Today we celebrate Trinity Sunday. The Trinity is the foundation of not only our faith but the reality of all that exists. God has been, is, and always will be. God exists as a communion of three Persons, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Three Persons in one God, but not three beings.
Anything we say about God is going to be woefully inadequate regarding the truth of who God is. Jesus, as the Son of God incarnate, revealed to his disciples the truth of who he is and who his Father is. As he approached his crucifixion, he began to prepare his disciples for the coming of the Holy Spirit. “I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now. But when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth” (John 16:12-13).
We consistently how hard it was for the disciples to understand that he was the Son of God, that he in fact is God. Jesus to explain the Holy Spirit to them he knew would not happen. But the seeds that he planted would take firm root for the appointed time at Pentecost which we celebrated last Sunday. The Holy Spirit would come upon Mary and the Apostles, and then we see them, as expressed in the Acts of the Apostles, coming into their spiritual maturity as they are willing to be led by the Holy Spirit.
We are not going to understand the deepest truth of our faith and who God is by intellect and reason alone. To begin we have a better chance of saying what God is not. God is not a being, not one being among many, nor the greatest of all beings. God is not in the same genus as us, nor in any genus. God is not even a supreme being, because God transcends beyond all space and time. God is completely self sufficient, thus he does not need us for our existence, nor does he need anything to exist. God is the very ground and source of all being.
God is infinite act of existence, or in the Latin of St Thomas Aquinas, ispum esse subsistens, the sheer act of “to be”. This means that God has no limitations. To say that God is three Persons is even harder for us to comprehend because we often in our modern sense use the words person and being synonymously. To use the word person in speaking of God means to speak relationally.
We describe God as Father because he begets God the Son, God the Son is the one begotten. The Son is not generated or created, because the Son has always existed with the Father. This is true because they are not finite beings separate from one another. They are infinite, though distinct, in their relation to one another. God the Holy Spirit is then the Love shared between God the Father and God the Son. God within himself then is an infinite communion because of the infinite giving, self-emptying, and infinite receiving between each other. Each Person gives and receives infinitely, perfectly giving all and holding nothing back.
We will never fully comprehend God because he transcends our finite reality. We will be frustrated also if we treat the mystery of God as a problem to be solved. God is not an equation to formulate but a person that we can encounter and develop a relationship with. This is possible because to be in relationship with God and one another is the very reason we have been created. God draws close to us, he reveals himself to us, he seeks us out, his created beings. We are blessed to live in a time when he has already drawn close to us in the Person of his Son through the love of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus and the Holy Spirit continue to reveal the truth of God the Father to us. When we allow the Holy Spirit to dwell within us and follow his guidance, we too can experience the communion of love shared between God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
The best way to understand, to know, to build our relationship with God, is not to force God to fit into our finite reality, mindset or limited view, but to be open to, “the Spirit of truth,” and “he will guide [us] to all truth” (Jn 16:13). The Holy Spirit will guide and lead us to all truth when we resist curving or turning in upon ourself and instead make the time to be still, to breathe, to ponder his living word, and lift our hearts and minds to him in prayer. When we do so we will be expanded and transformed by his love and conformed to God’s will. This gift of grace will grow the more we are open to opportunities to be loved and to love in our everyday moments. For where the willing of the good of each other is, God is, because God is love” (1 John 4:8).
When we as fathers follow the will of the Father, when we are willing to be loved by the Holy Spirit and to love our children and others in return, and when we are willing to sacrifice and serve as Jesus, we are at our best. Happy Father’s Day!
Photo: Spending some quiet time receiving the love of God.
Spiritual Stepping Stones 