Taking my car to my mechanic for an oil change one afternoon, I drove off, passing the nearby junior high — pardon, middle school — and stopped for a group of children crossing the street on their way home, ready to enjoy summer vacation. Seeing them laughing and chatting reminded me of an incident featuring my son, DeForeest, when he was that age.
The year was 2002 and I was driving my son home from the Boys and Girls Club, his after-school retreat. DeForeest, then nearing completion of seventh grade, was explaining geometry to me. This is a good thing. As much as I enjoy the deductive logic of Sherlock Holmes, I find mathematical logic, um, well, a mystery.
DeForeest defined rays — lines starting at one point that extend into infinity; line segments — which have both beginnings and endings; and arcs — which are curved line segments of a circle. He paused. “You know, Pop, God is like a line, isn’t He?”
“If you mean that, like a line, God extends endlessly into infinity, yes, you could say that,” I replied, allowing a car to change lanes in front of me. “Always understanding that God extends without bounds into all dimensions and in all directions.”
“Right, Pop. But like a line, God is without beginning or end. And God started human life to be rays originating from His line. Then we lost our connection to God through sin and became detached line segments.”
Here was a new idea which caught me flatfooted. I had never thought of expressing God’s relationship to humanity with such geometric simplicity, but then I don’t consider much of anything in geometric terms. It was a concept worthy of the very deep, but very readable theologian, St. Augustine.
Let me mention that this was not the first time I’ve been startled by the depth of my son’s reflections on God. At the age of three, on our way home from Sunday Mass, DeForeest asked me, “Papa, did the Father die on the cross with the Son? Both are God, right?”
The sophistication of this question astounded me. It is the basis of a third century heresy called Patripassianism: the belief that “the Father suffered” with the Son. I smiled at the notion of having a 3-year-old heretic on my hands.
Explaining that while the Father and Son are, with the Holy Spirit, three Persons united by a single divine nature so that, mystifyingly, the Three are still One God, the Divine Son suffered death but only because He was united to a human body. The human body of Jesus died, but not the everlasting Son. DeForeest only replied, “Ahhh.” Had he added, “Of course, that only makes sense,” I would not have batted an eye.
Yes, St. Augustine, the brilliant theologian, should have walked the beach discussing the Tri-Unity of God with DeForeest. Instead, while pondering the mystery of how Three can be One, Augustine came across a boy — an angel in disguise the Baltimore Catechism told us — carrying a little bucket, which he was using to pour the Mediterranean Sea into a hole he’d dug in the sand. Augustine watched the boy going back and forth for a while, then pointed out to him the impossibility of the task.
“Easier than trying to understand the Holy Trinity,” the little kid, really an angel, shot back rather smugly before disappearing. Take that, Augustine.
Getting back to the problem at hand, I was drawn to DeForeest’s geometric theology theory despite my mathematical uneasiness. “We were detached from God only temporarily,” I pointed out as we stopped for a traffic signal.
“Temporarily?” he echoed.
“Certainly. Jesus reconnected humans to God through His Incarnation, which is why we bow at the words in the Creed each Sunday, ‘by the power of the Holy Spirit, He was born of the Virgin Mary and became man.’”
This idea spurred DeForeest’s imagination. Grabbing a piece of paper and pencil, he made a quick diagram of a circle, inside of which were two intersecting lines, each having arrowheads on both ends. “In eternity,” he proposed, “Jesus is our point of intersection with God.”
I nodded, then ventured, “Could you say that our line segments are reconnected as rays by arcs of God’s grace?”
DeForeest considered the notion for only a moment. “I’m not sure of that comparison, Pop. In my example,” he pointed to his drawing, “the lines of the Father and the Son intersect like a cross. If we intersect with the Father at the point of the Son’s Incarnation, wouldn’t it be better stated that the point where we intersect the circle of eternal life is the Holy Spirit, who gives life to our faith and prayers?”
“Perhaps the Holy Spirit is symbolized by that circle around the cross,” I countered, attempting to keep ahead of the boy. “God can be encompassed only by God, not by eternity, otherwise eternity would be greater than God.”
“Well, Pop,” DeForeest patiently replied, “if you notice, I made arrowheads on both ends of the lines as they meet the circle, showing that the life of the Father and Son go beyond the circle into infinity.” Take that, Papa.
We were home. I realized that the mathematics of this theory was getting too deep for me. “Son, the Holy Trinity that is One God is beyond mortal understanding. I’m just happy that through Jesus’ incarnation, death and resurrection all our line segments again intersect with the life of God and become the rays we were meant to be.”
“Okay, Pop,” he nodded, reflectively. “I can accept that.”
“Thank you, God,” I prayed in grateful silence, only too happy to find a graceful way out of the discussion.
But I began to wonder if DeForeest’s guardian angel might just be that same little squirt on the beach who socked it to St Augustine.
Post script
In 2002, after writing up a paper he titled “Geometric Theology,” DeForeest sent it to Rome, hoping Pope St. John Paul II would see it and perhaps comment on it.
Weeks went by before a beautiful, cream-laid envelope arrived, addressed to DeForeest. It was a pleasure simply to hold it. The return address was Citta del Vaticano, Roma, Italia.
Within, along with a small medal bearing the pope’s visage, was a letter typed on the same soft, thick paper. A “Secretary to His Holiness” assured DeForeest that the pope had seen his message, was intrigued by the connection between geometry and theology, and commended my son for his “gifts of mind and heart.” The letter concluded by letting us know that the pope extended his Apostolic Blessing to DeForeest and his family.
Feeling something of a personal connection, DeForeest still ends his prayers with the invocation, “St. John Paul, pray for us.”
Despite geometric confusion, Sean M. Wright, a an award-winning journalist, Emmy nominee and Master Catechist for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, attends Mass at Our Lady of Perpetual Help parish in Santa Clarita. He replies to comments sent him at [email protected].
