A life lived in the Trinity through our baptism is deeply relational. We are drawn to love God and all that God loves. (PC: PIXABAY)
In his letter to the Ephesians, St Paul warns us to not limit God by our need to have some concrete image. God is too immense, he says, to be contained by any image (Eph 3:18-19). The Holy Trinity is often captured through images of a triangle, circle, shamrock, or a philosophical theory of person and nature to explain its mystery. But can there be another way of thinking about the Trinity that avoids containing God too much within our limited boundaries.
In his Angelus address on Trinty Sunday (2022), Pope Francis said that “celebrating the Most Holy Trinity is not so much a theological exercise, but a revolution in our way of life”. Here the late pope suggests that the Trinity is not something we strive to understand or even imagine but it is ‘someone’ whom we can relate to and contemplate upon.
At a personal level, Pope Francis invites us to encounter God who desires to relate to us. Such an experience is revolutionary because in this encounter we are overwhelmed by God’s love and care. In the process, our perspective on life is changed and so is our way of life. Let us see how our way of life might change because our relationship with God.
God’s first action in our world as narrated from a faith perspective, is found in Genesis 1 and 2 - the stories of creation. These two stories capture the Trinity’s dynamic relationship with each other and extend that relationship to the whole of creation.
In Genesis 1, God’s Holy Spirit hovers over the water, while God the Father sets in motion the dynamic relational mystery that is manifested in the creation of our cosmos. Furthermore, God creates by ‘word’ e.g., God says let there be light and there was light. At the beginning of St. John’s Gospel, we are told that the Word, the is Jesus, who is the + Christ, was present from the beginning of creation – “In the beginning was the word.” These biblical texts show that creation is the activity of the three persons in the one God, that is, of the Holy Trinty, and not just God the Father acting alone.
The creation stories also show that God, the Trinity, acts out of love. God is “pleased” or “delighted” in what is being created through the inner dynamic love at the heart of the Trinity. While God creates all of creation through the relationship between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, humanity is created in God’s image and, therefore, is called to love the rest of creation like God does. It is this highly active and caring relationship within the Trinity into which we are baptised and called to spread the Good News of God’s love.
On his election night, Pope Leo XIV began his first address as pope with the words, “May peace be with you all.” These words have continued to echo around the world as he calls for the end of war. Urgently reminding powerful leaders and nations that only respectful dialogue based on justice is the way to true peace, Pope Leo preaches from a deep experience of God’s love through the communion of the Trinity.
Pope Leo also asked us as ‘church’ to go forward united as a community of the baptised who are built on the loving communion that is the Trinity. We do this by participating in the Trinity’s communion of love and sharing this goodness with the whole of creation. The experience of this love is dynamic and revolutionary because it compels us to proclaim in word and deed the transformational love of God.
Our life in relationship with the Trinity is thrilling because it is life beyond belief or comprehension. We do not know what effects our life lived in the Trinity has on others. However, we can say that and justice, we are emanating the love within the Trinity; when we show compassion we are releasing God’s mercy; when we seek reconciliation we are activating God’s desire for respect and justice for all; when we offer an open hand of friendship we are offering the chance for God’s peace to reign. In deep relationship with the Trinity, love, justice, mercy, and peace will be realised in the world through the faithful.
In conclusion, a life lived in the Trinity through our baptism is deeply relational. In this relationship we experience God’s love and are drawn to love God and all that God loves, which is everything. This relationship is dynamic. It has its own power. It further draws us into communion with the whole of creation. In fact, the dynamism in our relationship with the Trinity is dizzying in its immensity, but also palpably present in our everyday lives.
Fr Kelvin Barrett SSC lives and works at St Columban's, Essendon.
