Is My Relationship With the Father, the Son, or the Holy Spirit?

June 4, 2023 

Today is the feast of the Holy Trinity.  And we all have been taught to understand the trinity as referring to three PERSONS, i.e. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, all co-existing in ONE God.  But how do we make sense of this doctrine? And does such a doctrine have any implications for our daily living?

There is an apocryphal story narrated about St. Augustine, who reportedly spent 30 years writing his treatise on the Trinity.  And the story goes that one day he was walking by the seashore reflecting on the mystery of the Trinity, when he saw a small boy running back and forth from the water to a spot on the seashore. The boy was using a sea shell to carry the water from the ocean and place it into a small hole in the sand. Augustine approached him and asked, “My boy, what are you doing?” “I am trying to bring all the sea into this hole,” the boy replied with a sweet smile.

 “But that is impossible, my dear child, the hole cannot contain all that water,” said Augustine.

The boy paused in his work, stood up, looked into the eyes of the Saint, and replied, “It is no more impossible than what you are trying to do – comprehend the immensity of the mystery of the Holy Trinity with your small intelligence.” The Saint was absorbed by such a keen response from that child, and turned his eyes from him for a short while. When he glanced down to ask him something else, the boy had vanished.

Nice story!  But do we let it go at that - do we just close our minds and say: ‘Oh, well that is a mystery which even Augustine could not understand - so just forget it and BELIEVE BLINDLY’. Some may be comfortable with that.  But some of us may not.

But, perhaps St.Augustine was at a disadvantage.  For instance, he did not have all the growth in understanding of religions in general, and also of other religions, that we have today.  Therefore, for those who are not satisfied with just closing their minds and believing blindly, we have to ask: ‘Can we make some sense of this doctrine today?’  

Let us start to try and understand this mystery of the Trinity, by reflecting on what is common to all these three readings for today.   

In the first reading, we hear that Moses, who had earlier broken the first set of tablets on which the Ten Commandments were inscribed (Exodus 32:19) because he sees his people singing and dancing and praying to a golden calf, now makes a new set of tablets and takes them to God, asking for his forgiveness and favour for his people.  In the second reading, Paul has heard about a lot of ‘contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, uncleanness, lewdness’ which he refers to in the verses (2 Cor 12:20-21) just before today’s second reading, and so he is pleading with the Corinthian Church community  to set everything in order and prays that they may be blessed by God to be able to do this.  And today’s Gospel passage comes after the description of Jesus chasing out the merchants in the temple,  which was followed by Nicodemus, a Pharisee, approaching him and asking for some explanations from Jesus. And in response, Jesus explains that the only way that human beings could come back to God is if God made a special effort to bring them back to him, an effort that God does make by sending the Son of God.

 

So what we are seeing in all three readings is that in each of the stories, the people have experienced the guidance/power of God, even the love of God, but despite that people still fall away and tend to go after what we can term ‘golden calves’ - or ‘sinful goals’ - whether it be the Jews in Moses’ time, whether the Jews in the temple, or even the Christians in Corinth.

We see the same kind of thing in our lives - a person may go to a holy place, listen to the preachings, experience miracles, but when they come back to  their lives, they go back to living the same kind of lives as they did before. But for a few of us, there is a real change of heart, inner change that changes us completely and It is that inner transformation that takes place when it is said that God’s spirit is working in our hearts. So Paul in the second reading prays that the people experience not only the grace of God and the love of God, but also the communion with the holy spirit. In other words Paul is praying that Corinthians experience God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in their hearts. 

 

In the same way,  when the early Church reflected on their experiences of God, they realised that they had experienced God in three distinct ways - as the powerful and guiding Abba Father, as a loving Son, and as an empowering Spirit.  And they felt the need to ‘describe’ this threefold experience of God because they realised that unless every Christian had experienced God in all three ways, they would not have had a complete experience of God, and their lives did not, and would not change - as they knew from the story of their own lives.  But how to describe these three different experiences of God in a way that did not confuse the three and blend them into one experience?  To use the analogy of the rainbow - how does one teach others that the fullness of white light comes to us ONLY when all seven colours come to us?   That was the debate within the early Church - that was their struggle.

