Karl Rahner, one of our most beloved Catholic Theologians, a key architect in the process and a significant contributing author to many of the 16 documents of Vatican II, is very famous for once having said “If people were to read in their morning newspapers that a fourth person of the trinity had been discovered it would cause little stir, or at least less than is occasioned by a Vatican pronouncement on a matter of sexual ethics – so detached has the triune symbol become from the actual religious life of many people.”
And I think he is quite right. I found it to be quite a stretch to meaningfully connect this mind-bending paradox to our everyday faith life….pondering how three persons can exist in one God….3 modes, but one substance….while the dinner is boiling over next to a sink full of dishes, my kids are running and screaming, and my aging father is cursing while negotiating the complexities and little buttons of his cell phone…
In the midst of the everyday grind, I was left wondering “does the Trinity really matter?” Which reminded me of this story….
Jesus said “Who do people say that I am?”
And his disciples answered and said, some say you are John the Baptist, others Elijah, or one of the prophets…
He said to them, “But who do you say that I am? Peter answered in reply
“Thou art the Logos, wisdom incarnate…one of the three distinct, but not solitary, persons in the consubstantial, Divine Triune Unity, in yourself whole and entire, sharing full divinity without disparity of substance or nature, emanating from the co-naturality of three infinites in perfect and profound egalitarian, relational communion.
Jesus said to him in reply “What?”
Sometimes I wish that God wasn’t so damned cryptic and subtle…that God would just say what needs to be said, clear as a bell….providing directions on the path of life like a trusted crossing guard….with no ambiguity, no doubt, no lengthy discernment period or straining to find that elusive ‘quiet place within.’
But instead, it seems that when I’m trying my very best to be an attentive and faithful servant of God, I often feel like a mouse poking around in a maze trying to find the cheese….not exactly edifying….
Now, of course, we all realize that fully grasping the mystery of God is absolutely and without question beyond us and our human capabilities…and that is as it should be.…But, that still leaves the question, is the revealed, paradoxical, truth of the Trinity relevant for our faith lives and in what way?
I caught sight of the cheese when reading theologian Elizabeth Johnson who affirmed that
at the root of ALL our doctrine is an encounter with the holy mystery that is God. Our doctrines are not just speculative mental acrobatics but rather an attempt to express a truth we have experienced.
The Trinity is an image, a concept of God that developed historically out of our collective experience…the first Christian believers were faithful to their Jewish monotheistic tradition and without abandoning Yahweh, the God of Israel, they pondered and tried to make sense of their experience of this same God in the person and mission of Jesus Christ…and then once again coming to know this same God in the Holy Spirit in the days following Pentecost.
In the doctrine of the Trinity, and why perhaps it is a non-negotiable for every Christian believer, God has shown Godself to be a community of three persons, equal in every way, living together in loving, mutual relationship…
….and somehow in the life, death and rising of Jesus we too have been swooped up into this communion, invited into this love of God that is gratuitous, overflowing, and life-giving… God is pure self-gift and we are the happy recipients of this nature, for God did not choose to be God without us. This is the God we worship and aspire to imitate.
And studies show that people actually do become like the God they worship …so, if people believe in a Warrior God, people become Warriors. If they believe in an aloof, patriarchal God, they become very detached from one another and struggle with issues of power and authority.
So, if we believe, and God has revealed, that God is a community of mutual love and equality, then whenever we find ourselves freely giving or receiving love we are actively growing in knowledge and discovering the truth of the Trinity in the most potent and powerful way…not through our limited reason and words, but through our graced experience.
A sufi mystic (Rumi) once said, we live “with a secret we sometimes know, and then not know.” There will always be moments of feeling like a mouse in the maze…this is the human condition….we don’t, and won’t, always ‘get’ what God is trying to communicate and draw us into.
But then there will also be those other times, when the sun is blazing through the colored leaves on a crisp fall morning, or when we are enjoying a spirited meal with those we love, or we feel the support of our faith community in a time of distress or loss….or, for me, last night, as I’m writing this, listening to my youngest laugh uncontrollably as my husband made silly faces at her in a game of peek-a-boo, and my feeling thankful almost to bursting for being alive…and at those times we know, deep in our souls, that God is in this….that the love that we are sharing, the love that is between us, IS the stuff of God, the substance of life, the Trinity expounded…and it is enough…..(it is relevant.)
So, perhaps paradox is just God’s loving way of playing peek-a-boo…getting us out of our heads and into the communion of the moment.
….and somehow in the life, death and rising of Jesus we too have been swooped up into this communion, invited into this love of God that is gratuitous, overflowing, and life-giving… God is pure self-gift and we are the happy recipients of this nature, for God did not choose to be God without us. This is the God we worship and aspire to imitate.
And studies show that people actually do become like the God they worship …so, if people believe in a Warrior God, people become Warriors. If they believe in an aloof, patriarchal God, they become very detached from one another and struggle with issues of power and authority.
So, if we believe, and God has revealed, that God is a community of mutual love and equality, then whenever we find ourselves freely giving or receiving love we are actively growing in knowledge and discovering the truth of the Trinity in the most potent and powerful way…not through our limited reason and words, but through our graced experience.
A sufi mystic (Rumi) once said, we live “with a secret we sometimes know, and then not know.” There will always be moments of feeling like a mouse in the maze…this is the human condition….we don’t, and won’t, always ‘get’ what God is trying to communicate and draw us into.
But then there will also be those other times, when the sun is blazing through the colored leaves on a crisp fall morning, or when we are enjoying a spirited meal with those we love, or we feel the support of our faith community in a time of distress or loss….or, for me, last night, as I’m writing this, listening to my youngest laugh uncontrollably as my husband made silly faces at her in a game of peek-a-boo, and my feeling thankful almost to bursting for being alive…and at those times we know, deep in our souls, that God is in this….that the love that we are sharing, the love that is between us, IS the stuff of God, the substance of life, the Trinity expounded…and it is enough…..(it is relevant.)
So, perhaps paradox is just God’s loving way of playing peek-a-boo…getting us out of our heads and into the communion of the moment.
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