JANUARY 9, 2011 –BAPTISM
OF THE LORD: MATTHEW 3:13-17
HOLY SCRIPTURE IS A STREAM IN WHICH A LAMB CAN WADE AND AN ELEPHANT
CAN SWIM. This colorful and rather humorous
observation, made by Saint Gregory the Great fourteen hundred years ago,
is the fruit of an intense study of the word of God over a number of years. The
insight it reflects is well illustrated by the account we have just heard in
today’s Gospel. The issues raised are not minor in nature, but concern the very
nature and intent of the Gospels. Jesus came, like John the Baptist who
prepared his way, preaching to the poor and simple as well as to the wise and
learned. Faith is a gift offered by God to the humble of heart; the insights
and understanding supplied by faith far surpass the intelligence and wisdom of
this world. Today’s reading from Saint Mathew well illustrates this
characteristic of the inspired text.
Any
intelligent and thoughtful adult, no matter how highly educated, will find in
the revelation of the one God in the three persons of the Trinity as described
in our text, abundant matter to reflect on. The more we examine these lines,
the stronger grows our awareness that full understanding of the implication of
the revelations made at the Baptism of Jesus far surpasses our human powers.
Only by the guidance of grace, after considerable time, did it prove possible
to reconcile the preaching of three divine person with
the conviction that there is but One God alone. In the year 180 Theophilus of Antioch, writing in Greek, referred to God as
a ‘trias’ that is ‘a threesome’. It was a generation
later before Tertullian used the Latin term “Trinitas”
as an apt term for the nature of God. Neither in the original Greek scriptures
nor the early Latin versions contain either word. Much
thought had to be expended by the best mind before reason could find a way to
reconcile the truth here revealed in the Gospel account of the Baptism and
other pertinent passages of the Scriptures. That the one God subsists by his
very nature in three persons was the proper way to state her understanding of
the Scriptures was expressly accepted by the Church as her essential teaching
only after much discussion and was marked by appreciable dissension. Still
today few are aware of the fact that the term ‘person’ as used in reference to
God has a different meaning than it has when used of humans. We conceive of a
human person as an individual with an independent will, memory, and mind.
Whereas the persons of the Trinity, have but a single will and knowledge and
understanding, participated in by three distinctive relations. How this can be
remains mysterious to human understanding. It is helpful that applied to the
Trinity the words one and three do not have the same meaning they
have when used in reference to any created thing or set.
As
profound as this mystery remains, yet an alert seven year old child who should
hear this passage read would find it an easy matter to understand the message
concerning Jesus’ divinity and the testimony he received from God the Father
and the Holy Spirit in this story of his baptism. I had occasion some years ago
to verify the fact that a child can readily accept such revealed truths without
hesitation. My brother came with his family to the monastery at Gethsemani at
the annual visit. He, his wife and four of his sons went to communion at the
mass I offered in the chapel. The fifth boy, being seven years old, had not yet
made his first communion but was being prepared for it at his parish. When the
family met after mass in the parlor, he broke into the conversation I was
having with his parents, saying “I want to go to communion.” His father told
him he could not yet receive. The boy, however, repeated his words with strong
feeling “I want to go to communion.” Noting how much this desire meant to him,
and that he felt somehow left out of something important, I told him to come
with me into an adjacent room alone, where I questioned him. “What is
communion, do you know? ”Communion is Jesus,” he
promptly answered. “Who is Jesus?” I then asked. Without delay he said quite
simply “Jesus is God.” So I told him, tomorrow at mass you can go to communion,
and he did. I told my brother to inform the pastor what had transpired. That
child’s belief in the Eucharist illustrates the same faith that we are confronted
with in today’s Gospel in reference to the Trinity. The wondrous fact that the
Word of God, who, as
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