“How can these things be?” (NRSV, John 3: 9)

Last Sunday we were paying especial honour to the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth whom Jesus promised would lead us into all truth and who, as the Proper Preface declared has, by the Gospel which he has inspired, brought us “out of darkness and error into the clear light and true knowledge” of God the Father and of his Son Jesus Christ. (1) And now immediately afterwards we are confronted with the humanly unfathomable mystery of the Holy Trinity.

This seeming contradiction illustrates what kind of enlightenment it is which we are given by the Christian Faith.  It draws our attention to the fact that we, with our tiny limited minds, are as incapable of understanding the Being and Nature of God, as the lowliest insect is incapable of understanding us.  Thus as Pentecost is followed by the Feast of the Holy Trinity, so the light of the Gospel, while it reveals to us much that otherwise we could not know, does not remove mysteries in religion.

Our understanding of these mysteries is further restricted by the fact that the Holy Spirit never enlightens our minds merely in order to satisfy our curiosity about the unsearchable mind of God, but solely that we may abandon our sins and lead an altogether new life dedicated to the honour and glory of God.  And all the knowledge necessary for that is given to us.

The bright light of the Gospel, then, does not – and is not intended to – remove the shadows of intellectual difficulties.  For example, it is revealed to us that God is wholly good and controls all things and that when he made this world he saw that everything in it was very good.  But he could not say that today, when evil goes unchecked on every side.  So the Gospel bestows on our souls the assurance and comfort of knowing that God, the supreme power behind all things, is our good and loving Father who has made us to share his eternal glory: but this very knowledge makes the continued existence of evil in the world he has made all the more difficult for our minds to understand.

We may say that the salvation of our souls necessitates our knowing something of God’s Nature and purposes, but our human limitations prevent us knowing all.  And such incomplete knowledge is as puzzling as truths imperfectly revealed are mysteries.

This is especially true of the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity, Three Persons in one God.  We have contrasted the essential goodness of God with the existence of evil; and with that evil the soul of each of us is infected and made unfit even to approach God, let alone share his glory.  But in the Person of Jesus Christ, God the Son has come to our rescue by becoming Man and dying on the Cross in order to save us from the power and consequences of our sins and to restore us to the Father.

And following up this surpassing generosity to us, God the Holy Spirit imparts to our souls in the Sacraments of his Church, his own living power and presence to make us holy and spotless like himself so that we may one day be fit to enjoy the Beatific Vision of the Eternal Trinity.  In return for this incomprehensible love which God again and again bestows upon us, how can faithful Christians do otherwise than give to each Person of the Blessed Trinity the worship and adoration of their whole soul?

And because each Person of the Trinity is God we can worship each without falling into the error of idolatry, that is, of offering to anyone except God the worship which is his due alone.  For the Father is by himself God, the Son by himself God, and the Spirit by himself God, and yet there are not three gods but only one God.  But though the threefold goodness and generosity of the three Divine Persons is the support and inspiration of all those souls who have experienced it, yet the fact and truth of the Trinity itself puzzles our minds.  The soul – the spiritual part of us – receives it with joy, the mind – the intellectual part – with perplexity.

But the very perplexity has its purpose and its value in helping to sift the nominal from the actual follower of Christ.  For these difficulties can help in proving the reality of our faith.  Humble disciples have their perplexities, but they do not lessen their love and devotion for God.  They are well content to accept them trustfully and gladly, for they see how presumptuous and arrogant it is for anyone to imagine that they can fully comprehend the Nature and Being of the Infinite and Eternal God.  And the more we learn of his Universe which he has made, so much the more obvious does this truth become.

But when men and women approach God in a condescending spirit, unconscious alike of their own sinfulness and unworthiness, and of his blinding holiness and overwhelming majesty, then they object to these mysteries and are impatient because they cannot understand them.

It was the same in our Lord’s day.  When Jesus was teaching about the inner reality of the Blessed Sacrament, that it was to be his Risen and Ascended Body, he said, “…unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you”.  And we read that many of his disciples said, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?”  “Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him.  So Jesus asked the twelve, ‘Do you also wish to go away?’  Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom can we go?  You have the words of eternal life’ (NRSV, John 6: 53,60, 66-68) (our emphasis).  So the worldly wise left him and we know no more of them: but the humble trustful Apostles remained with him and are with him now with the rest of the Blessed Saints in Heaven.

So what matters is that we should love and reverence God rather than know all mysteries and all knowledge.  For, as Pentecost is followed by the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity, so knowledge is of value only if it fulfils its purpose and brings forth the fruit of a penitent and faithful soul that is growing in the likeness of the All-holy God himself.

Reference

1. Book of Common Prayer Proper Preface for Whitsunday and six days after.  Available from:  https://www.churchofengland.org/prayer-worship/worship/book-of-common-prayer/the-lords-supper-or-holy-communion.aspx  (Accessed 03 June 2017) (Internet).