What a Life!

The three great monotheistic religions in the world are Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Those religions believe in only one God. The rest of the world religions believe in many gods, perhaps hundreds or thousands. Christianity adds a unique element to the belief in one God. We believe that our one God is manifest in three persons. We use the word “Trinity” to describe this belief. If you spell out the word, tri – that is, three; and unity – that is, one. Only Christianity has this teaching of three in one.

The word “Trinity” does not appear in the Bible. This is a term that became part of our Christian vocabulary about three centuries later. Christians believed that there was one God in three persons. The early Church did not have a name for what they believed. In time, we came up with a name – Trinity.

God is beyond our grasp. If we fully understood God, then we would be God because, in the very act of fully understanding, we would have God under our control. A god under our control surely is not much of a god. Of course, God is completely beyond our grasp. If there were no mystery in God, nothing about God that you and I could not fully comprehend, it would be a very insignificant god, quite unworthy of worship.

Reflecting on the mystery of the Trinity, writer Ron Rolheiser put it this way: “God is a trinity, a flow of relationships among persons. If this is true, and scripture assures us that it is, then the realities of dealing with each other in community, at the dinner table, over a bottle of wine or an argument, not to mention the simple giving and receiving of hospitality are not pure, secular experiences but the stuff of church, the place where the life of God flows through us.”

If I could articulate only one thing to help people embrace the mystery of the Trinity, it is this: The reason the Trinity is important is because it changes everything. If there is just a Deity out there who created the world, established some rules, and then sat back until Judgment Day, we are all in a heap of trouble. However, if God so loves the world that Jesus entered our skin and our everyday life, showed us one clear path through sin and death, and promised to be with us always to the end of time, we have every reason to hope.

All of us have the same longing for union with one another and with the world in which we live. That longing is based on who we are as sons and daughters of God. It is a wonderful longing that we must never think of as merely sentimental or just for those with poetic dispositions. That longing tells us in a very powerful way who we are and who God is. As God’s creatures, we are truly sons and daughters of the One we call Love.

We know that we are not alone in this world, having to live with our broken relationships, bad choices, and regrets. God is here, present, active, and powerful. If we want to listen to a voice of wisdom that will only tell us the truth about ourselves, the world, and our journey through the world, that voice is available to us right now.

God established creation with nothing but goodness. Although we have managed to cause much evil in human history, that does not diminish God’s available goodness. The Spirit of truth will lead us straight to the best this world can offer. May every mark of affection, every gesture of friendship that you give to others, be a sign of God’s peace for you.