Our Trinitarian life

IF we believe that we are the image and likeness of God, that in fact we are, with his grace, children of his, made to participate in his very own life, then we should realize that our life cannot but reflect the divine life which, while absolutely simple, is also triune.

      This is the deepest mystery we know about God, thanks to Christ who revealed it to us. It gives rise to the other mysteries of our faith, truths that are so supernatural we cannot fully understand them.

      More than understanding, what we need to do is to believe, because with belief, that is, with faith, the path to understanding these mysteries is opened to us, though that path will also be endless. Still, faith does not stifle understanding, but rather enhances and stimulates it.

      God is one yet three persons. Christ himself said so. He is the Son, there is the Father, and also the Holy Spirit. At the end of his redemptive work on earth, he commissioned his apostles to baptize people in the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

      This divine command should lead us to wonder what baptizing us in the name of the Trinity involves, what effects, what duties it would entail.

      The Church has recommended that we just don’t deal with God in a generic way, but rather that we should try to have a personal relation with each of the persons of the Blessed Trinity. But how do we translate this ideal in practical terms?

      Saints, theologians and other great minds through the ages have tried to fathom this mystery, and to a certain extent they have managed, only to lead us to further levels of the truths.

      Grappling with the mystery of the Blessed Trinity is definitely a sublime exercise, for which we are somehow basically wired and equipped by way of our capacity to think, to know, to love, and to love not only with intentions and words, but also and mainly in deeds.

      It’s an exercise that launches us to a never-ending effort to mine the mystery, accompanied in every stage of the process by some effects and fruits in our heart and soul.

      What we now know about this mystery is that in the very core of the life of God, there is an eternal, perpetual dynamism of knowing and loving, in such a way that these actions are not only actions, but persons, given the supreme perfection of God.

      God is absolutely simple with no division or parts. Everything we know about him is identified with his substance. But though one and simple, he is not alone nor inert. He is in constant motion of knowing and loving.

      His knowing is not an act alone that begins and ends. It is fully identified with his very substance, and is therefore referred to as a person that goes on from all eternity. So is his loving.

      It is in knowing and loving that makes God present in everything as well as what makes everything in himself. St. Thomas Aquinas can shed light on this when he said that in knowing, the known object is in the knower, while in loving, the lover is in the beloved.

      Following this principle, we can conclude that within God, he knows and loves himself perfectly well. Outside of him, everything is in him, since he knows everything, and vice-versa, he is in everything, since he loves everything. Nothing escapes from his knowing and loving.

      If we are to reflect and actually live this Trinitarian life of God due to the fact that we are his image and likeness and even adopted children of his, then we have understand that our knowing and loving should approximate or even go in sync with the knowing and loving of God.

      In God, the knower is the Father, the known object, that is, what God knows of himself, is the Son, while the love between the two is the Holy Spirit.

      Therefore, for as long as we pursue in God the act of knowing, we are relating ourselves to the Father as knower. For as long as what we know conforms to God’s knowledge, we relate ourselves to the Son. And for as long as we love what we know, we are relating ourselves to the Holy Spirit.

      This should give us the idea of how we can make an intimate relationship with each of the persons of the Blessed Trinity. It’s in perfecting our knowing and loving in God as revealed by Christ.