Hi,
I am discovering that the best way to undestand the Trinity is to take off from the fact that God is love. If God is love this tells us something abou God being not lonely. Even before creation God was love. So was he was lonely how could he be love?
Love suggests itself ‘unity and plurarity’. It suggests ‘giving’, ‘receiving’, and ‘sharing’. After reading and re-reading
this article I realized that actually our Christian Faith depends on how much we undestand the doctrine of the Trinity. I think this is even what Jesus wanted when he asked that we be baptized in the name of the FAther, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. I think this was itself a new revelation!
God had revealed his name to Israel, but Israel still did not know him more intimately. By ordering disciples to baptize with that formula Jesus was ordering the to welcome people in God himself in the household of God, the Church, the Bride, one with the Son, the temple of the Holy Spirit, and therefore where the fullness of God is to dwell. It is like introducing people into your house and revealing to them who is in the house and what their names are and how they are related to each other.
With the baptism formula Jesus revealed who God is, that he is love and show how. He showed the relatedness in the Trinity.
God is one by the infinite power of his love which is natural to him.
I think the reason we are sometimes afraid of ‘separating’ the person is because we measure their relationship with our poor relationship so they become easly three Gods from our point of view. But if we focus on the fact that their love is infinitely self-sacrificing from one to the other, then we realise thaty they are both different and inseparable. Jesus showed us precesly this divine love. And showed us that by being christians we are invited to love like him if we are to deserve to be sons of God. This love given by the Holy Spirit assimilate us into the Son and makes us one with him. So we get to live in the life of the Trinity. Adoring the Father with the Son, by the power of the HOly Spirit.
It is beautiful to contemplate the love between the three persons because that’s how we learn ourselves to be really humans. I think Adam who was created in God’s image meant ‘humanity’. It says, he created ‘man’, male and female’ he created them. Which shows that what was created in God’s image is both man as an individual and as a community.
As a community we know clearly how ‘relationships’ are fondamental to our lives. Just like in God. God is perfectly one because the three persons are perfect in their love. Humanity is not perfectly one because the persons are not perfect in their love.
If we love like Jesus with complete selfless love, if we live completely for the other like it is in God (Heaven) then we are ‘fully’ human. If people would love like that, humanity would be fully one as Jesus prayed for.
Perfect love makes a divine person fully God. It also makes a human person fully man.
Perfect love makes divine persons truly One God while remaing truly different persons. It would also make human persons truly one Man while remaing truly different persons.
I think we are going towards a day when humanity will stand up as one Man and this will be realized in Jesus so this one Man will be united in Christ and be divinized and live in eternity in God, the life of God himself.
In few words we really become more christians as we meditate more deepley on the mystery of the Trinity. We were baptized in the divine love, so we can be people of God, loving the true love which is the divine love. That’s really why Jesus calls as to pick up our cross and follow him. Because this ‘complete self-giving to the other’ is culture of God and it is this culture in which we are introduced into when we are baptized.
I wish priests would erraborate always more on that because I wish I had understood all this earlier somehow. I wish all homelies, or preaching was clearly centered on that because that’s really how it should be. I fill like we are left to understand that the Trinity is a great mystery which we can’t grasp, but we are not told that we are actually commanded to meditate, to try to understand it because it is the foundation of our Faith.
Isn’t it a shame that we most of the time don’t know how to explain even this basic explanation which I found it is really easy to understand and yet don’t know it?
Let’s pray for each other that we may live up to our baptismal promises…
God bless
Our priest once said that we will truly understand it once we are face to face with God.