Feast of the Holy Trinity

Yesterday, the Catholic Church celebrated the Feast of the Holy Trinity.  Every year, at this time, I recall a course entitled "The Mystery of God" that I took at the University of Notre Dame.  The professor was Catherine Mowry LaCugna.  Professor LaCugna's classes (as I took her twice) were among the most demanding that I have taken.  In the first class, "Systematic Theology," she had weekly papers graded on a three-point scale.  They papers were no longer than a page-and-a-half.  She attempted to teach us to be concise and precise in our language.  She was exacting and would not accept sloppiness.  She was a great theologian and teacher.

At the same time, Professor LaCugna was shy and reserved.  A group of us seminarians invited her to dinner.  When she accepted, we considered it a triumph.  That night at Moreau Seminary, we students (then seminarians, Walter Jenkins, C.S.C., Brent Kruger, C.S.C., and I) shared tabled with our professors, Professor LaCugna and Bob Krieg.  The conversation was a delight, even as the extroverts-- Walter and I-- felt that we had to carry it a bit.

So, yesterday, while preaching, I tried to tell her story of the Trinity.  I began with Augustine and said that we cannot know the inner life of God, but we can know God through the "economy of salvation," through Scripture, through prayer, through the sacraments.  This God, who is relational, a "God for us," invites us to live in right relation and to live a doxological life, a life of praise.  I also spoke of chapter seven of her book, God For Us, on lamentation.  We, as Christians called to live a life of doxology, of praise, are called to praise God at all times, even in pain and hurt and loss.  Chapter seven of her books employs the term "lamentation" for this.  Lamentation, she writes, is a powerful form of doxology.

"Lamentation is not the opposite of praise but a form of praise in which God is rightly held accountable to God's promises: to comfort the widow, heal the afflicted.  Giving praise in the pattern of lament is hardly naive  or passive or complacent; indeed, doxology provides the context within which one might make the most trenchant and most solemn and insistent protest against every form inequity or inequality, whether this is experienced as coming from the hands of God or from the hands of someone else." (God For Us, p. 341).

In class, when we reached this chapter, a group of us talked about how to ask her about the experience that gave rise to this reflection.  She was as intensely private in class as she was intellectual.  We would ask a question, she would blink as she thought of her reply.  (We called that "engaging the hard drive" as the older computers had a light that would flash as the hard disk was engaged.)  Then she would offer the pearl of great price in reply, but she did not directly refer to her personal life and experience in the reply.  Back in the spring of 1994, we knew that she had had a bout with cancer, and we suspected that this experience informed her reflection.  I think that it was Fr. Steve Wilbricht, C.S.C. that asked the question that day about chapter seven.  Her reply, although I cannot cite it chapter and verse, was profound.  So profound that, for once, we all placed our pencils and pens on the tables just to listen.  It was a moving and profound experience.

A year later, I had departed for a pastoral year in Chile.  During the time that I was away, Professor LaCugna had a recurrence of her cancer.  On May 3, 1997, at the age of 44 years old, she entered into the beatific vision.  She might now be able to write about that ad-intra relationship within God, but I do know that she lived a profound life of doxology that taught me a great deal about the Mystery of God and the mystery of our own suffering and loss and how that is swept up in the victory of Christ.

The photo is from the Chapel of San Cristobal on top of Cerro San Cristobal in the center of Santiago.  If I could light a candle next to her grave at Cedar Grove, I would.  As I am far away, I offer the lit candle in the photo.

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_LaCugna