The Gift of Not Understanding

Reflection for May 31, 2026 – The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

In today’s Gospel reading, we learn how Jesus was sent by God the Father to redeem and save humanity, and how belief in Jesus saves.  Find Today’s Reading Here 

I once listened to Bishop Daniel Flores — a renowned scholar and prelate — give a 70-minute talk on the Trinitarian nature of God. In those 70 minutes, Bishop Flores said a lot of eloquent things. But what that really landed with me was not any group of words, but a single gesture.

Defining hypostasis, the term we use for the “the reciprocal dynamic relations that constitute distinct identities within the Godhead” (yes, I am using his words because I could never, in a million years, trust my own) Bishop Flores said “the Father and the Son are true God, but the Father is not the Son, and the Son is not the Father. How not? Different hypostasis.”

And here his eyes grew wide; he turned his head and opened his hands, drawing back as if from a spooked horse. The implication was clear: Any further than this, I dare not go.

I’ve never felt so seen.

Sometimes, I make the mistake of thinking that I am unique in my inability to understand the great mysteries. Sometimes, I despair that I am not a “better Catholic” — one who will rush headfirst into the crosshairs of a hard question, confident in the words that come immediately to my lips.

But when I saw Bishop Flores flinch at the thought of defining how, exactly, the Son is not the Father, and vice versa, I remembered that only fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

This Sunday, friends, take heart: our failure to understand is not a poverty. It is a gift. It propels us constantly back to the wellspring of our glorious Faith — to Scripture, to Tradition, to the in-dwelling of the Holy Spirit which sustains each and every one of us who dare to believe.

©LPi