Greater Intimacy with God

We celebrate Trinity Sunday tonight (today). There is an old joke among Catholic clergy we wind up preaching more heresy about the Trinity than just about any other concept. 

Part of the reason is the idea of three persons in one being seems odd to us. But if we think about it, there are actually many examples in the universe of multiple organisms attached to a single body. There is a legend after all; that St. Patrick taught the Irish about the Trinity by showing them the three leaves on a single stem of clover. There are many branches, but only one tree. Cells by the billions divide with one body. So maybe when we preach about the Trinity we just try too hard. Instead of seeing the Trinity or things like it in the universe, we focus too much on the literal. It reminds me a little of that old commercial for Contadina tomato paste. The commercial claimed that there were eight great tomatoes in that little bitty can. But only theologians I guess when confronted with this would actually try to stuff the eight tomatoes into the can literally.

So why is the Trinity important? Well from the dawn of human life, why we are here, what and who is God, and what is the relationship between God and ourselves are three of the oldest questions with which human beings have had to grapple. We have often been taught that the divine world and the world of humans were distinctly different. Humans could not share the life of the divine in this life, only in the next.

But despite the fact that Christians may believe this to be true, it is a distinctly un-Christian point of view. For Christians believe there is but one God, and God is a God of love. God created the earth as a gift of all gifts, a gift of love by God the Father for God the Son. The Holy Spirit proceeded from that incredible love, an incredible love that spread  throughout universe, throughout the earth. The Holy Spirit is a spirit of truth and love as noted in our Gospel from John tonight. As our first reading from the Book of Proverbs reminds us, we come to know God as a God of truth and love through the Holy Spirit. Three persons in one God, the Trinity, was present from the beginning of time.

But for the Trinity to matter to us, we must go deeper into this idea because there is much at stake. Because God is an all-loving God, God beckons us to share the life of the Trinity. God wants us to live God’s life, the life of Jesus, the Gospel life.

So God shares divinity with us. Think about it. The Trinity at its very basis is relational love. And how is life preserved among humans? Through relational love. When we think about it, this relational love of humans and the relational love of the Trinity are directly and intimately linked, much as God and humans are directly and intimately linked.

This means that unlike pagan theology, secular humanism, and many other belief systems, all of which have perhaps captured a piece of the mystery of God and humans, the Christian belief in God captures the relationship between God and humans in a most effective way. We are one with God. God is a Trinity, and the means for the continuation of the human race is also a trinity. God is very close to us and we can be very close to God if we so choose. We experience God not as object, not as a faraway distant god separated from us. Rather, God is in our midst. As St. Paul says in our second reading God has poured out his loved for us through our hearts. So how do we experience God's Trinitarian love?

First, because of the loving nature of God, who desires the closest of intimacy with us, God is closer to you and me that we are to ourselves. God is one with us. God dwells in us, as part of our being that can be filled, if we choose, by prayer, sacraments, Scripture and service with the Trinity of God who brings us into union with God. This unity is a union of wills, something comparable to the experience of sexual oneness, but it is a  union of divine and human bodies that is even more intimate than sexual oneness among humans.

Second, we should always keep clear in our minds and hearts that God loves us. His love is unconditional. God cares for us at all times and in all circumstances. God loves me and you as God loves God. For we are indeed one in self with God. Does this mean evil things will not happen to us or to others? No it doesn’t mean that. We have seen enough natural and man-made disasters lately to know better. Here the mystery of God takes over.

The ultimate knowledge of good and evil belongs to God in the Trinity, not to us. What we can understand however, is what we humans should be DOING about suffering and evil. In the face of many evils, we should use the gifts of God poured out to us in the Trinity to do things like using science and technology to predict earthquakes, to build houses that do not collapse, to construct dikes to prevent flooding, to save water to mitigate against drought. Our own social justice efforts here at St. Hubert are actively seeking the best means to help in respecting the dignity of the human person and our physical environment, to make poverty history, to help dismantle structures of oppression, to promote cooperation between business and government so man-made disasters don't occur in the first place, to share with all in the common good created with God in the Trinity.

Third, because God’s interrelational love is personal, God is a subject not an object. God is the universal subject. In trying too hard, sometimes theologians over the centuries have indeed done damage to ideas about the Trinity, far more damage than stuffing tomatoes in a can. For the Trinitarian God is not a God for who torture, killing, and oppression is justified. The Trinitarian God is not a  punishing judge. The Trinitarian God is not the great egoist who imposes the will of God on everyone. Nor is the Trinitarian God an all-powerful manipulator who sends us earthquakes, floods, and other disasters. God in three persons is rather a loving universal subject and we are born in God’s image and likeness. We are therefore part of the same subject, and share in the same Trinity.

And because God loves human beings so intimately, God wants us to love each other in the same manner. It should come naturally out of a joyous sense of the love God gives us.  Sadly, it often does not. To love others requires first that we love ourselves for if we do, then loving others is much easier. If we see ourselves as subjects who are loved by God with all our faults, then it reduces the chance we will see others as objects to be manipulated, punished, tortured, and killed. Putting oneself in another’s shoes is critical here. For it enables us to establish subject to subject relationships. It is enables us to develop the kind of intimacy with others that God has in the Trinity of persons, and with us. When we see everyone as a subject, not an object, it is possible to bring Trinitarian-level intimate love given to us to the whole world. We are all one flesh. Whatever we do to anyone, we do to God. And what is best for everyone is best for us.

Taken in its entirety, the message of the Trinity in Christian faith is both challenging and ultimately joyful and liberating. It is also the ultimate meaning of God’s love poured out for all through the Trinity.