Wednesday, June 5, 2024

“The Drama is in the Dogma”

 

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Many readers will be familiar with the story of Nicholas of Myra at the Council of Nicaea. It’s said that when the saint heard Arius speak heresy, he was so angered that he strode across the Council floor and struck the heresiarch in the face. Now, that behavior is not to be imitated or encouraged. Still, there’s something admirable in it. Perhaps Nicholas couldn’t control his temper. But at least he took dogma seriously and understood that a dogmatic error would empty Christianity of meaning, of all goodness and beauty. At least he saw dogma as something worth fighting about.

Now, that account might seem out of season. In fact, however, it’s perfectly suited to today’s feast – not only because it concerns the Trinity, but because it brings out the importance of dogma itself.

Up until today, the Church’s liturgical calendar has commemorated and celebrated historical events: Christmas, the Presentation, Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, etc. These are easier to get our minds around because they happened in our world and involved people like us. We can point to the place and imagine the scene. But today’s feast is not about an event. It’s about a dogma, and that’s always a more difficult thing to convey. So perhaps we should just linger on the importance of dogma itself and our celebration of it. We must learn to appreciate, as Nicholas did, that the drama is in the dogma.

It will strike many people (including many Catholics) these days as weird, perhaps even unhealthy, to celebrate a dogma. The word is rightly associated with authority and requirements of belief – abhorrent things to our culture. Worse still, today we celebrate the highest dogma, the most dogmatic of all dogmas, if you will. That God is One in Three Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. That each Person is entirely God and together they are one God. That the Father generates the Son, the Son loves the Father, and the Spirit is the love or the bond between them.

Most people will find that pretty boring stuff and desire more stories and events – more action. But this dogma is the purpose of all the other feasts, of everything else that we’ve celebrated thus far. We might have the impression that Trinity Sunday is just an addendum to Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost. But God entered the world, suffered, died, and rose again precisely to communicate the Trinity – in both senses of the word communicate. That is, to reveal the inner life of the Triune God and to impart that life to man.

Read the rest: https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2024/05/26/the-drama-is-in-the-dogma/

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