Spirituality of the Readings

Closing the Circle

  “Why do we have to hear all this stuff about the Trinity?”

This question had come forth from a gentleman in the third row as I was giving a marvelous and subtle explanation (according to me) of that topic.

  “Why can’t we just go to church and be good to each other?”

Would he allow me to explain, I asked. He would.

I told him that the Triune God is not some kind of brainy speculation by scholars. It is the way we experience God in this world. To “go to church and be good to each other,” is the Trinity in action!

How about you, reader? Would you allow me to explain?

First, long ago, human beings found that there is only one God, and that s/he “found delight in the human race.” Think of the many stories in the First Testament about God’s pursuit of us, laboring to make a loving and holy covenant with us. “I will be your God, and you will be my people.” Like a marriage agreement.

And, as in the course of a marriage, God became by turns angry, hurt, delighted, glorified, spurned, ignored, praised and rejected. Yet God kept coming back and back to renew the covenant. God's love remained steadfast—even if ours, at least a lot of times, did not.

Then humans found out that God’s nature had always consisted of at least one other component, if that c word is the right one!

God’s very nature had always been to relate to others; to “pour himself forth,” as the First Reading puts it, and also to receive back. The “Second Person” was this outpouring, and had been present in God for all eternity. Therefore this “person” had always been at one with the “First Person.” Get it?

Then this Second Person became flesh. We named it “the Word.” Jesus laughed and cried and preached and turned over tables and cured people, and was loyal to his friends even unto the end. He said, “everything the Father has is mine” (Gospel). That’s how we knew he was the Word, and that the Word was God. Somehow, two persons in one God.

Then came a third revelation, giving us the Trinity. Jesus hints about it in the Gospel: “I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now.” In other words, our small souls would burst with the greatness of God—unless God gentled himself down and actually explained to us, guiding our understanding.

Jesus tells us that this Spirit is God’s presence. “Everything that the Father has is mine; for this reason I told you that God the Spirit will take from what is mine and declare it to you.”

Do you get the logic? All that the Father has belongs to the Word. All that the Word (Jesus) has belongs to the Spirit. Thus, the Spirit is the third part of God, so to speak, and it bestows us and the whole earth back upon the Father, thus closing the circle.

So there is aliveness and movement in God: speaking, reaching out, flowing forth, receiving back. God is liquid motion, a dynamism in which everything is changing always, yet always remaining the same, because it is love.

We are invited into that circle of love. Even in today’s difficult world.

And that is why we hear “all this stuff about the trinity”!

John Foley, SJ

**From Saint Louis University