Well, as I feared, my homilist on Pentecost Sunday was unsatisfactory. He didn't mention the important parallel between the Tower of Babel story in the Old Testament and the Pentecost Story, didn't mention, much less describe, the extraordinary gifts of the Holy Spirit, etc. He went straight to a practical-moralistic application of the so-called ordinary gifts of the Spirit, a focus on the private-individualistic aspects of spirituality despite the profound public-communal aspects of Pentecost itself.
Today's homilist was another disappointment. When he began by saying, "We can't understand or explain the Trinity. It's the greatest mystery ever," I grit my teeth and gripped my pew, because I was reminded of what I tell my students:
"Remember," I say to them, "when in a previous religion course you asked your teacher to explain the Trinity, and he or she always replied, "We can't; it's a mystery. Let's move on"? Well, it was "Here we go again" with my homilist, because, on the contrary, I myself in the classroom DO give some basic philosophical and social-psychological analysis on the reason for or meaningfulness of the doctrine of three Persons in one God.
My homilist attempted a very brief commentary on the Trinity by citing the creed of the Council of Nicea, which defines God the Father and God the Son as "consubstantial." Fine, but that creed barely mentions, and does not define, God the Holy Spirit. Then he mentioned St. Patrick converting the pagans in Ireland to Christianity by Patrick's illustration of the similarity of a shamrock to the Trinity. Fine, visual-aid power, I guess. But then the homilist, as I expected, quickly reverted to an easy practical-moralistic application of "living the Trinity."
Now I'm left wondering why we don't have, say, two, four, or six, etc. Persons in the Trinity.
-Old Gargoyle
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