 

At this point, let me tell you a story, a parable of mine, that may perhaps help us to understand how the early Church solved this question of how to express their different experiences of God.

Once there was a planet of plants. They were very much like the plants we 
see around us, except that they could speak. One fine day, a spaceship from 
Earth landed on that planet. Some unfamiliar beings descended and started 
carrying out certain experiments. When they found that the plants could speak, 
these beings interacted with the plants as they carried out their experiments.  
 
After a few days these strange beings got into their ship and went away.
 After they had gone, the plants who had conversed with them exclaimed in 
wonder to their plant friends of the marvelous new kind of beings they had 
related with. The curious friends – and their friends - who had not had an 
opportunity to interact with these marvelous beings pestered the plants who 
had met them, to describe them. The ‘lucky’ plants at first refused, saying that 
these beings were so different that it was impossible to communicate their 
differences in words. But the others insisted, and so after much persuasion, 
these lucky plants made serious efforts to describe them. 
 
Unlike us,” one of the fortunate plants began, “these beings have two, not just 
one, tap root.”  “And again, unlike us,” chimed in another, “their two tap roots 
are above the ground.”  “And marvel of marvels,” continued a third, “they can 
lift their tap roots and move to another spot and continue to draw nourishment 
from the earth from that new spot.  And, however often they moved, there was 
no let up in the nourishment that they continued to get from the earth through 
these tap roots.” do all sorts of wonders with those branches.”  
 
The first plant went on. “Above these two tap roots was their trunk,” it recollected,  
“which, like ours, was presumably meant to be a means by which the nourishment  
from the earth would rise to the upper parts of the being. However, they had only  
two branches, and a few smaller branches on each of these two major branches.”  
“But,” interjected the second, still in great wonder, “though only two, these 
branches of these beings were marvelous - they could grab hold of things, and 
do all sorts of wonders with those branches.”  
 
"They did have a weakness, though," the third plant said thoughtfully. "They had
just one fruit, situated midway between the two branches... with a little bit of  
grassy growth above the fruit, like we have in coconuts. At least I think it was a
weakness because, unlike us, once that one fruit fell off, that being would die." 

Now the question is this: Was that description of the ‘marvelous beings” accurate? Well, yes and no! Since the plants had to use their own terminology, their own plant language, and their own awareness of their world, to speak of a being that was so different from themselves, it was a true description to the degree that it pointed somewhat in the direction of the truth (human beings do have two legs, two hands and a trunk, with a head).  But at the same time it was also NOT a true description - in many obvious ways (e.g. the legs, for instance, are not tap roots, nor does the food move upward drawn from the earth, nor is the head a fruit). 

In the same way, like the plants struggling to describe humans in plant language, we often struggle to explain our experience of God in human terms. Similarly, throughout its history, the Church (as in all religious groups) HAD to use the language and concepts of their time in order to be able to hand down to successive generations their own experience of God. 

And since the early Church felt the need to share with those who came after them, the story of Jesus, and the story of their various experiences of God, the early Christians used the Greco-Roman philosophical concepts of PERSONHOOD to help them articulate their experiences. In that philosophy, a PERSON was defined as  one who had a distinctive and independent way of functioning, and that seemed a useful ‘plant language’ to speak of the three different ways in which they experienced God entering their own lives. But at the same time, as strict monotheists, they were clear that there was only ONE God.  And so, they finally came to the grudging articulation that God was ONE, but intervenes in three different ways in human lives and so consisted of THREE PERSONS. So ONE GOD, THREE PERSONS.  Such human concepts (or “Plant language”) was the best they could come up with, to describe these three different experiences of the ONE God they believed in.  

