At Confirmation, the archbishop asked the children for a definition of the Holy Trinity. A girl answered very softly, "The Holy Trinity is three Persons in one God." The archbishop, who was almost deaf, replied, "I didn't understand what you said." And the young theologian before him replied, "You are not supposed to. The Trinity is a mystery."
The first thing we can say about our Triune God is that we cannot ever fully comprehend him. This is one of the messages that Pope Benedict XVI has preached through symbol since the beginning of his papacy. During his inaugural Mass three years ago, his chasuble featured sea-shell designs. His new papal shield has prominently featured a sea-shell. This sea-shell comes from a story in the life of St. Augustine, on whom our Holy Father did his doctorate fifty years ago. St. Augustine, the great North African convert, bishop and theologian (d. 430), was trying to come to grips with the Trinity for what became his multi-volume work De Trinitate. As he was walking along the beach, trying to take in God's infinity through the infinite horizon of the sea, he saw a young girl going back and forth into the sea, filling a scallop shell with water that she proceeded to pour into a hole she had dug in the sand. "What are you doing," Augustine tenderly asked. "I'm trying to empty the sea into his hole," the child replied. and so, Agustin retorted: "How do you think that with a little shell, you can possibly empty this immense ocean into a tiny hole?" The little girl countered, "And how do you, with your small head, think you can comprehend the immensity of God?" As soon as the girl said this, she disappeared, convincing Augustine that she had been an angel. St. Augustine, as smart as he was, and our Holy Father, as great a theologian as he is, both recognize that before the mystery of the Blessed Trinity, one can never understand everything.
But that doesn't mean that we can understand nothing. In fact, we understand a good deal. We know what we know about the Trinitarian God because Jesus came to reveal the Father and with the Father send the Holy Spirit. He talked about the Father and the Holy Spirit and sent his apostles out to baptize in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. If we want to get to the heart of the mystery of the Trinity, we can turn to the most theological of his apostles, who meditated very deeply on all Jesus had revealed, and, inspired by the Holy Spirit, said - simply and synthetically - "God is love" (1 John 4:16). This statement strongly implies that the one God somehow had to be a Trinity of Persons. For God to be love, he could not have been solitary, because no one can love in a vacuum. In love, there is always one who loves, one who is loved, and the content of their love for each other. God the Father and God the Son, in all eternity, loved each other so much that their love generated a third person, the Holy Spirit. They exist in an eternal communion of persons in love, in which the three persons exist in mutual self-giving that not only makes them united but makes them truly one, three persons in one God.
Because love is naturally expansive, their mutual self-giving was bound to overflow. Out of no necessity, our Triune God created the world - and created the human person - to share his love. We were made in God's image and likeness and hence are created in love and for love. We're created in the image of the divine giver. We're called to live in a communion of persons in love. We see this image reflected in the way he created man and woman to exist in a communion of persons in love so strong that their love for each other can actually generate a third person, similar to what we see in the Holy Trinity. Pope John Paul II used to say that this is the deepest thing that can be said about the human person made in God's image: we are in God's image most not by our reason and our capacity freely to choose, but by our nature and call to live in a loving communion of persons. But this image of God is called to be reflected in the family, in the Church, and in society. And each of us, on this Trinity Sunday, is called to ask whether we really strive to live in as a loving communion of persons in God's image and likeness, or whether we live egocentrically and individualistically.
How do we enter more deeply into God's loving communion and share it with others? In today's second reading, St. Paul tells us that we will understand and experience God's love to the extent that we imitate it, that when we love and live in peace with each other, the "God of love and peace will be with you." It's like swimming; we can really only learn in the water. The way we experience God's Trinitarian love is by jumping into the ocean of his love. The way we experience it with others is by jumping in that same ocean with them. But love is a word used so often, and misused so often, that to speak of God's love is no longer very clear. Hence I'd like to focus on three aspects of God's love that we are called to imitate if we are going to grow into the image of that love:
God's love is SACRIFICIAL - We read in today's Gospel, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life." God loved us enough that he died so that we might live forever. This is why the greatest symbol of love is not Cupid with his arrow and a heart, but the CRUCIFIX. "No one has any greater love than to lay down his life for his friends."
God's love is OTHER-CENTERED - When you pay close attention to the Gospels, you notice that each of the persons of the Blessed Trinity speak about the OTHER. What great peace would reign in that family! And this is not an impossible ideal! It starts with each member's trying to put the other first.
God's love is MERCIFUL - This is perhaps the greatest and the most important thing we could say about God's love relative to us (because there's no need for mercy within the Trinity). It's also the most important aspect of God's love that we're called to imitate if we seek loving communion with God and others. In today's first reading, God says to Moses on the top of Mount Sinai: "The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness." God is merciful and we're called to be merciful. The greatest destroyer of communion is an incapacity to forgive, which is why, if we wish to enter into loving communion is to live in a relationship of forgiveness and reconciliation with God and others. "Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy" (Mt 5:7).
God who is love loved us so much that he wanted us to share in this love, not just in the next life but in this one. The way we best prepare for heaven is by entering into a communion of love here on earth. If God in his mercy grants us the blessing of heaven, we will enter into the communion of persons in love that is the communion of saints, within the loving communion of persons who is the Blessed Trinity. This Trinity Sunday is a chance for us, once again, to hear God calling us to live up to our dignity and enter more deeply into the communion with Him and with others that will bring true joy to our lives in this world and eternal joy in the next. Out of love, God has created us in his image, made us capable of receiving his own love and life within, and given us the joyful privilege of sharing it with others. Today we thank Him for that gift and that calling, and ask him for all the help he knows we need so that we might truly be men and women in a communion of love and say, by words and deeds, "Glory be to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be."
