The Trinity Is Important
We
do not know very much about God. From the stories in the Old Testament
we can deduce a certain amount. We deduce a creator, a liberator,
a saving God and so on. What these human analogies really mean is
even harder to explain. By the time the New Testament was written
down, the revelation that there is one God and that this God is three
persons was clearly articulated. For example, at the Annunciation
we are told that God sent an Angel to announce his Son, and that Mary
conceived by the power of the Spirit. At the Jordan when John baptized
Jesus, our feast this weekend, the Holy Spirit was seen in the form
of a dove and a voice was heard from Heaven saying, "this is
my beloved Son, hear ye him." In very many places there are explicit
references to three modes of God's being.
If God reveals this to us, it must be mightily important. Yet, it
is only in the last few years that I discovered for myself that it
is important. I was a priest for twenty years before I found real
meaning in the revelation that God was one and three.
Let's
try now to unpack the idea of the Trinity. I will start with a human
comparison. Fifty years ago, I was a little baby and I depended on
my parents for everything. Twenty five years ago, I was a newly ordained
priest. I went home to visit my parents - who were then about my present
age - and enjoyed an adult-to-adult relationship with them as equals.
Later, as my parents aged they depended on their children to make
most decisions for them.
My
mother of fifty years ago, my mother of twenty five years ago, and
my mother in her final days was one and the same person. Yet she was
not the same person. What was once a relationship of dependence on
her became one of equality, and then, one of her depending on us.
But if I am to re-member my mother now I must remember all three.
She is, and is not all of those three persons.
So,
too, our God is transcendent, he is the God who created us and we
depend on him for everything. This God is also incarnate. In Jesus
Christ God became human, became one of us, and shared our lot. Our
God is also immanent and dwells within each one of us and depends
on us to become his hands and feet, his ears and lips, to make him
present in the world today.
When
my mother was still alive, I was very locked in to the stage of the
moment. As a child I experienced her as the one on whom I depended.
Later, I experienced her companionship on an equal footing. All of
those memories were practically forgotten when faced with personality
changes brought on by Alzheimer's disease. The problems of the final
years made us forget the joys of the earlier phases. After her death
we were able to re-member her once more in all of the phases.
So
too, as individuals or as Church, we can get locked into one mode
of God's revelation as Father, Son or Holy Spirit. To take one aspect
by itself is incomplete and inaccurate, and may mislead us in our
response to God. The name or names that we give to God have far-reaching
consequences. Our name for God reflects where we perceive God to be,
how we pray and how we perceive the Church.
To
be in relationship with God - to pray - is to be in relationship with
all persons of God. If God found it so important to reveal those persons
to us, then each one of them must be important and complementary to
the others. To neglect any one of these relationships is a misrepresentation
of the truth about God and therefore could even be termed heretical.
Heresy has sometimes been defined as taking part of the truth and
making it into the whole truth. Unfortunately, for centuries we have
been seeing God mostly as "up there" in heaven. Today we
have a greater awareness of the Emmanuel, the God who is with us,
around us and within us.
The
rediscovery and the practice of meditation in the Philippine Church
is a very positive sign. For me, it indicates a rediscovery of the
Trinity itself at the heart of the life of the Church.
Taken
from Sundays
into Silence - A Pathway to Life. Copyright © 1998 by Claretian
Publications
