The Trinity explains both the reality of our faith and the depths of our human nature
Posted on May 30th 2010 in Weekly messages
Two of the key maxims taken up by the mediaeval theologian, St Thomas Aquinas, from classical philosophy have always perplexed me. The first is Aristotle’s statement ‘that all people desire to know’, and the second that ‘everyone acts for the good’. Both sound counter-intuitive and the experience of life would say otherwise. Much of life is spent not wanting to know, of putting off difficult questions, or of assuming what is blatantly untrue to help us through life’s difficulties. Again what one chooses to do as good is often far off the mark with respect to the good established by God. The weight of evidence points in the other direction, that most people are either not interested in knowing the truth, or act for selfish reasons alone.
However, what should prevent every Catholic from taking this cynical road are the experiences of the liberating power of the truth, and the internal resonances of divine peace when a truly good act has been undertaken. These experiences might not be very common, but when they occur, they point to the deeper human nature of each person, what might be called our religious selves. They point to our real nature, and become the yardstick whereby we may measure the everyday. The method of measurement makes the believer look upward rather than levelling God’s creation downwards.
The same may be said about the Trinity, the Solemnity of which the Church celebrates this Sunday. The doctrine of the Trinity may be explained in human language stretched to the limits of comprehensibility but, without intuitions of the relationship between Jesus and the Father or the experience of the Holy Spirit, all human words will be doomed to failure. The existence of God as Trinity is the backdrop to our Christian religious experiences. The religious experience of Catholics does not prove the Trinity. It is the relationship between God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit that makes our own religious experiences possible. The relationship between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit explain the encounter that the believer has of Jesus as the bringer of God’s mercy, and with the Holy Spirit in the sacramental moments of their lives, the reception of Holy Communion, marriage in Church, intense charitable actions and moments of quiet prayer. The reality of the Trinity embraces every aspect of our lives but this reality only breaks through every so often. When it does break through, sometimes quite unexpectedly, there can be an overwhelming sense of contentment and belonging, which can be hard to describe in words but which reassures us that the daily struggle of life has a greater purpose. This experience charts a course between the superficiality of thinking everything can only get better, and the counsel of despair that everything is getting worse.
The existence of the Trinity, and the relationships between the Father and the Son, the eternal consequence of God’s thinking, and the relationship between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the consequence of God’s outpouring of love, together establish the framework for all human life. The human desire to know and to do good, requires a personal commitment. The Trinity animates this peculiarly human aspect of our nature, our free will, and along with this, the ability to know and to love, to remember and to imagine. The fact that the Son of God took human flesh and carried the Holy Spirit has inserted God into human history, and humanity into the life of God. God cannot be belittled by human evil, malice or limitation, but humanity can grasp its potential greatness through the experience of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.