The Triune God

After Monsignor George Parnassus, late pastor emeritus (now four years) of St. Victor died, I deposited a number of what I perceived to be Church-historical items with the Archdiocesan archives located at the San Fernando mission, things like photographs of his 1953 ordination that featured the liturgy of the time and the Bishops and Cardinals of the time, as well as some letters from the 1960s and 1970s involving Church matters.  There was also the catalog of the Zefferelli auction by which St. Victor obtained the copy of the San Damiano Cross, photos of the Cross, and correspondence regarding it.  I understand that the items have never left the storage box in which I delivered them. I knew that Monsignor was not of such hierarchical stature as to merit any of the small donated material to be rushed to the public archival record, and perhaps there was nothing there of significant interest, but I had hoped it would at least be unpacked and reviewed. It was not to be, which makes me glad that I held out a copy of an address he made in 1973 to the Catholics United for the Faith, on as the title announces, "The Triune God".



Gifted at homiletics, Monsignor never, at least in my time hearing him, used a script or notes. What follows is not a homily, per se, but it reflects the substance and style from which his St. Victor parishioners benefited year upon year. It's a mind bending theological subject, but I like how he addressed it, and I thought that Internet posterity, should one exist, should have it for future generations.


We are told that modern man feels alienated, adrift in the world. He has lost the sense of security that cones from being part of a purposeful, rational existence. Man asks--despairing even as he asks of getting an answer--what is the meaning of his existence? Where has he come from? Where is he going? What meaning does his history have?  Or perhaps, is life without meaning? Irrational, absurd?

It is not too much to say tat the reason all these questions arise in such pessimistic fashion (they are certainly not new questions--but it is a new development for Western civilization that there are now no generally accepted answers) because in large part Western man simply has lost true faith in God. Man currently is trying to explain himself in isolation, apart from God, in a vacuum. I do not necessarily mean that all idea of God has been formally rejected in our culture.  Some, probably most, still retain a conviction about a First Cause, the Author of Intelligent Design.  However, even this notion is giving way more and more to explicit atheism.  But God known by reason has never been the God known and called as such by Western man.  Western man has been Christian man and his God is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God revealed to us as our Father by His Son, Jesus Christ. . . My faith, our faith, is our knowledge of the true God as He has chosen to reveal Himself to us by His word.  That knowledge in us--His Name, His Identity--He has chosen to make known to our generation of men.  We are the people whom He has gathered together in this age from east to west to give glory to His Name.

We must proclaim Him as He is.  We must proclaim Him as He has revealed Himself and as we know Him in faith.  Man's reason is valuable and he is obliged (and will recognize the duty if he has good will) to use reason to bring him to a limited, natural knowledge of God.  Reason, again when it is accompanied by good will, will assist man, after he has come to faith, to understand, at least in part, the meaning of God's revealed truth. But reason does not save.  Reason itself does not give us a knowledge of the God Who loves us, Who forgives us, Who will to save us.  It is faith that saves, and therefore, as we are God's children, as His love is in us, so for the sake of our brothers who lack faith, what we must offer the world is the witness of true faith.

In the words of the General Catechetical Directory, "The greatest way the faithful can help the atheistic world to come to God is by the witness of a life which agrees with the message of Christ's love and of living and mature faith that is manifested by works of justice and charity."  The opportunity faith offers modern man is not alone an access to the world to come, but it gives release as well from the grinding despair and pessimism in this world that result amidst the hardships of life without knowledge of the God Who sees us in our misery, Who cares, Who rescues.

The consequences of all this preamble is to say that when we speak about God in fact we preach and offer to the world knowledge of the God Who is a Trinity, for there is no other God.  This is a truth known by faith, an absolute mystery revealed to men by God. Reason can perform two fundamental tasks in regard to the mystery of the Trinity; it can show that there is nothing intrinsically impossible about the doctrine--by a reflection on and study of the concept of the Trinity--it can help us to an understanding of its meaning. But reason does not bring us into union with the Trinity.  We will never know, love and serve Father, Son and Holy Spirit by us of reason alone.   It is faith that brings us to acknowledge and confess the Trinity.  It is faith that enables us to share the life of the Trinity.  It is faith in the Trinity that saves.

