With regard to the Trinity, it is a homily priests struggle to preach. Reasons include the lack of understanding and a loss of interest in the mental sophistry of trying to reconcile three in one. Or people simply do not care about it. For all intents and purposes, the Trinity makes no difference in their lives.
Slowly we veer towards a vocabulary centred on the Trinity relevant to us. The false divide between the immanent Trinity, that is, God in Himself apart from the work of salvation, and the economic Trinity, that is, God in relation to the history of salvation, may have contributed to a Trinitarian illiteracy.
After all, we make the sign of the Cross without second thoughts. Sometimes we do not even voice the formula “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”. Unthinkingly, we just trace the cross over our head and chest. This gesture is also used for comedic effect in entertainment especially when actors find themselves in a “Hail Mary” desperation.
Catholics are vaguely familiar with the Trinity in the sense that it is there. While the liturgy is steeped in Trinitarian references, yet it remains a conceptual challenge. We accept a Trinitarian God but many cannot give satisfactory explanation for this belief. One major monotheistic religion still cannot wrap its head around the idea of a God who is 3 Persons in 1. For us, at best, we take refuge in the usual reply that it is a mystery which we just accept and move on.
Christianity took a few centuries to clarify how the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are not three Gods. We may not face the same problem today because the Church has arrived at a better knowledge of the Trinity. However, if we are not careful, meaning, if we do not have a working grasp of who God is, we might end up worshipping three gods. In other words we confess a Trinitarian God but in actual fact, we have deviated towards a form of tritheism.
The Trinity may be a mystery but God chose through Jesus Christ to reveal His inner life to us. For example, “the Father and I are one. And I will ask the Father, and He will send you another advocate who will be with you till the end of time”. This profound self-revelation of God is central to how we ought to live.
According to the Catechism: “The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of Christian faith and life. It is the mystery of God in himself. It is therefore the source of all the other mysteries of faith, the light that enlightens them. It is the most fundamental and essential teaching in the ‘hierarchy of the truths of faith’”. (CCC 234).
If it is that essential, we should know who God is in Himself. The fact that the Trinity is a mystery should actually make us want to know more about it. It is natural for the more a reality is shrouded in mystery, the more we want to know it. Just like we are interested into know the private lives of celebrities.
The confession that we believe in one God is true simply because He is one divine nature. Pay attention to the Creed later. “God from God, light from light, true God from true God. Begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father”. It describes the one divine nature of God. Yet He is distinctly three in persons, meaning that the Father is God, the Son is God and the Holy Spirit is God is also true. These two questions “Who are you?” and “What are you?” allow us to grapple with the mystery of why God is One but Three in Persons. To God, the question “Who are you?” will draw three distinct replies. The Father will response “I am the Father”. Likewise the Son and the Spirit. These are not one person with three answers but three Persons, each giving a distinct response. Then the question “What are you?” will draw the same answer from each Person of the Trinity. The Father will reply “I am God”. Likewise the Son and the Spirit. The distinction that the Father is neither the Son nor the Spirit provides insight that these three persons are relational in nature. The best description for the Three Persons in One is love.
St John equates God with love. He is love and love’s power is shown through relationship. In a manner of speaking, love is Trinitarian in nature because the one who loves is the Father. The one who is loved is the Son and the love between them is the Holy Spirit. Love is verbally an act meaning that it does not exist in an abstract. No one just loves “directionless” or aimlessly. Instead, when a person loves, he or she loves someone and there is someone who is loved and between them there exists a love that binds them together.
The more we know that God is love, the more we would want to invest in relationships. True relationship cannot be reduced to monetary value but instead, it is marked by love and if the nature of God is love in relation, then the knowledge of Him should also inspire us to follow Him.
The reality is that Christians are not as loving as they should be. We are poor lovers in the sense that we do not know how to love like how God loves. To grasp that love, we can start with defining what the opposite of love is. The opposite of love is not hatred. Rather, it is selfishness. Those in a selfish marriage knows what this feels like. However, in God, there is no selfishness. The Father loves the Son completely. The Son loves the Father selflessly. The love between the Father and the Son is infinite. Jesus showed His love for the Father to the extent that He poured out His life in order to save each one of us. This is the love that Christians are invited to. Without being Pelagian, meaning that all this is down to our effort, perhaps our failure to live and love like Jesus is because we have yet to fathom and feel the love within the Trinity between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The knowledge of the inner life of the Trinity is not vacuous but instead it gives us the inspiration to live our Christianity to the fullest. Love which is truly life-giving is sacrificial for it never stops at the self but like Christ, life is most magnificent when it is poured out in love. The Trinity is our template for the love which Christ has come to show us.
