Three Lit Matches and the Holy Trinity
When the Unique Precludes Analogy
What do three lit matches/one flame and a three-leafed clover/one stem have in common?
Both are trotted out as pale analogies to the Holy Trinity.
Analogies are about the only tool we have for understanding God. The Holy Scriptures sometimes present metaphorical language, such as Jesus as the vine and his followers as the branches. All language is at the root metaphorical, if you think about it; these words you see are representative of ideas.
Analogies are imperfect in any situation but especially so with respect to grasping the truly unique aspects of our Catholic faith handed down through Holy Scripture and Tradition.
My focus on utter uniqueness was prompted by a fascinating dream during which someone was trying to come up with an analogy to the actual presence of Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist. That reality is referred to as “transubstantiation.” I objected on the grounds that the sacrament of the Body and Blood of Jesus present in the Holy Eucharist is without analogy because it is unique.
Suddenly I awoke in the middle of the night. I was happy to discover my unconscious was vigilant and on guard, always prepared to defend the Faith!
It dawned on me that non-believers struggle the most with truth that defies analogy, such as transubstantiation, the Holy Trinity, and the Virgin Birth.
Uniqueness shouts so loudly that the world cannot ignore it. Would we expect the Creator of the universe to be ordinary or extraordinary?
Let’s look closely at the Catholic belief in transubstantiation which is 100 percent scriptural. Jesus annoyed the Jews of his time by claiming “I am the bread which came down from heaven” (John 6:41, RSV). Okay, you might say, perhaps Jesus is just using a limited metaphor with no more significance than calling himself a vine.
However, what followed in that scenario was in no uncertain terms a clarification regarding exactly what Jesus meant:
“I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live for ever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh” (John 6:51 RSV).
Next, Jesus emphasized the astonishing unique, literal nature of his teaching:
“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is food indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him” (John 6:53–56 RSV).
Certainly Jesus was aware of the magnitude of what He was saying. He could have easily used the words “symbolizes” or “representative gesture.” He did not. He said “eats my flesh and drinks my blood.” Therefore, in some mysterious way, some unique way, the host and wine consecrated and consumed during Holy Mass is actually the Flesh and Blood of the Risen Christ.
At that point in the Biblical account, some of his own disciples said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” (John 6:60 RSV). “After this many of his disciples drew back and no longer went about with him” (John 6:66 RSV).
Father Francis Spirago explains “The presence of the body and blood of Christ under the appearance of bread and wine is a mystery because our feeble reason cannot comprehend it. Our Lord conceals Himself under the appearance of bread and wine in order to test our faith, whether we believe His words rather than the testimony of our senses” (The Catechism Explained, p. 624).
Another astonishing reality without analogy is the Virgin Birth. God chose a virgin to conceive miraculously the Son of God. The Nicene Creed says “He [Jesus] came down from heaven, and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary and became man.” “Incarnate” means He took bodily form. When the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary, the angel made it clear that the Holy Spirit would cause this miraculous conception to take place in the virgin’s womb.
One non-believer said to me, ‘I don’t believe that. There has to be an egg and a sperm involved for any woman to become pregnant.” I replied, “Are you telling me that an omnipotent God cannot miraculously cause a virgin to conceive?”
He admitted that under those circumstances, actually anything would be possible, but in the realm of probability, the likelihood was almost negligible.
That’s right. That is why the Virgin Birth amazes us. It only happened once. It was a unique event in human history.
Jesus himself has been referred to as the “absolutely singular” by Swiss theologian, Hans urs von Balthasaar. No wonder the way He entered the world was absolutely singular.
The Resurrection of Jesus Christ was unique because He was raised from the dead by His own power. At the end of time, all humans who were saved by His grace will rise from their graves; however, the resurrection of the dead on the last day is not the same as the one unique Resurrection of Christ.
Perhaps the most difficult mystery of all to grasp because we want to be able to conceptualize it, is the Holy Trinity. In addition to the analogies of the three lit matches and three-leafed clover mentioned earlier, some people have tried to use the “ice, water, steam” analogy which really fails because it seems as if God is a shape-shifter — only taking one shape or another at any given time. There is a slightly better analogy using the spectrum of light. When you hold a crystal to the light, you see how separate colors exist within white light.
Nevertheless, even the prism analogy does not come close to reflecting the inscrutable mystery of three uncreated, coeternal persons — the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit — in one God.
In line with uniqueness, all three phenomena — -transubstantiation, the Virgin Birth, and the Holy Trinity — are paradoxical.
A paradox is not a contradiction as many people think. Rather, it is when two realities co-exist despite the seeming impossibility.
Paradoxes exist in disciplines besides theology. For example, in science, light is both a wave and a particle. That fact, at first glance, seems contradictory. Yet, the truth is, according to my friend who is a scientist, that sometimes light behaves like a particle, and other times, it behaves like a wave.
If we can accept paradoxical truth in other realms, then we should not be surprised when the Faith is riddled with paradoxes.
Paradoxes occur when we hit a wall with our ability to comprehend complex concepts. We should not be astonished by a wafer that is no longer a wafer, a mother who is a virgin, and one God who is three Persons.
If we were omniscient, as God is, nothing would surprise or baffle us.
Since we are not God, it helps to recognize that, as Jesus taught us, “with God, all things are possible” (Matt. 19:26 RSV).
