For
the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity
God is
Love.
Those
words— GOD IS LOVE— those words cannot be absolutely true if God is not three
persons.
How is
that?
Love is
a relationship.
If God
is just one person, then where is the relationship?
We
might try to say, “God loves us; so, God is love.”
However,
if God is not able to be love without US … that’s no GOD at all.
God is
Love … a relationship … between at least two persons … two persons in God.
However,
that is not enough.
The
Bible names THREE persons in God.
God is
Love in THREE persons.
Why not
just two persons who love each other?
Why is
Almighty, Eternal, Living Love THREE persons?
Let’s
consider the words the Bible gives us: Father, Son, Spirit.
The
Trinity in Itself
A
“father” is someone who gives his very self as a fountain of life.
In the
LIFE of God— in God’s own LIFE— there is a person who is the FATHER, someone
who GIVES, someone whose GIVING is so total, so absolute that it is alive: the
SON.
The
Gospels show that, when it comes to the heavenly Father, the personality of
Jesus is total gratitude, absolute gratitude to the Father.
To
speak of “God the Son” is to say that GRATITUDE for the Father’s self giving—
GRATITUDE in God— is also an absolute, a living person: THE SON— Gratitude in
Person.
The
Father and the Son— the GIVER and the THANKSGIVER— the Father and the Son live
for each other.
However,
their embrace, their love for each other is not closed in on itself.
Their
shared giving is absolutely open-ended.
Both of
them give.
None of
them needs or takes anything back.
Their
communion of surrender for each other is a living absolute: THE SPIRIT.
If
there is not a Trinity— if there is not God the Father and Son and Holy Spirit—
then there can be no one and nothing worth recognizing as God, for such a one
could not be absolute in anything.
Not
absolute in SELF-GIVING.
Not
absolute in THANKSGIVING.
Not
absolute in the COMMUNION of giving and gratitude.
The
truth is that God is Father and Son and Spirit.
The
Father: absolute self-giving.
The
Son: absolute thanksgiving.
The
Spirit: absolute communion of self-giving and thanksgiving.
This is
the truth of the living God, absolute love BEFORE and WITHOUT the created
universe.
God is
Love— before and without the created universe … before and without us.
God is
Love.
The
Trinity for Us Men and for Our Salvation
We are
baptized into the Trinity, baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son
and of the Holy Spirit.
The
saving Trinity is what the Son of God was born on earth to reveal and make
present in the Flesh and Blood of our humanity.
The
Trinity is the saving truth that Christ lived.
It is
the saving truth in which he suffered and died.
The
saving truth in which he rose from the dead.
The
Father and Son and Spirit are revealed, present and at work in the Flesh and
Blood of our humanity, for us men and for our salvation— and for the glory of
God.
The man
born in a stable and risen from the dead in a garden is the Way of God, the
Truth of God and the Life of God in human Flesh and Blood.
He is
the Flesh and Blood of the heavenly Father’s self-giving love for his children.
Christ
is gratitude to the Father, gratitude in Flesh and Blood.
Christ
is Flesh and Blood communion with the Father in one Spirit.
We call
this Flesh and Blood “Eucharist”, a Greek word meaning “thankfulness,
gratefulness, gratitude.”
The Son
of God is “Eucharist”— “gratefulness” in person, eternal gratefulness to the
Father.
We also
call this Flesh and Blood “Holy Communion,” because the Father and the Son are
TOGETHER, bringing us into their COMMUNION of one Spirit of Life and
Thanksgiving.
We now
celebrate this Flesh and Blood in which we receive our salvation.
GLORY
BE TO THE FATHER AND TO THE SON AND TO THE HOLY SPIRIT,
Turn. Love. Repeat.
