Welcome, friend!

In this week’s session, we continue to break from the regular reflections. Here, Fr. Freeh gives us the broad-brush overview of what the Trinity is, how our belief in a triune God sets Christians apart from every other faith, and how expressing that common belief could be an important step toward real ecumenical progress…in less than 10 minutes!

[Note: I’m playing catch-up on the feast days here owing to travel. Trinity Sunday was this past weekend. Despite more travel, I hope to have the post for Corpus Christi up in time for this Sunday, and post in time for the Feast of the Sacred Heart on the following Friday, for those of you who are keeping track.]

Like Vicki, I’m wondering what the beeping was all about–and also wondering if Fr. Freeh’s hearing is what it used to be! 😉 I’m discovering these sessions are “like a box of chocolates…you never know what you’ll find.” Except maybe something good to chew on. You might want to invite a Protestant friend to reflect on Fr. Freeh’s discussion of the meaning, worship, blessing, consecration, protection, and witness of the Sign of the Cross…and take that first step to unity.

The Holy Trinity, as Fr. Freeh points out, is the key to understanding our redemption. But what do we understand about the Holy Trinity?

A few years ago, I got into a discussion about the Holy Trinity over a drink with someone. The conversation went like this:

Me: “I know the Trinity is the central mystery of the Christian faith, and there must be more to it than this…but on the first-pass level, it makes perfect sense to me. God is love. Love is necessarily a relationship, so He has to be more than One Person. God the Father knows Himself perfectly, and that perfect knowledge of Himself is His Son. And the perfect love between them is the Holy Spirit. And since love unifies, Perfect Love must necessarily be Perfect Unity–One God.”*

Someone: “My understanding of God is a little more abstract than that.”

Me: “You realize that, by definition, an abstract of something is less than its reality. Right? And the real God will never be less than complete and entire.”

Someone: “Hmmm.”

For me, one of the keys to going beyond my first-pass understanding of the Holy Trinity is to understand our eternal God in the dynamic present tense. I’ve often fallen into the trap of associating “eternal” with “long past,” or “far future.” This perspective removes Him from what matters most to my spiritual life: Right Now.

When we proclaim Jesus Christ to be “the Only Begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages,” we’re not talking about something over and done with before the Big Bang was a twinkle in God’s eye. The Word of God is begotten by God the Father always, and everywhere… including right now, right here. The same is true for the Holy Spirit, the everlasting–and ever present–expression of the Love between the Father and Son.

The same is true, by the way, for God’s creation of the universe. When I was kid, I learned the prayer to the Holy Spirit, but I never understood the line, “Send forth Thy Spirit and they shall be created. And Thou shalt renew the face of the earth.”

God had already made us. What’s this about “they shall be created”? The earth seemed pretty darn solid to me. How can God renew the face of the earth?

What I didn’t even begin to understand back then is this truth: God didn’t just wind us up like a clock and walk away. He’s holding us in existence right now. In Him, “we live, and move, and have our being.” It follows, then, that He has the power, in this ever-present moment of Creation, to create in us clean hearts, to heal us, to transform us. If we let Him. If we give ourselves to Him. In this moment.

The best example of this is, of course, our Blessed Mother. Her self-gift was entire, to each of the Three Persons, as daughter, mother, and mystical spouse. If you want to understand the relationship God wants with each of us, ask Mary to teach you.

So, is your understanding of God more of an abstract thing? Or do you want to enter into relationship with each of the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity…and enter into the unity of Love Himself?

Now.

And Forever!