That faith has come to us in divine revelation.  In the Old Testament the revelation of the Trinity was prepared in the belief held by Jews that God revealed Himself by appropriate historical acts to save His people.  He did not reveal Himself in an abstract text-book set of teachings about Himself but by deeds fitted to the circumstances of His people's needs.  By these acts God not only intended to reveal Himself but also to communicate, to give Himself to His people.  Therefore, as long as God was not ready to enter upon His irreversible self revelation and self communication in Jesus Christ and He was only promising but not yet manifesting the final age of history which belongs to the Spirit of God (the Parousia) then for the Old Testament Jews the revelation of the Trinity would have been a word of revelation not accompanied by a saving effect.  God did not nor does He act in this fashion.  It required the "fullness of time", when all was made ready by the many less self-revealing and saving acts that had gone before, that finally He revealed Himself as the Trinity when He spoke through His Son

The New Testament is therefore the logical place to look for God's word to us about His Triune Nature. As in the Old Testament there is no formal or analytical or systematic teaching about the Trinity in the Gospels or Epistles.  The nearest we have to a full and explicit statement is the admonition in Matthew to baptize "in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (28:19).

But in a wider sense, of course, the doctrine of the Trinity is fully contained in the New Testament.  It is clear when Jesus is referred to as Son of God that His Divinity is being named. He is not merely a cosmic power intermediate between God and the world, but He exists before the world in the realm of the divine.  For the New Testament authors Jesus is simply "the Son" not a mere prophet.  He is the absolute bringer of salvation.

The New Testament also closes out any view of the Spirit as a cosmic or religious power intermediate between God and the world.  He is none else than the Spirit of God.  The Son and the Spirit bring to mankind the saving presence of God (the Father) Himself, but the Son and Spirit are not simply identical with Him Whom they reveal to the world.

It is evident how hesitant and groping the religious language of the New Testament authors is, when they try to speak of the unity and distinction of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Where then do we find the convincing proof in revelation of this word of God regarding His nature?  The answer must be that the very incarnate Jesus is for us the presence of God (the Father) and still is not the Father. ("Philip, do you not know that he who sees Me sees the Father?")

This absence of a systematic treatment of the doctrine of the Trinity in Sacred Scripture makes more important the task of the Magisterium in formulating that doctrine.  What then, does the Church teach us as the doctrine of the Trinity? There are numerous ancient and medieval statements of the doctrine.  Outstanding among these are the Athanasian Creed and the Decree of the Council of Florence.  One of the finest statements, which I quote here not because it is the most authoritative but because of its clarity, is from the First Vatican Council.  That Council, as you know, was interrupted in 1870 before it could compete its work.  But the council fathers had prepared a statement on the Trinity to combat the errors of now all but forgotten priest, Anton Gunther. The statement is an accurate summary of what the Church teaches on the Trinity.  Here it is.

"Of all the mysteries which we profess in light of faith, the supreme mystery is God Himself, who is One in Essence, Three in Persons, Father, Son, Holy Spirit. According truth of the Catholic faith, the blessed Trinity is one God, because the essence or substance common to the three Persons is really and numerically one.  For from all eternity the Father generates the Son, not in producing in emanation another essence equal to His own, but in communicating His own simple essence.  And in like manner the Holy Spirit proceeds, not by a multiplication of the essence, but He proceeds by a communication of the same singular essence by one eternal spiration from the Father and the Son as from one principle.  This essence, then, or nature, one in number, truly is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; it is equally three persons and each of them individually.  Thus the persons are really distinct from one another, but in nature or essence they are one and the same.  And since in God everything is one where there is no relative opposition, there is one will and one operation with which the most Holy Trinity creates, arranges and governs everything extrinsic to itself."  (The Church Teaches, page 137)

What this statement (let us not call it a dogma since it was never enacted by the Council) emphasizes is the unity of Almighty God even though there are Three Persons in the One God.  What is reflected as well in the statement is the tremendous development in understanding of the Trinity that has been accomplished by theology over the years.  Without going back at all on my previous statements about the primary task that faith has in proclaiming the truths of Christ, and that it is faith that saves, not reason, the contribution of reason in understanding this doctrine must be acknowledged.  After all, theology is the application of reason to matters of faith. When theology is under the guidance of the Magisterium, human progress in knowing Divine truth can be tremendous.  And so it has been in the history of the dogma of the Trinity. Theology has defended it from error, clarified its meaning and developed our understanding of revelation in a way that truly enriches the practice of faith in the Trinity.

To be explicit, theology has distinguished for us the concepts of nature and person.  We understand that not alone in God but in man as well these things are distinct.  Just as in human nature, humanity is the common substance of each one of us in this room yet each one is a distinct person, so also nature and person are distinct in man.  The two concepts are important for understanding the doctrine of the Trinity.  "Person" indicates who you are; "nature" what you are.  "Who are you?  To answer that I give my name, "George"?  What are you?  What I am is a man, my nature, we are all equally, none more or less than others, human beings.  But I alone am the "who" that I am.  Personhood makes me unique;  it makes me to be me, to be me in such a unique fashion that I am I and no other.