The first thing we can say about our Triune God is that we cannot ever fully comprehend him. This is one of the messages that Pope Benedict XVI has preached through symbol since the beginning of his papacy. During his inaugural Mass three years ago, his chasuble featured sea-shell designs. His new papal shield has prominently featured a sea-shell. This sea-shell comes from a story in the life of St. Augustine, on whom our Holy Father did his doctorate fifty years ago. St. Augustine, the great North African convert, bishop and theologian (d. 430), was trying to come to grips with the Trinity for what became his multi-volume work De Trinitate. As he was walking along the beach, trying to take in God's infinity through the infinite horizon of the sea, he saw a young girl going back and forth into the sea, filling a scallop shell with water that she proceeded to pour into a hole she had dug in the sand. "What are you doing," Augustine tenderly asked. "I'm trying to empty the sea into his hole," the child replied. and so, Agustin retorted: "How do you think that with a little shell, you can possibly empty this immense ocean into a tiny hole?" The little girl countered, "And how do you, with your small head, think you can comprehend the immensity of God?" As soon as the girl said this, she disappeared, convincing Augustine that she had been an angel. St. Augustine, as smart as he was, and our Holy Father, as great a theologian as he is, both recognize that before the mystery of the Blessed Trinity, one can never understand everything.
But that doesn't mean that we can understand nothing. In fact, we understand a good deal. We know what we know about the Trinitarian God because Jesus came to reveal the Father and with the Father send the Holy Spirit. He talked about the Father and the Holy Spirit and sent his apostles out to baptize in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. If we want to get to the heart of the mystery of the Trinity, we can turn to the most theological of his apostles, who meditated very deeply on all Jesus had revealed, and, inspired by the Holy Spirit, said - simply and synthetically - "God is love" (1 John 4:16). This statement strongly implies that the one God somehow had to be a Trinity of Persons. For God to be love, he could not have been solitary, because no one can love in a vacuum. In love, there is always one who loves, one who is loved, and the content of their love for each other. God the Father and God the Son, in all eternity, loved each other so much that their love generated a third person, the Holy Spirit. They exist in an eternal communion of persons in love, in which the three persons exist in mutual self-giving that not only makes them united but makes them truly one, three persons in one God.
Because love is naturally expansive, their mutual self-giving was bound to overflow. Out of no necessity, our Triune God created the world - and created the human person - to share his love. We were made in God's image and likeness and hence are created in love and for love. We're created in the image of the divine giver. We're called to live in a communion of persons in love. We see this image reflected in the way he created man and woman to exist in a communion of persons in love so strong that their love for each other can actually generate a third person, similar to what we see in the Holy Trinity. Pope John Paul II used to say that this is the deepest thing that can be said about the human person made in God's image: we are in God's image most not by our reason and our capacity freely to choose, but by our nature and call to live in a loving communion of persons. But this image of God is called to be reflected in the family, in the Church, and in society. And each of us, on this Trinity Sunday, is called to ask whether we really strive to live in as a loving communion of persons in God's image and likeness, or whether we live egocentrically and individualistically.
How do we enter more deeply into God's loving communion and share it with others? In today's second reading, St. Paul tells us that we will understand and experience God's love to the extent that we imitate it, that when we love and live in peace with each other, the "God of love and peace will be with you." It's like swimming; we can really only learn in the water. The way we experience God's Trinitarian love is by jumping into the ocean of his love. The way we experience it with others is by jumping in that same ocean with them. But love is a word used so often, and misused so often, that to speak of God's love is no longer very clear. Hence I'd like to focus on three aspects of God's love that we are called to imitate if we are going to grow into the image of that love:
God's love is SACRIFICIAL - We read in today's Gospel, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life." God loved us enough that he died so that we might live forever. This is why the greatest symbol of love is not Cupid with his arrow and a heart, but the CRUCIFIX. "No one has any greater love than to lay down his life for his friends."
God's love is OTHER-CENTERED - When you pay close attention to the Gospels, you notice that each of the persons of the Blessed Trinity speak about the OTHER. What great peace would reign in that family! And this is not an impossible ideal! It starts with each member's trying to put the other first.
God's love is MERCIFUL - This is perhaps the greatest and the most important thing we could say about God's love relative to us (because there's no need for mercy within the Trinity). It's also the most important aspect of God's love that we're called to imitate if we seek loving communion with God and others. In today's first reading, God says to Moses on the top of Mount Sinai: "The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness." God is merciful and we're called to be merciful. The greatest destroyer of communion is an incapacity to forgive, which is why, if we wish to enter into loving communion is to live in a relationship of forgiveness and reconciliation with God and others. "Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy" (Mt 5:7).
God who is love loved us so much that he wanted us to share in this love, not just in the next life but in this one. The way we best prepare for heaven is by entering into a communion of love here on earth. If God in his mercy grants us the blessing of heaven, we will enter into the communion of persons in love that is the communion of saints, within the loving communion of persons who is the Blessed Trinity. This Trinity Sunday is a chance for us, once again, to hear God calling us to live up to our dignity and enter more deeply into the communion with Him and with others that will bring true joy to our lives in this world and eternal joy in the next. Out of love, God has created us in his image, made us capable of receiving his own love and life within, and given us the joyful privilege of sharing it with others. Today we thank Him for that gift and that calling, and ask him for all the help he knows we need so that we might truly be men and women in a communion of love and say, by words and deeds, "Glory be to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be."
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