This weekend we celebrate the feast of the Most Holy Trinity – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The Church, in her great wisdom, places this feast immediately after Pentecost – the Son returning to the Father and the Father sending us the Holy Spirit.
The Trinity is the greatest truth and mystery of God. We come to knowledge of the Trinity only through God’s revelation – we could not have discovered it on our own. You can’t see the Trinity in a telescope or model it on a computer. It is beyond our faculty of reason.
Buddhism endeavors to go beyond (or “transcend”) human reason using koans – expressions that serve to quiet the mind and turn from human reasoning to “enlightenment.” A classic koan is “what is the sound of one hand clapping?” Another one is, “why would anyone order a raised donut instead of a cake donut?” (it’s not written down anywhere, but we’re certain the Buddha meditated on that).
Here again we come to a key difference between eastern and Christian spirituality. Reflecting on “one hand clapping” might quiet the mind, but to what end? It leaves us only with an absurdity; it leads only to nothingness.
Christianity offers its own marvelous alternative to “koans” – but they aren’t absurdities to confound the mind – they are mysteries that invite us into relationship. One of the greatest is the Trinity – three Persons sharing one divine nature. Christianity offers many other “koans” – like the hypostatic union of Christ – one Person with both a divine and human nature (true God and true man).
Returning to the Trinity, our basic understanding is that the two great actions of God are knowing and loving. God’s self-knowing is so real that it is a Person – the Son. And the love between Father and Son is so real that it is a Person – the Holy Spirit.
The Father is not the Son and the Son is not the Father. The Son is not the Spirit and the Spirit is not the Son. And the Father is not the Spirit and the Spirit is not the Father.
Three distinct Persons, but all are God.
That is a mystery with meaning, because God truly exists as three Persons, as opposed to the absurdity of koans (by definition, one hand can’t clap, any more than a man can give birth, but we digress…).
In this week’s Pearls episode (click here to watch/listen) and our follow up emails we’ll look closer at each Person of the Trinity and, especially, how we fit into Their relationship.
Blessings on your journey with Christ –
Steve and Karen Smith
Interior Life
Postscript: The interior “conversation” of the Trinity
Here’s a question – what does the Trinity “talk” about? They’re all God. They share the same Divine Nature and same Divine Will. What is left to talk about?
Since our human nature is a reflection of Their divine nature, we should expect to find some illumination in our own experience.
We might think of long-married couples. They need few words because they have grown so close to one another – they are happy to simply be together. In fact, so close have they grown together that when one is brought home, the other is often soon to follow.
Or we might think of our own thoughts when we’re alone. Do we not tend to have near-continuous conversations in our head (especially all you introverts out there..)? To be sure, that is not the inner life of the Trinity (“can you believe the shoes We wore today?”). But let’s take it one step further. What happens to that endless interior dialogue when we’re captivated by a great sight, like a beautiful sunset over the ocean? The internal conversations fade to the background, and we’re left contemplating the sunset – simply lost in that experience of beauty. Now we’re perhaps getting closer to the inner life of the Trinity.
That ordinary experience of contemplation is the springboard to the supernatural experience of contemplation, when God enters into our mental prayer and guides our faculties. The mystics tell us that at the heights of contemplation (entering into the “cloud of unknowing”) we come to a place of complete sacred silence, in which we are simply present with the Almighty.
Perhaps these sorts of simple human experiences give the slightest glimpse of the “divine conversation” that is the eternal relationship, self-knowing, and self-giving of the Trinity.