Sunday Scripture Reflections
with Frank Doyle SJ
THE HOLY TRINITY
Deuteronomy 4:32-34,39-40; Romans 8:14-17; Matthew 28:16-20
THE LENTEN AND EASTER seasons are now over. Today, as usual, we
begin the remaining long period of "Ordinary Sundays of the Year" with
the Feast of the Holy Trinity.
Our Christian faith is based on two pivotal revelations:
in God there are three Persons, distinct but totally equal
the Son, the Second Person of the Trinity, took on our human nature
and lived among us for our salvation and reconciliation with God.
During the whole of Lent and the following Easter season we have been
recalling and celebrating the second of these two great 'mysteries' or
revelations.
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The inner being of God
Today we consider the first: the nature of God in himself. St Paul tells us
that, in the light of reason and even common sense, any person can come
to an awareness of a creator God as the source and cause of all that is.
There is no way, however, by which we could come to know the inner
nature of God in the way it has been laid open to us in the pages of the
Christian Testament and from the words of Jesus himself.
That is not to say that, as a result of this revelation, we have a perfect
understanding of God. We will never, in this world, even have more than
the dimmest understanding of what God is really like. God is beyond all
knowing and we only begin to know him when we accept that.
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Reaching for the unreachable
In the case of the Trinity as an explanation of God's inner nature we can
only make statements based on what revelation tells us. We can say
categorically that there is only one God, who is all-knowing, all-powerful,
all-loving. But the extent of God's knowledge, power and love is far
beyond anything we can possibly grasp. Was it not Thomas Aquinas who
said that every statement we make about God has to be contradicted
immediately? "God is Truth" but not truth as we can grasp it. "God is
Love" but not love as we have ever experienced or could experience it. As
we say, God is 'transcendent' he surpasses anything that our limited
minds can grasp.
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Knowing God from what he does
But God is seen from another aspect in the reading from Deuteronomy
today. We can know God not just intellectually but personally
experiencing his actions in our lives. So Moses asks the people was there
ever a god so majestic as their God? And yet how close that God is to his
people! "Did ever a people hear the voice of the living God speaking from
the heart of the fire, as you heard, and remain alive? Has any god
ventured to take to himself one nation from the midst of another [Egypt]
by ordeals, signs, wonders, war with mighty hand and outstretched arm,
by fearsome terrors?"
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Three 'Persons'
On the basis of revelation, too, we can say that in this one God there are
three Persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Each Person shares totally in
the being of God and is God; yet each Person is distinct. The distinction is
determined by their mutual relationships: Father to Son, Son to Father,
and the mutual Love of Father-Son is itself the third Person, the Spirit.
Apart from making these statements there is not very much we can do to
grasp their full meaning. We can say, however, that we are not trying to
state the impossible, namely, that 3=1. We are not saying one Person is
three Persons but that one God is three Persons. There is a clear
distinction between 'God' and 'Person'. We are not saying that three Gods
are one God or that three Persons are one Person but that in one God
there are three Persons.
The fact that such a concept is beyond our experience or imagination
does not ipso facto rule out its possibility. There are many things in our
created world which are both beyond our powers of full understanding or
imagination. At one extreme is the vastness of our universe and at the
other the constitutive elements of all matter: the electron, proton and
neutron.
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The actor's mask
The word 'Person' comes from the Latin, persona, from which clearly
comes our English word 'person'. But the Latin word persona has a
somewhat different meaning. It does not really mean a person in our
contemporary English sense. It rather refers to the role played by an actor
in a play. Even today the script of plays often begins with a "Dramatis
Personae", that is, the list of roles in the drama.
In classical Roman drama the actors wore a mask or persona in order to
indicate the role they were playing much as in Chinese opera the actors
paint their faces in a way which tells us immediately what part they are
playing. The persona literally means that through which the actor speaks
(per=through; sona from sonum meaning a sound).
In Greek drama, from which the Romans drew much of their own
theatrical tradition, the persona or mask was called a prosopon, literally,
something in front of the face.
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The 'Persons' in God
When we consider the Persons of the Trinity the word 'Person' in relation
to God can be seen in relation to this ancient tradition. In God, there are
three distinct roles: that of Father, of Son and of Holy Spirit.
We may not be able to penetrate the inner reality of these roles but we
can be helped in our understanding when we look at how each Person
carries out his role:
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The three faces of God
The Father is the Creator, the Conserver, the source of all life and being
and the final end of all things.
The Son is the Word, by whom and through whom the nature of God is
communicated to us. The Son, became incarnate, that is, assumed a fully
human nature and lived among us. As the Word of God, the self-
communication of God, he helps us to understand, by his words and
actions and by his whole way of living and his humanity, what our God is
like. Even then, we still only see God "in a clouded mirror" because the
humanity of Jesus, greatly limits the full reality that Jesus was opening up
to us. Jesus' love reached the very limits possible to a human being but is
still only a pale shadow of the love that is in God. Nevertheless, it is what
we need in order to reach out to that limitless love. The Spirit is the
presence of God in the whole world and especially in the Christian
Church. It is through the Spirit that the Church is led and guided into all
truth. The Spirit is, as it were, the very soul of the Church by which the
Church is truly the visible em-bodi-ment of Christ.
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Baptised in the name of the Three Persons
The Gospel describes the moment of the Ascension as it is presented in
the gospel according to Matthew. The risen Jesus gives his final mandate
to his gathered disciples. He passes on to them the authority that he has
received from the Father. In particular he commands them to call all
nations to discipleship with him: "Baptise them in the name of the Father
and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit". The fullness of that baptism, which
goes far beyond the sacramental ritual, is to enter fully into the Kingdom.
And so it is, 2,000 years after this mandate was given, all new members
are incorporated into the community by being baptised in water and
having these words spoken over them. For the newly baptised, the Father
becomes the origin and goal of all living; the Son, in Christ, becomes the
model through whom that goal is reached; the Spirit becomes the
energising source by which we go through the Son to the Father.
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Abba's children
It is of that Spirit that Paul speaks today to the Romans (Second Reading).
All who are moved by the Spirit are children of God. And it is not the spirit
of subservient slaves filled with fear. It is the spirit of sons and daughters
who can call out with a daring intimacy, "Abba!" As children and not
slaves, we are therefore heirs as well: heirs of God and coheirs with Jesus
Christ, sharing his sufferings as well as sharing his glory.
So today's feast on the one hand leads us to reflect on the
incomprehensible greatness of our God and at the same time helps us to
be aware just how close that "Abba" (Papa) God is to us. A God so far
above us that he remains forever in a "Cloud of Unknowing" and yet who
is, as St Augustine said, closer to us than our very breathing.
We live, as Teilhard de Chardin put it, in a "divine milieu", a world that, as
the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins said, "is charged with the grandeur
of God". How wonderful to know that we have a God like this! And what a
responsibility we have to share that God with those around us!
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© Frank Doyle SJ
Frank Doyle is an Irish Jesuit, working as chaplain in Gonzaga College in Dublin.
