Fr. Luigi Brioni, sx
TRINITY SUNDAY
“If the Trinity were not revealed, it had to be invented”. So said and wrote one of our Xaverian fathers in a non-distant time. His assertion was backed by the definition of God, which John gives in his first letter to the Christians, when he wrote, “God is love” (1 John 4:16). Our priest was explaining, and you guess that I am on his side, that someone cannot be and do “love” when he is alone, when there is no one else close by. If no one is there to love, then, how can love exist at all? How can God be? If God is alone, if He is only one person, he can only be and have only selfish love, a self-interested and introvert existence. He would be, yes, a creator and saviour, but for His own benefit. He would make us human beings only to serve Him and, so to say, to increase his own glory. But, by making us for ourselves, as it is so clearly expressed in the story of Adam and Eve, He can surely take delight in His people and show us that we are the unmistakable objects of His unconditional love, asking nothing in return. In the Old Testament nowhere is the essence of love better expressed than in the Song of Songs, when the two lovers say to each other, “My beloved is mine and I am his” (2:16). Here we have a (small) taste of the equality, reciprocity, and total belonging of the Three Persons. Yes, love needs another, a Thou; perfect love needs to be triune!
It is an exercise in futility to try to understand the Trinity in its fullness, but one simple example for our people in Sierra Leone is taken from the setting of their kitchen. There the cook makes fire and places her pot on three stones. Thus, not three fires, but one; but the three stones are in need of one another to support the pot. My good friends in USA or Italy, so much accustomed to gas and electricity and microwaving, you may not get this small parable, but here it works well and (especially) “my” ladies nod on it in total assent. And I feel sure that the Trinity’s love is not far away from them, even in their poverty and lack of formal education.
It was finally the Word-made-flesh (Jo 1:14) that in His New Testament replaced humanity’s effort to invent the Trinity and told us clearly that He and the Father are one together with their Spirit, that they are an absolute family, which lives only with and by love.
We cannot now give a lesson on the Trinity. It would take us too much time, and, above all, in the end we would make very little progress in our understanding of the Triune God. But what is important to remember, and celebrate, and live out is the reality of the Trinity-Love in our very life. As Jesus reminds Nicodemus in the Gospel of this Feast, God loved the world so much, so intensely, so truly, to give us His Son. And then His Son gives us the Spirit of them Both! For us, for all, for me.
This “for me” has recently become the refrain of my catechesis to the candidates for Baptism this Easter. Yes, we Christians do believe that the Three Persons are so much in love with one another that their love cannot be kept within themselves, but needs to overflow in abundance for me and for creation.
We are baptized Christians “in the name of the Father …..”; we make the Sign of the Cross “in the name of the Father ….”; we are created by the Father, saved by the Son, and made holy by the Spirit. Do we need anything else to be blessed, to be joyful, to be loving in His (Their) image and likeness?
May the Divine Family be truly our family too, our home, here and there, now and ever. Amen.
TRINITY SUNDAY
“If the Trinity were not revealed, it had to be invented”. So said and wrote one of our Xaverian fathers in a non-distant time. His assertion was backed by the definition of God, which John gives in his first letter to the Christians, when he wrote, “God is love” (1 John 4:16). Our priest was explaining, and you guess that I am on his side, that someone cannot be and do “love” when he is alone, when there is no one else close by. If no one is there to love, then, how can love exist at all? How can God be? If God is alone, if He is only one person, he can only be and have only selfish love, a self-interested and introvert existence. He would be, yes, a creator and saviour, but for His own benefit. He would make us human beings only to serve Him and, so to say, to increase his own glory. But, by making us for ourselves, as it is so clearly expressed in the story of Adam and Eve, He can surely take delight in His people and show us that we are the unmistakable objects of His unconditional love, asking nothing in return. In the Old Testament nowhere is the essence of love better expressed than in the Song of Songs, when the two lovers say to each other, “My beloved is mine and I am his” (2:16). Here we have a (small) taste of the equality, reciprocity, and total belonging of the Three Persons. Yes, love needs another, a Thou; perfect love needs to be triune!
It is an exercise in futility to try to understand the Trinity in its fullness, but one simple example for our people in Sierra Leone is taken from the setting of their kitchen. There the cook makes fire and places her pot on three stones. Thus, not three fires, but one; but the three stones are in need of one another to support the pot. My good friends in USA or Italy, so much accustomed to gas and electricity and microwaving, you may not get this small parable, but here it works well and (especially) “my” ladies nod on it in total assent. And I feel sure that the Trinity’s love is not far away from them, even in their poverty and lack of formal education.
It was finally the Word-made-flesh (Jo 1:14) that in His New Testament replaced humanity’s effort to invent the Trinity and told us clearly that He and the Father are one together with their Spirit, that they are an absolute family, which lives only with and by love.
We cannot now give a lesson on the Trinity. It would take us too much time, and, above all, in the end we would make very little progress in our understanding of the Triune God. But what is important to remember, and celebrate, and live out is the reality of the Trinity-Love in our very life. As Jesus reminds Nicodemus in the Gospel of this Feast, God loved the world so much, so intensely, so truly, to give us His Son. And then His Son gives us the Spirit of them Both! For us, for all, for me.
This “for me” has recently become the refrain of my catechesis to the candidates for Baptism this Easter. Yes, we Christians do believe that the Three Persons are so much in love with one another that their love cannot be kept within themselves, but needs to overflow in abundance for me and for creation.
We are baptized Christians “in the name of the Father …..”; we make the Sign of the Cross “in the name of the Father ….”; we are created by the Father, saved by the Son, and made holy by the Spirit. Do we need anything else to be blessed, to be joyful, to be loving in His (Their) image and likeness?
May the Divine Family be truly our family too, our home, here and there, now and ever. Amen.