These ideas are applicable to the Trinity.  There is but one God, that is, one Divine Nature, but in that Nature, there are three Divine Persons.  What do we ascribe to the Divine Nature?  What to the Divine Persons?  Again, the analogy from human nature and human personhood are useful. What belongs to each of us, by reason of the fat that we are human--rational soul and physical body? What do we ascribe to person?  This is a difficult question, never fully answered  It is somewhat close to the answer to say that person is what operates nature, the person you are is "in the driver's seat" to operate the nature you have.

To some extent that is the way it is with God.  There is one Divine Nature and to the Nature of God belongs the one Divine Mind, the one Divine Will, the One Divine Knowledge, everything that God to be God must have belongs to Him by nature.  And we must predicate only one of these attributes to God, whatever they may be:  immensity, eternity, goodness, love, truth, justice, mercy--only the one but shared in equally by each of the Three Divine Persons. Synonyms for the Divine Nature, by the way, are: Divinity, Deity and Godhead.

All right, what then does each of the Three Divine Persons have as Persons and not by reason of the Divine Nature?  Or in other words, what makes each Person to be a distinct Person in the Trinity?  The answer is best given from the names of the Divine Persons:  The Father's Personhood is His Fatherhood, the Son's His Sonship, and the Holy Spirit's the gift of the Love of God.

I think that is always useful when talking about the Trinity to remind that the God is pure spirit.  Because He has no body, He does not become a Father in a human way, by sexual generation, but He generates the Son by intellectual generation.  It is from the Mind of the Divine Nature that God the Father generates the Son  We ask what is the first idea and essential idea that the ind of God must generate?  The idea God must have is of Himself.  And since He is infinite, perfect, all wise, etc. then the idea He generates will be an absolute Image of Himself--infinite, perfect, all wise and all the other Divine attributes: whom we call God the Son. This is an indication only of the way that traditional Christian theology considers the generation of the Son from the Father. IT is perfectly in accord with Sacred Scripture, which calls God the Son "the Word"  (a word is an expression of an idea) and "the Image of His Being."


God the Holy Spirit originates from the movement of love between Father and Son.  Since God is all-perfect His love of Himself must find a perfect expression of love--that expression we call the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity.

We should now point the direction in which theology may well go in developing the understanding of the Trinity.  Put simply we may say that the more attention is being given to the roles of each Person in the work of our salvation.  You will readily agree that the emphasis heretofore has been almost totally on the role of the Second Person as Saviour.  This is not a mere mental device in order to facilitate study of the Trinity, but rather the more clearly we study the roles of Father, Son and Holy Spirit in salvation history the ore those roles tell us who the Father is, the Son, the Holy Spirit.  It is identity between the Persons in the Trinity and the roles or missions of each in our salvation which theology is now asserting.

To conclude I return to my original point:  it is faith that saves, faith in the Trinity.  We cannot deny our duty to study this doctrine with reason analytically and systematically.  Scripture must be searched for meaning.  But above all this must be done in a spirit of faith.  It is God Who wills that we come to know Him. He has sent His Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, into the world to teach us all things.  No one with faith will deny that the Spirit illuminates, inspires and guides all who sincerely will His coming.  Our prayer in faith is to God Who has taught the faithful through the light of the Holy Spirit that He will give us by the light of the same Spirit the wisdom to know Him and always to rejoice in that knowledge.  

Four Years

I have been busy most days the last several weeks, but today, I had no appointments, and, after Mass, reminded that today was precisely four years since Monsignor George Parnassus' death--he was pastor of St. Victor's from 1977 until 2000--I thought that, after lunch, I'd make a visit to Holy Cross. It would be three visits I decided, one to Monsignor's grave in the priest's plot right in front of the large main edifice, then a swing over to the newer mausoleum, where my father's remains reside in a Columbarium, and then to the other side to the Our Lady Grotto, where Monsignor Murphy was, of the three, most recently buried.

It was a spectacular Los Angeles Day, the sky the kind of blue that makes visitors want to become inhabitants of the city. And the breeze was perfect in its temperate caress. I decided that I would do the rosary as I visited each grave, just one, splitting up the decades of the Luminous mysteries, two at Monsignor Parnassus' space, one at Dad's, and the remaining two at Monsignor Murphy's. I found flowers at Monsignor Parnassus' grave. I knew there were others who remembered. Next week, after the 8 a.m. Mass, there will be group visit for the Rosary of some of them. Monsignor Murphy's name is still not on his grave, next to his younger brother who died in 2015. He is the one near the Grotto.

