I WONDER WHAT accounts for vivid memories from childhood. For example, while re-reading Michael Downey’s “Altogether Gift: A Trinitarian Spirituality” (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2000, pp. 143, $12), a memory from first grade in Catholic grammar school has come back to me. The memory is of Sister reciting questions about the Blessed Trinity and the entire class reciting together the answers. Sister would ask, “How many persons in God?” and we would chime in, “There are three persons in God: the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.” The most vivid memory is that Sister stressed that no one could ever understand the mystery of the Trinity completely, but it was important that we knew the answers to the questions.
Language is important and its importance is strongly stressed by Downey.
Unfortunately for much of my life, speaking correctly and accurately about the mystery of the Trinity may have given me the impression that my way of speaking almost allowed my reason to master the Trinity. Downey writes the following:
“Our grammar, our way of speaking of God as Father, Son, and Spirit, is intended to invite meaningful and truthful communication about God as well as participation in the mystery about which this language speaks. In speaking the language, it is not so much that we grasp the mystery but that we open ourselves so as to be grasped by it. The grammar of the Trinity is meant to convey the simply astonishing truth: ‘God is love.’ (1 Jn 4:8) God’s Word is spoken, God’s Spirit is poured forth. The life and love of God are not past tense, but present, ecstatic, alive, outreaching, gift/ing here and now.” (p. 44)
Language Should Serve Life
What we speak about the Trinity should help us to enter more deeply into the reality of Father, Son and Spirit. Our language should serve our lives. I find Downey’s reflections on the Trinity very helpful, both in trying to relate to God and in trying to appreciate more deeply how human persons are relational. I am thinking of the stress that Pope Francis puts on relationships in his marvelous encyclical “Laudato Si’.” The Holy Father stresses that everything is connected, that everything is related. Our Christian faith really is cosmic. It includes all of being. I think of the human person as magnetized by God: our minds are open to all being, our wills are oriented toward all good. The human person is magnetized by Infinite Being and Unlimited Good. Pointing out that everything created in God’s image has as its destiny to be brought into the communion of one Love, Downey writes the following:
“All reality is personal that is toward and for. God is self-giving, outpouring, ecstatic. God is not foremost a self-contained individual. God is personal. How do we know this? We know this because of the way that God is for us in the grand economy of salvation. Father, Son, and Spirit-toward us, for us, with us, in us, as Giver, Given and Gift/ing.” (p. 56)
Downey stresses that because human beings are created as images of an inherently relational God, we are called to enter deeply into relationships. Our radical vocation is to become our best selves through relationships with other persons. To be a human person is to be called to be a lover. That is not just a lovely, romantic ideal. That is a description of our being. That is who we really are. We are who we are because God is Who God is. Emphasizing that our model is Jesus, Downey writes:
“In the Incarnate Word and through the indwelling Spirit we see what a person is to be and become, recognizing in Jesus Christ the paradigm of rightly ordered relationship with self, others, God, and the whole of creation.” (p. 57)
The Incarnate Word is Incarnate Love! That person did not exist only 2,000 years ago. The Risen Christ is present to us now, present to me as I write this column and present to you as you read it. This is not just good news; it is the best news. It is news so wonderful that it puts our best desires, dreams and hopes to shame. God has gone beyond any gift we might have imagined. It seems like the only response that would make sense is a life of unending gratitude. Each life should be like a Eucharist.
Father Lauder is a philosophy professor at St. John’s University, Jamaica, and author of “Pope Francis’ Spirituality and Our Story” (Resurrection Press).