faith in God. Later I went on to study philosophy – including a Master’s degree in philosophy. I was confused about many things of life. But one truth was unshakable: God is in my life!
This first experience of God was, of Him as the Father – as the creator, not only of the universe, also of my own individual self. The creation of my self in the womb of my mother was the greatest miracle that has ever happened. And God was there. God had a plan through the different events of my life. I wanted to respond to Him. I wanted to become a priest.
In the first reading of today (Dt 4:32-34), Moses invites the people ofIsraelto become aware of how the Lord God worked in their history in a unique manner. He invites them to remember “all this that the Lord your God did for you before your eyes inEgypt” (Dt 4:34). This could be a typical experience for us too – as individuals and as communities – the experience of the first person of the Trinity: the God who creates us, provides for us, and sustains us. And Jesus referred to this God as His Father, and as ours too.
2. This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Mt 3:17).
In my twenties, one question remained unresolved: Who is Jesus? What is special about him? How is he the son of God? I thought a lot about it, I read about it, I prayed about it. At one stage, I just decided to accept him in faith and move on with my Christian life. But the question was still open.
In 2007, I went for a five day prayer. During this spiritual retreat many things happened to me, but let me just tell you the core incident. Some of you might find what I am going to say very pietistic, please bear with me. On the fourth day, as I sat for a two-hour community adoration, an image would come to me. Every time I would close my eyes, I would see myself seated on a rock by a stream. The glistening rays of the sun, breaking through the branches of the trees, were gently reflected on the clean, flowing waters of the silent brook. I could feel the presence of someone sitting just behind me, very close to me. I assumed that it was Jesus. Over the gap created by the stream and the rocks between the thick lines of trees, I would see a dove hovering around, effortlessly swaying in the wind. I would tell myself it is my imagination and open my eyes. When I closed my eyes again, the image would just come back without any effort on my part.
Well, that night I went to bed. I couldn’t sleep for a long time. There was some excitement, but there was inner peace. Then, at a particular point, it was like I was falling asleep, and I would be awakened and it was like someone telling me: Read Matthew 3:17. I am a philosopher. I was not going to take it seriously. Again as I would fall asleep, I would be awakened and told: Read Matthew 3:17. Then I would play this game: is it Mk 3:17? No Mt 3:17, I would be told. May be it doesn’t exist at all. Just check it, I would be told. So finally, I took my Bible that was on my bedside, used the light of the mobile phone to read the verse, and it said: “And a voice came from the heavens, saying, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”
It all simply made sense. It was as if, everything had fallen in place. He is indeed the Son of God! I need no more proofs.
3. No one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 12:3)
As I laid my head on the pillow at 3 am that ‘night’ – I knew it was the Father, through the Spirit who had revealed His Son to me. All in His own time! And the Spirit was there.
In the second reading of today,St Paul, writing to the Romans, tells us, it is the spirit that “makes us cry out, “Abba, Father!” (Rom 8:15). So after all, the Spirit was there in my life even when I made my first statement about the Father-God. But the same spirit was there when my faith in Jesus as the Son was confirmed. The Spirit is the God who continues to enlighten me, to renew me, and to lead me in hope.
Our Christian life then is to experience God as the Father, the Son and the Spirit. Our baptism (Mt 28:19) then is an invitation to that experience – to encounter God in his complete nature.
See also Sermon for Trinity Sunday – Cycle A
See sermon for Trinity Sunday – Cycle C