                                         
                                         

                                                 

It's so odd to feel the calm I do at Holy Cross, actually, at any cemetery. My own tiny square is next to my father's in the Columbarium. And though my anxiety rises at pretty much anything, at this it did not rise.  After I said my hellos and prayers, I wandered about as I do, and once again, noticed the names of other people I had known during their lifetimes, and several celebrities whom I had not known, Jack Wrather, Bonita Granville Wrather, Rita Hayworth, "Bing" Crosby, although the nickname is not on the marker.

Time passes. Monsignor Parnassus is gone four years. My father, nearly ten. The celebrities, some of them for twenty and thirty years. Time. We walking above ground take time so much for granted. I know I do. And in that place, in that cemetery, where the outside world no longer matters, time stands still. I am not sure how to put all that together for this blog entry today. Except I liked the suspension. I went to the Grotto again. I took some pictures. I watched dragonflies and turtles in the little pond by the Grotto.

All three men, my father, and the two Monsignors, they weren't what you'd call "at ease" in life. And yet, I have this image that their souls having left the earth and greeted by our Maker, are now at ease sufficiently to hear my concerns and to act as intercessors with Him, for me. It was Monsignor Murphy who said that the dead can be our intercessors. And now he is one of several of mine.  I talk to them now as I could never do in life, bound as we are by the burdens of the earth.

I like that. But I still miss them.

Djinns

I begin with a short short SHORT story of my father's. I know the circumstance which is the context of the tiny tale is true. He told me that when he was in North Africa, during World War II--he actually was in Casablanca, and there was no "Rick's Cafe"--he caroused a bit too much and driving back to his base, I think, he overturned his jeep. This was no place to have that sort of incident as it was a dangerous time, and place. He was indeed rescued by several Bedouins, who helped him, and righted his jeep. The credit given to the Djinns, the spirits, known to us as genies, well, that, I think, is fiction!

The Jeep overturned.  I was thrown.  Ahead the blackened City of Bizerte loomed in the vast emptiness of war.

A luminescent fallen object beckoned. 


It was the brass lamp I bought in Tunis. Unaccountably, I rubbed it against my shirt, and sat, disconsolate, on the ground.

Suddenly, a Bedouin leading a camel, followed by others, emerged from the mist, life where there should be none.

Silently, they righted my vehicle.  I placed ten thousand francs in the leader's palm. He let them fall and pointed to the lamp.  I gave it to him.  It had begun to feel warm, alive.

As I read this piece, and thought about this entry, I found myself contemplating Djinns in relation to myself.

djinn

A djinn is a certain type of spirit in Islam, similar to an angel. Many Muslims believe that a djinn can take the form of an animal or a human.

Muslim mythology includes angels and also the spirits known as djinns or jinns, which are described in the Qur'an as being able to interact with people despite being made of a "smokeless fire." Djinns are known for having free will, and for being either good or evil, like humans. The word djinn comes from the Arabic jinn, a plural noun that means both "demons or spirits" and also, literally, "hidden from sight." The word genie shares the same Arabic root.  (courtesy of vocabulary.com).

In some odd fit of creativity, my father, at the behest of my mother, who wanted her first and only child to have an unusual name, bestowed that of the Djinn upon me. Djinna, actually, using the "a" to feminize the word, for Djinns can be male of female. I have had a mixed relationship with this name. Today, the word is known, and lots of people name companies after it (like Djinns shoes in Europe and there are games and comics using the name) and it is something of a badge of honor to be the only one in the world, as far as I know, with this first name, with this precise spelling, but given the nature of Djinns, and the poem by Victor Hugo that apparently was the final inspiration, I have, on and off, found myself disconcerted, and discomfited that any parent would equate their child with a Djinn. Djinns can be changelings, that is left in place of a human child. There is my explanation for feeling an outsider through pretty much my entire development! And I am glad that I didn't know what a changeling was when I was a child, because my father's joke that I was found in an A and P Supermarket bag might have added to the things to talk about in therapy.

My parents were eccentric, my mother perhaps more than my father. I don't say that with either anger or condescension. It was just a fact, as those of my friends who knew them (fewer my mother as she died when I was 20) probably could attest. They were just not like any people I ever knew from the Bronx, and possibly from anywhere.