Not that everybody agreed with this articulation, and so we know from historical records that the Latin word for person ("personae") sounded like a heresy to the Eastern Churches, and the Greek word for person ("hypostasis") sounded like a heresy to the Western Churches. Eventually St. Augustine (being from the Western Churches) pushed for the use of the term ‘person’, acknowledging that this was just a ‘necessary way of speaking’, that helped us articulate this experience the best we could.  This view gradually prevailed in Councils (that were perhaps dominated by the Western Churches), and this expression became the dogma of the Church.  Looking at this doctrine from the perspective of many centuries later, we can recognise that this description of God as TRINITY was an analogical way, a human (or plant language) way of expressing the different ways in how the early Christians experienced God.  

But what relevance does this dogma of the TRINITY have for us today?   

My suggestion is perhaps we could ask ourselves honestly - HOW have we experienced God in our lives?  Have we perhaps experienced God primarily as a Rule Giver, who tells us what is right and wrong, and who forgives us if we do wrong?  Or  perhaps our primary experience of God is that of someone close to us like a brother/friend who cares deeply for us and to whom we can take all our sufferings hoping for healing - somebody we can approach more easily than the somewhat-distant God the Father?  Or have we experienced God as a Spirit who enlightens and empowers and most of all PUSHES us out into mission?   The chances are that we have experienced God more frequently in the first and second ways - but have rarely experienced God in the third way. And that was the weakness that the early Church realised was present in many of the early Christians.  Of course experiencing God in the first two ways is truly experiencing God, but both of them are not transformative of our lives.  We remain ‘good’ Christians, not “Christians on a Mission’.  

 

And so the doctrine communicates the teaching that just KNOWING the will of God and even experiencing God’s love as Abba/Father, or even being enraptured by the wonders and teachings of God in our lives (as the disciples were in their experience of Jesus) does not necessarily change us in a way that we are “saved”. Something further must happen within us. We must experience an interior change of heart, that gives us enlightenment and courage to live in a completely different ‘other-centred’ way like Jesus did.  And this transformational change comes only when we internally experience the Spirit of enlightenment and courage.  To use the Buddhist story as an example, we have Gautama who had received the wisdom of the various religious teachings and scriptures of his own world, and attached himself to various gurus and religious leaders, always trying every way to find enlightenment, but somehow, no teaching, no experience really gave him the answer he was looking for.  Finally, however, he settles down under the Bodhi tree and after much time, finally experiences a sudden enlightenment that completely transforms him. And that sudden enlightenment comes to him as a gift - it is not something he has worked out for himself.  And then he no more remains Gautama, but he becomes the BUDDHA.  That final experience is what really changes him.  And so it is with us. We may have grown up in Christianity, we may have been taught repeatedly in catechism classes and sermons and prayers from our families, - and yet, whatever we have grown up with, whatever we have been taught, whatever miracles we may or may not have seen, whatever religious services or sacraments we partake in - none of that seems to be enough to change us substantially.  Until suddenly some of us, suddenly experience an inner transformation that the Church has called the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

 

Do we unfortunately have to accept that perhaps most of us have NOT experienced that earth-shattering inner transformation that has completely changed the course of our lives on a permanent basis.   Could we then say that though we may have found much meaning in experiencing God in one or both of the first two ways, we have not yet experienced God in that third way? The Trinitarian dogma reminds us of this reality of our lives - and it is for this reason that the dogma has relevance in our lives. 

First Reading: Exodus 34: 4b-6, 8-9

And Moses rose early in the morning and went up on Mount Sinai, as the Lord had commanded him, and took in his hand the two tablets of stone. The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name, “The Lord.”  The Lord passed before him, and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, And Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth, and worshiped. He said, “If now I have found favor in your sight, O Lord, I pray, let the Lord go with us. Although this is a stiff-necked people, pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for your inheritance.”

Second Reading: Second Corinthians 13: 11-13

Finally, brothers and sisters, farewell. Put things in order, listen to my appeal, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you.  Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the saints greet you. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.

Gospel: John 3: 16-18

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.  Indeed God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.  Those who believe in him are not condemned, but those who do not believe are condemned already because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.