Emmaus
Lover, Loved, and Loving
Understanding the mystery of the Holy Trinity, not just through the eyes of the mind, but through the eyes of faith
Coming into the very first Sunday in Ordinary Time right after the close of the Easter Season, we are welcomed by the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, wherein we are brought to appreciate and embrace once more one central tenet of our Christian faith, that of the divine mystery of one God in three Persons.
Every single prayer in the Church always begins by invoking the Holy Trinity as we make the Sign of the Cross. Every season, feast, and solemnity within the Church always involves an invocation to the Trinity. Every Sacrament involves the Trinity, from Baptism, to Confession, and even during the Anointing of the Sick.
The dogma of the Trinity is so central to our faith, yet understanding the very concept of 1+1+1=1 and not 3 is well beyond any human intellect and capacity. Any form of explaining it in human terms will always fall way short of grasping the entirety of the Trinitarian concept. Even Scriptures does not give a very explicit use of the word Trinity, nor does it give a full and detailed explanation of it, and yet, the Evangelist and the early Church Fathers embrace it as Gospel truth, as dogma.
But if that’s the case, how, then, do we, at the very least, get a glimpse of understanding the Trinity in our faith?
Maybe that’s just it. Maybe it’s not so much about understanding in the intellectual sense, but in believing through our sense of faith, our sensus fidelium.
The concept of the Trinity, I believe as a start, is best understood when we see God from the lens of love and how it operates.
We can start off with the very basic understanding that God is love, Deus caritas est. And since God is love, there must be an object of that love, or a receiver, because love, by its very nature, must always be outward in motion, so that love must move towards having someone who receives it.
Since God, who is love, is perfect, then that love itself that moves outward is perfect, hence it is also important that the vessel or receiver must also be perfect in nature. Here we have the vessel or receiver of that love as the Son, who is equally perfect as the Father, yet also one with the Father. Since we also mentioned that the love that moves outward and exchanged between the Father and the Son is itself also perfect, then its perfection is also personified, which gives us the Holy Spirit.
Now we say that the Father and the Son are one, despite being both lover and loved. If they are one, then that loving that is personified is also one with them, making us see only one God, yet personified in three. Such is the perfection of that love that it is personified beyond any and all forms of human comprehension.
Does this explanation give us a complete grasp of the concept of the Trinity? No! It will never suffice! It is only a mere human attempt to explain it. Hence it also shows to us how small we are compared to the grandeur and magnanimity of God, that the concept of three in one is even beyond us.
That is why after looking at it through the lens of understanding, we now look at it through the lens of BELIEVING. It is now about faith, knowing that what we hold on to as a tenet to our faith is true, and not some made up fairy tale, legend, story, or even a theory that is simply passed down from generation to generation. It is what it is, a part and parcel of our faith that is not simply made up, but we hold to be true and will remain unchanged through eternity.
To think about it, we can only say that we embrace it with faith if it reflects upon our way of life. It’s not just about merely making a sign of the cross each day when we pass by a church or when we pray. It’s not just about a conscious inclusion of praying to the Trinity in our daily prayers, though these are good practices, and are definitely very good ways to imbibe and live out our Trinitarian faith in our lives.
It’s also about acknowledging that we are created by a Father God who loves, and we acknowledge this by our embrace of the sanctity of life, and seeing ourselves as beings with inherent, inviolable, and inalienable dignity. Because of that love, dignity, and respect for the sanctity of life, we learn to love others and bring Christ to others through our prayers, words, and deeds. We become men and women for others, a counterculture to the pervading culture of “me, myself, and I”. We run to the Holy Spirit to allow us to build and strengthen that vertical relationship with God, and that horizontal relationship with others.
I love what Father Antony Kadavil said,
But the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity challenges us to adopt an “I-and-God-and-neighbor” principle: “I am a Christian insofar as I live in a relationship of love with God and other people.”
If you notice, it involves three distinct individuals or beings: our selves, God, and others. It is perhaps in that “I-and-God-and-neighbor” principle that the concept and dogma of the Trinity would become less foreign or alien to us.
Perhaps it’s also because Christ wanted this to happen, that in Matthew’s account of the Ascension, Christ was very explicit with in his blessing and instruction:
Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,
teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.
Realizing this, then maybe the concept of the Trinity isn’t really well beyond us after all. We really just have to live out our faith to allow ourselves room to continually chew on this concept, and embrace it more closely.
Ave Maria!