Given this story, my father seems, despite the poem by Hugo, which posits Djinns as vindictive wraiths, to have felt they were helpful magic. He looked on them fondly. Thus is my discomfiture somewhat relieved.

The Catholic priest who baptized me didn't know the derivation of the name; he only knew that there was no saint with that name and so I couldn't be baptized with it. My middle name is my Baptismal name. I am only legally a Djinn. And I guess I have gotten used to it by this time. I certainly never was inclined to change it; the derivation is often a good icebreaker when I meet new people.

That's a good thing.

The Gaze of Christ: The Zefferelli Brother Sun, Sister Moon Crucifix Redux

Close up of the San Damiano Crucifix from Brother Sun, Sister Moon at St. Victor

The Welcoming Lord at St. Victor

The figure of Christ Crucified demands and dominates attention when you walk into St. Victor's Church in West Hollywood. The suffering Son of Man seems to be in three dimensions, his body almost lifting from the cross on which He is pinioned. For me, the most compelling feature is His eyes, that despite the pain seem to follow and embrace the visitor seeking prayer. This is the powerful representation of the God-Man who broke into time to reconcile Himself with the very creatures who would torment and kill Him. He asks for our response, in love, becoming as the apostles before us, His trusting disciples.

Pictured is a replica of the San Damiano Cross, extra special, perhaps, to the parishioners of St. Victor, because this very crucifix was once a part of a Franco Zeffirelli movie, "Brother Sun, Sister Moon" made in 1972. It is the romantic, almost impressionistic, production of the tale of St. Francis of Assisi, who gave up the life of rich comfort to serve God as a lowly mendicant. I try not to hold against the movie that Donovan did the main musical theme, but it WAS the 1970s.

"Francis," Our Lord said as Francis stood in a crumbling edifice beholding the Cross, "rebuild my Church."

Francis, initially, took the command literally, to rebuild the San Damiano church that had fallen into ruins. But he was being asked to do more, to demonstrate the road, first to the Cross, but then through that instrument, to everlasting life to be followed by all men, if only we will believe in God's immense love and power.

I sometimes think, when I sit in the amber low light before this paradoxically comforting one time prop that I can hear a voice imploring me to do some rebuilding of my own--of my too variable faith.

How did we become so blessed, our parish community, to have this beautifully rendered icon?  It was the creation of Lorenzo Mongiardino.  He was the Production Designer of  several Zeffirelli movies. He was an interior designer, and an architect.  It was he who crafted this personal image of Christ. He would, I hope, be pleased that his handiwork now truly glorifies God accompanying the daily celebration of the Mass.

Perhaps fifteen or more years ago, Mr. Zeffirelli had an auction, in Italy, of his props from many of his movies. The San Damiano Cross was one of them. I do not know how he happened upon it, but our pastor of the time, Monsignor George Parnassus, obtained the catalog of the upcoming event. By letter, he began a negotiation to bring the Crucifix to St. Victor to replace a tapestry above the tabernacle. I admit I had never been fond of the tapestry, purporting to be Jesus driving out the money changers. However, the putative Jesus was bald, and I knew of no reproduced image of a bald Jesus. It was apparently an antique, but I could never warm up to it.

The Crucifix was acquired for the parish by our tenacious Monsignor, and I understand, at his personal expense. I first saw it under a tarp on a long table in the lower sacristy. It was in need of restoration. If you see the movie, you will note that the Crucifix is made to look worn and torn, and on one side, an entire piece of wood is missing. There is also a hook like section at the bottom right (or left as you look at it) which needed to be filled in.

The Crucifix in the movie Brother Sun, Sister Moon.

It was also so heavy, it needed a specially constructed hardware to affix it above the tabernacle.

Extras gather under the Cross in the movie.

But once there, our San Damiano Cross became a beloved sacramental that encouraged gazing up and imagining the Lord of centuries ago still present in the Tabernacle below. When I look at these pictures of the movie and then see the same Cross in our parish, I feel the kind of calm and comfort and trust in God, I wish I could maintain outside the Church walls. We have much that is beautiful at St. Victor, that surrounds us as we seek to cooperate in the work of salvation, including the stained glass windows made by the well known Pizcek sisters (now both passed on), but for me the Crucifix has a special place in my heart.

I so want there to be a memory of the history of this piece of art, where Hollywood (a la Italia) meets Catholicism that I forgot I wrote already about this in a prior iteration of my blog, back in 2014. But you know, the internet is a big place, and memory is transient. I don't think there can be enough mention. 

Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam!