Thoughts on Trinity Sunday

Fr. Darcy brought up some interesting points during his homily today. He spoke about how it took some 350 years for the Church to come up with a doctrine of the Holy Spirit (Council of Constantinople, 381 AD), and pointed out that of the three Persons of the Trinity, we're the least comfortable with the Holy Spirit. We have an image in our heads of the Father (inadequate as it may be), and we're more or less ok with thinking about Him as the Creator. When we use words like "omnipotent" or "omnipresent" or other words that speak of something infinite, it's generally the Father we have in mind. The Son we can most easily identify with; after all, the Son took on human flesh and "made His dwelling among us." When we speak of God as a brother, as a guide, or in human terms, it's generally Christ whose image is in our minds. But what about the Holy Spirit? We have no image of the Spirit. We picture the dove at Christ's baptism or the tongues of fire at Pentecost, but these are not comfortable images. Perhaps this derives in part from the fact that "Father" and "Son" are very human words, words for which we have concrete analogies. We have some insight into the Father because of the participation of human fathers in that archetype; the same is true for the Son. But what analogy do we have for the Holy Spirit? The Spirit is a challenge, but perhaps our inability to pigeonhole the Spirit should serve as a reminder to us, lest we be tempted to become too comfortable with our notions of Father and Son. Perhaps the enigma of the Spirit should cause us to recall that the Trinity, for all the words that have been spoken, all the ink that has been spilled, also remains a mystery to us and should be even more a cause for adoration than for study. If you're interested in reading more about the Trinity, I'd suggest St. Augustine's De Trinitate (an online text can be found here) and St. Hilary's earlier work which has been given the same title (the original title is lost to antiquity; unfortunately, if you want to read this one, you'll have to find a library. Horrors!)

In other news, basketball is fun, even in the complete absence of skills. A word of advice: if you're trying to make a defensive play, don't lead with your chin. You'll end up getting your bell rung and bleeding from a half-dozen small lip and mouth lacs. It's ok, though. Just walk it off.

Also, I'm suffering from ED withdrawal. I need to shadow. Stat. (Funny story about this: when the docs go to put orders into the computer, they have to give a time frame. Two of their choices are "now" and "stat." Being under the impression that "stat" meant "now," I of course asked about this seeming redundancy. The attending laughed and told me that "stat" means "now" and "now" means "in the next hour or so." Because that makes sense.) Hopefully this week / next weekend, seeing as I'm also supposed to be hitting up the OR on Thursday or Friday.

So I think that's about it for now. Once again I'm doing this at a ridiculous hour. I should probably fix that. Back with more updates in the near future.

Peace and God bless!