“Truly, the Mystery of Godliness is Great.”  St. Paul

“If you love everything, you will perceive the Divine Mystery in things.”  Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Celts Loved the Trinity.  We see this clearly reflected not only in their theological writings about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but also in the way they recognized the Trinity as it was seen and experienced in the world.  For example, the harmony that existed between the water, air, and land, or the relationship between moon, sun, and stars reflected The Trinity. 

The Celts also loved and were comfortable with mystery.  The mystery of the Trinity is beautifully symbolized in the Celtic trinitarian knot, which is a reminder of the eternal aspect of the “three in one.”  Rather than trying to explain the Trinity, One God in Three Persons, they lived in the daily reality of that mystery. 

It’s quite possible that we may not be nearly as comfortable with living in the Mystery of The Trinity.  In the Western way of thinking and believing, we desire proof and answers so that everything, including God, can be comprehensible. We are pragmatic and proof-driven.

And that is why I’ve chosen in the next three blogs to address the Holy Trinity in a non-traditional and non-Western way.  Rather than trying to explain the relationship between Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, I would like to focus on Mystery, Contemplation, and Astonishment.

St. Paul says that God is mystery.  To the extent that one can “understand” God, that primarily occurs in nature and Christ.  Followers of The Way believe that Jesus is the human incarnation of the Universal Christ of God, who reveals at least some of God’s attributes so that human beings can comprehend God at least a bit better.  But even Jesus is a mystery.  For example, we don’t know what he looked like. 

Throughout history many theologians have attempted to explain the mystery of God.  But others, some of whom were women, have simply embraced the mystery.  One of those was St. Theresa of Avila.  She wrote “The Interior Castle”, which delves into the seven stages of fully experiencing the love of God in prayer.  Her disciple, St. John of the Cross, wrote “The Dark Night of the Soul”, based on his own personal experience of feeling separated from God, and recognizing that in that very separateness and silence, God was close to him; a paradoxical mystery. There have been many other mystics such as Julian of Norwich and Meister Eckhardt.  I would invite you to look at some of what they wrote and spoke.  But the point is that they were comfortable in recognizing that God as so ineffable that God simply can’t be fully explained or understood by the human mind.  In fact, they went as far as to believe that the God who can be explained is not really the true God.  For them, experiencing God, not in mystical visions but in daily life, was the way to know and love God. It was the pursuit of participation with, not explanation of God that mattered.

So how about you?  Do you struggle to understand or explain God?  Are you uncomfortable with God as mystery?  Or do you embrace knowing God through experience, whether that be in nature, or with others, or in simple daily life? 

I leave you with the rest of the quote from which the sentence at the beginning of this blog was taken.

“Love all of God’s creation, the whole and every grain of sand of it. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything.  If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in all things.  Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day.  And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love.”[1]

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[1] “The Brothers Karamazov” by Fyodor Dostoevsky;  Quotation taken from “Everything Belongs” by Richard Rohr, p. 28