The Most Holy Trinity:
Love in Mystery
Awhile back, I was meeting with all the candidates for First
Holy Communion and Confirmation to see how well they were prepared for these
Sacraments of Initiation. At some point in the conversation, I asked each
youth, “So, do you have any questions for me?” One little
girl — who did fairly well — took me up on the question: “One thing I still
don’t understand. . . How is God three Persons but just one God?” And of
course I gave the classic answer: “Well, it’s just a mystery.” You may
think this is kind of a patronizing response, but even the greatest theologians
said ultimately God is mystery. Even more a mystery is how God can both
be One and Three. There is a story that one day St. Augustine was walking
along the seashore and had a vision of a young boy trying to scoop up the whole
sea and put it in a hole in the sand. When he asked the child why he was
attempting the impossible, the child replied that Augustine was trying
something even more difficult: explaining the mystery of the Trinity.
Even though the Most Holy Trinity is a mystery — the greatest
Mystery of our Catholic faith — it does not mean that we cannot say anything
about how God is both One and Three. The Catholic Church
has formulated the language that even Protestant Christians use when speaking
about God. God has one divine substance, but He is three Persons.
St. Patrick used the shamrock to demonstrate this, yet this image still falls
short. The real problem is our imagination (as Frank Sheed correctly
highlights in his masterpiece Theology and Sanity).
Imagination is helpful when meditating on the gospels, but it gets in the way
when we try to comprehend the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as one
God. When we think of three Persons, we cannot help thinking of three
separate beings. Yet, God is one Being consisting of three distinct (not
separate) Persons.
You may be sitting in the pew right now thinking that this is
all fine and dandy, but what does this have to do with my everyday life?
Well, the fact that God is relationship in se, and we are made
in His image and likeness (Gn 1:26) says a great deal about life
itself. The Catechism says that we as human persons are social by our
nature because God is social by His nature. Why do you think the Two
Greatest Commandments are to love God and love our neighbor? It is
because God Himself is a relationship of Love; the Love between Father and
Son is the Holy Spirit; and God wants us to love as He
loves. Today’s solemnity (like Pentecost Sunday) is just one more
reminder that the love we should have as Catholic Christians is not just some
abstract warm feeling, but a real Person. Our love must be the Love of
Father and Son. And while we will never perfectly achieve this kind of
love in this life, we must be committed to this kind of Love with the help of
this Love until the end of our lives.
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