There are all kinds of stories of growing up Catholic but very few that focus on that core of the culture that is the Sign of the Cross. “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.” This Trinitarian invocation begins and ends almost every event, every ritual, every meal – whether it is a blessing pronounced by the Pope or the gesture we learn from our parents before we can talk.

For all of Catholicism’s lengthy tradition, its mantras and catchphrases, Trinity Sunday is the only Sunday that fails to attempt in words what is incomprehensible. The priest who has a sermon for each Sunday looks into his bag or online list of stock themes, works hard on the presentation, and raises the white flag of surrender as he steps into the pulpit. The standard disclaimer is “We really cannot understand the Trinity. It is a matter of faith.” After confusing those who are awake in the congregation with St. Patrick’s shamrock “three in one” or various other analogies, he repeats the opening disclaimer and makes a hasty retreat to the Nicene Creed, where we sleepwalk our way through beautiful Trinitarian poetry that we ignore out of repetition. “…Light from light, True God from True God, Begotten not made, One in Being with the Father…”

For those of us who graduated from Catholic schools and had a good review of the Trinitarian controversies of the first three centuries and the further travails of this teaching in Church history, the sense of incomprehensibility grows.

William Paul Young’s allegory, The Shack, presents a weekend encounter with the Holy Trinity by a deeply wounded and grieving father. It is a mystical healing encounter that shows us that our concept of God has more to do with us than with the Divine. As a work of fiction it is easier for us to comprehend than the abstractions of theology. The contemporary setting and the issue of why the innocent are slaughtered make this central Mystery more accessible to us than the writings of the mystics who lived in different times and cultures.

Athan Smith tells us that his reading of The Shack brought the Trinity to the center of his life.

I encourage you to read the book. Once you do, that automatic gesture – the Sign of the Cross will be the gift that it is – an entry point to the very life of God.

I have been struck by the stories this Resurrection Season because for the first time, they strike me not as eye witness accounts of the Risen Christ, but as the challenge of faith for the disciples and us. The disciples on the way to Emmaus are leaving Jerusalem – returning home, perhaps, – grief stricken, but more importantly, disillusioned. The teacher has failed. The forces of evil have destroyed a very good and wonderful young man.

One way to see this story is to take it as another proof of the Risen Christ as encountered by his disciples. The story does convey this message. However, the story also tells us that we find the Risen Christ when He opens our minds to see the scriptures and when our hearts are opened at the Breaking of the Bread. Look for Him in the scriptures and invite Him in to dinner and your hospitality will be more than repaid.

There is just a glimpse – a flash of recognition and he disappears from our midst. The presence of the Risen Christ is a momentary and ongoing discovery. It is the result of searching, wandering, questing in grief and disillusionment and being open to the challenge of the Stranger.

All of us have moments, years, decades, in which everything we knew and had hoped for is swept away. The disciples had no clue of what was to become of their beloved teacher, but his torture and death threw them into utter grief and confusion. Yet their confusion only increased when they heard that other disciples had found the empty tomb and seen the angels. They were re-grouping, leaving town, trying to get some distance. A Stranger notices their grief and inquires. They listen and reflect on the scriptures and Break Bread.

This is the Christian life – the quest and the encounter in the village of Emmaus – continuing through all generations.

Fr. Richard Rohr is a Franciscan priest who was ordained in 1970. He is the founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico and is an internationally recognized retreat master and spiritual director. Fr. Rohr’s spirituality is summarized in his December 18, 2006 essay for the National Public Radio feature, This I Believe entitled: Utterly Humbled by The Mystery. His profound views have a tremendous application to everyday life.

Letting Go… Letting God

In a November 2005 address to medical students at Yale University, Fr. Rohr’s talk Sadness describes pain and suffering, The Way of Tears, as the way our consciousness can be transformed and bring us to “liminal space … the point at which we realize we can’t fix it and therefore the ego has to give up control.” Paradoxically, his approach to human sadness is more like an inoculation. Life is full of happy and pleasant things, “a way of light”. As we know there are many sad and difficult things, “a way of darkness.” Fr. Rohr says that St. Francis embraced pain so that it could not become an enemy; that it could not surprise him. In Fr. Rohr’s view this embrace is shown in St. Francis’ love of poverty, the poor, and the disenfranchised.

Clarity – A Comfortable Untruth

Far from being a love or desire for pain, this embrace is a way to transcend it. He actually distances himself from the focus on pain of those who have “given a marveled fascination to suffering.”The way of light, according to Fr. Rohr, has come to dominate the last 300 years since the Enlightenment. Christians have wanted clarity, closure, solutions – a comfortable untruth which can teach us very little and leave us untransformed.

What Kind of God Has to be Bought Off?

Fr. Rohr traces our problem with suffering back to the 13th century at the University of Paris. There was a controversy between the Dominican and Franciscan approaches to the meaning of Jesus and our salvation. “Is Jesus Necessary?” According to Fr. Rohr, the Dominican position held that “Jesus had to offer this sacrifice, pay this atonement.” Fr. Rohr wonders about what kind of God “has to be bought off to love us?” This is the standard view of atonement which we see in Mel Gibson’s movie, The Passion of the Christ.

Into the Lovability and Generosity of God

According to Fr. Rohr, the Franciscan view was advanced by John Duns Scotus (John Duns the Scot) — that there was nothing to be fixed. Christ was among us and died and rose again not to atone for us but to be the image of the invisible God as described in St. Paul’s letter to the Colossians. From this point of view, Jesus “brought us into the lovability and generosity of God.” Fr. Rohr speculates that the Cross is the “deepest icon because humanity needed an image that God was on our side, that God was given to us, that God was for us and not against, and benevolently involved with the universe: That is, of course, supposed to be the transformative meaning of this image of the crucified Jesus.”

Where Life Is

Fr. Rohr decries the view that “engineers” Jesus into solving a problem. It leaves us with what Fr. Rohr calls a “terrible atonement” theology” that we have been “stuck with” for 700 to 800 years. “Jesus came to identify with the pain of the world and enter into it with that cosmic sympathy and to invite us into that identification with sadness. We are invited, like Francis, to proactively move right into it and say this is were life is at; this is where you understand, not at the top of things but at the bottom of things.”

For More on Fr. Rohr

There is much more to explore in the spiritual theology of Fr. Rohr, which we will try to do in later posts to this blog. Take a moment though and review the links and spend a little time at Fr. Rohr’s sites Male Spirituality and the Center for Action and Contemplation

Additional materials from Fr. Rohr are available at:Credence Communications and American Catholic

Pace e Bene