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Sunday, May 30, 2010
For Short Timers: A Sunday Rumination
On Trinity Sunday, Catholics acknowledge and ponder one of the central mysteries of the Christian faith: the Three Persons of the One God. Believe it or not, that mystery gave rise to one of the most important of all the schisms in the Church: the Arian-Athanasian face-off over the relation of Jesus to God the Father. That controversy, settled dogmatically at the Council of Nicaea, eventuated in the departure of the Monophysites -- today known as the Coptics -- from the Church of Rome.
Ironically, there was far less of a dust-up over the nature of the Holy Spirit and its relation to the Father and the Son. What there was arose principally from linguistic contrasts between the Latin phrasing of the Nicene Creed and one particular tendentious translation of it into Greek. In our time, neither subject is much discussed.
Except today, here, at Eternity Road.
C. S. Lewis posited that the Three Persons of God give His creatures a demonstration of love embedded within the Divine. When I first stumbled on this notion, my first reaction was "Isn't it pretty to think so." (Yeah, yeah, the devout Catholic is a Hemingway fanatic. So sue me.) If we postulate God's benevolence, the act of Creation is inherently an act of love. Since that seemed -- and seems -- indisputable, further demonstrations struck me as redundant.
These latter days, I'm not so sure the conclusion follows. Not that it matters; the Trinity has demonstrated its reality repeatedly, as is chronicled both in the Old Testament and the Gospels. What strikes me most powerfully about those demonstrations is the property we in the software racket call functional decomposition. Each Person of the Trinity appears to concentrate on a specific set of "tasks" as Man would view them:
- The Father: The Uncreated Creator, Who willed the temporal realm into being and decided upon the laws that apply to it.
- The Son: The Teacher and Redeemer, who articulated God's Will for Man into two Great Commandments and linked all other right action to them.
- The Holy Spirit or Paraclete: He Who inspires faith and energizes all good works.
I don't claim that it absolutely has to be that way, of course. However, the way each Person seems to correlate with particular undertakings among men is itself highly suggestive. In particular, it points us in a particular direction when we're moved to petition God for assistance with some need.
Some such needs manifest themselves throughout our lives as rational creatures; others become apparent only at the inception, or as we near the end.
The Person called the Holy Spirit is accorded the responsibility for awakening men to faith. John the Baptist, in his first recorded invocations of the "one mightier than I who comes after me," spoke of Christ as He Who "will baptize you with the Holy Spirit, and with fire." For in those years, baptism was regarded not just as a recognition of faith, but as a doorway through which faith might be invited to fill the one baptized.
The elusive, shapeshifting quality of fire was John's analogue to faith and its action. Fire can spring up wherever the conditions are right. It refuses to commit to a single form. Men can enjoy fire, can benefit greatly from its light and warmth, but they can also harm themselves and others by misusing it. It can also sputter and die out if not fueled and properly tended. In all these regards, faith follows fire quite closely.
Faith is most important to him who faces severe trial. Linked as it is to our ability to hope, we lean on it, consciously or not, whenever our vistas darken. Being temporal and finite, each of us must eventually face the "dying of the light," when all temporal hopes are quenched and all that remains is our willingness to believe that a better world awaits us.
Mature men don't wait until the final seconds of their lives to contemplate that one-way journey. They give it increasing consideration as they age. Here in America, it's only the very luckiest of us who don't "see it coming." Accordingly, we plan out our exits with some care: insurance; provisions for surviving loved ones and the distribution of property; care in accepting obligations we might not live to discharge completely. Because our lives are long and rich, we respect mortality far more than in those places and times where life is cheap and unlikely to persist much past young adulthood.
It strikes me as supremely appropriate that we should lean upon the Holy Spirit ever more as our shadows in time lengthen. If It was the Agent of our passage into faith, then we can rely upon It, if asked, to aid us in sustaining our faith as we near our ends.
God wants us to accept the reality of the Trinity. Wherefor, then, should we refrain from appealing to the Person most closely connected to the gift of faith when our temporal hopes have faded? Isn't that more or less Its job, and deserving of our respect?
I'm getting old. My parents were both short-lived, and I'm not all that well. It's not given to me, no more than to any other man, to know how much time is left to me. Still, my clock is winding down toward zero, as is yours, Gentle Reader, and everyone else's on this ball of mud. I have premonitions, imperative if fleeting sentiments that my end is drawing nigh. I hope to be prepared when my end arrives. I've begun to invoke the Holy Spirit's aid in that regard. I commend the practice to you as well, whether your own need is near or comfortably far in the future.
As I mentioned above, some such preparations are as temporal as life itself. But others are wholly of the spirit, and in these the Eternal Flame of the Paraclete is the best sustenance for faith in the goodness of God, hope of life eternal in His nearness, and grateful love for His Creation, the act of generosity that can never be surpassed.
May God bless and keep you all.
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