The Holy Trinity. Today we celebrate the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity. While implicitly referred to in the Old Testament, explicitly proclaimed by Jesus Christ and the apostles in the New Testament, and formulated dogmatically by the Church only in the succeeding centuries, the Trinity is and has been from all eternity. The Trinity is the primordial and everlasting reality from which we originate, upon which we pattern our existence, and for which we are ultimately destined.
Dogmatically, Christians proclaim that God is One in three Persons: God the Father is the unbegotten Creator, Jesus Christ, the eternally begotten Son of the Father, and the Holy Spirit, the mutual eternal love between Father and Son. Theologians through the centuries have attempted to explain how three persons can constitute One God. Augustine, for instance, employed the analogy of love to explain the unity-in-distinction of the Triune God: the Father is the Lover, the Son, the Beloved, and the Holy Spirit, the love between them. While distinct, they share one essence, love. As John the evangelist proclaims, “God is Love.”
The Cappadocian Fathers develop the same idea of God’s essence through the concept of relationality. We can try to decipher God by listing attributes of God as the Greek philosophers did: omnipotent, omniscient, immutable (cannot change), impassible (cannot suffer). But these attributes, while true and important in underscoring the oneness of God, are insufficient. They can lead us to conceptualize God as a monad, existing from all eternity, self-sufficient in heaven and detached from the world. The oneness of God is complemented by the threefold personhood of God, which emphasizes God’s relationality. An ancient doctrine beautifully describes the inter-relationships among the three persons of the Trinity as perichoresis — an eternal dance of self-emptying love among Father, Son and Spirit. From all eternity, the three persons give themselves totally to each other in love. Moreover, from the creation of the cosmos to the crib and cross of Christ God has revealed God’s essence as self-emptying Love. As Robert Barron writes, “Love is the deepest name of God.”
The Great Commandment. In our Gospel reading today, Jesus commands His disciples to baptize all nations in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. How is this great commandment related to the mystery of the Trinity?
To become a disciple of Jesus Christ entails becoming like Him interiorly and externally — imbibing the values and convictions which shaped His person and emulating His way of life. The great commandment to baptize all nations adds another condition for discipleship — evangelization, drawing others to Christ, not by imposing the Christian Faith on others, but by proclaiming and witnessing to Him.
We proclaim Jesus when our words and way of life witness to Him. As Jesus is the incarnation of the absolute self-emptying love of God, so is the Church, the community of disciples, the sacrament of Jesus’ love and the sacrament of God’s compassion for the world. To proclaim Jesus is thus to pattern our lives after Jesus’, to become like Him who is the heart of our Triune God in human form. To baptize all nations in the name of the Trinity is to bear witness to the historical self-emptying of Jesus on the Cross and the eternal self-emptying among Father, Son and Spirit.
Footnote on the con-ass. While this is supposed to be an apolitical column, I cannot in conscience not comment on the con-ass in relation to our faith in the Triune God: Becoming fully human entails becoming like God who is Self-emptying Love. Since we are seeds of the Triune God, we will find our true selves only by patterning our lives upon the Love which has begotten us.
This is why we are scandalized and infuriated by the self-seeking behavior of our politicians, particularly the Lower House of Congress which railroaded the con-ass. We do not see in their machinations self-emptying love for their constituents or the nation; we do not see in their manipulation of the rule of law a concern for the public welfare, love for our patrimony, compassion for the weakest members of society, but rather, detect self-seeking motives to prolong their hold on power and to amass greater wealth. They do not reflect the best of what we are called to be, servants to one another. They do not embody their lofty vocation, to be servant-representatives of our people and to be subservient to the will of the people. In fact, in wielding power in pursuit of their self-seeking ends, in dismissing the voice of the people who are against a con-con or a con-ass, and in manipulating the law in accordance to their schemes, they epitomize the worst in us as a people.
In protesting the con-ass, we are repudiating the dynamism of self-absorption and self-aggrandizement which lures and, then, ensnares all of us. In denouncing the actions of the Lower House, we are consequently affirming our collective human vocation, that which we are called by grace to be, that which we elected men and women in Congress to embody; that is, the self-emptying love of Father, Son and Spirit.
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