American theologian Thomas Rausch, S.J., in his book Systematic Theology, states simply: the doctrine of the Trinity is not in the New Testament, but there are trinitarian formulas in it. What our scriptures do reveal to us is a self-giving God who is love. The Nicene Creed we say during most Sunday Masses is a trinitarian creed. It was formulated in the year 325 to affirm the equalness (consubstantialness) of Christ with the Father, and of the Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified. This is language that uses Greek philosophical categories (from Plato, Aristotle and others) of thought about the inner life of God. Today, theologians are still trying to understand, comment on and amend this difficult language! After all, we also say that God is not the same kind of being as we are, and so all our words are inadequate.
So what can we say that is understandable for our souls? In our second Trinity Sunday reading, there is one of those “trinitarian formulas.” “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.” These words are from 2 Cor 13:13 and were written very soon after the resurrection, around the year 56. Sometimes they are used as the priest’s greeting at the beginning of Mass. The evangelist John, writing at the end of the first century, presented God as love, and we hear him speaking that way today. The reality of this doctrine of the Trinity becomes real for us when we consider how divine love operates in our world and in our lives. God works lovingly to create: “God so loved the world,” or, better, God is loving the world, continuing to bring life into the whole universe on a scale we barely comprehend. God is also continuing to save — but we ought not hear “save” as only referring to sin. God is saving us through Jesus’ life as well as through his death and resurrection.
Salvation happens in us continually and in many ways, flowing from Jesus the Christ. Throughout our lives we are enlightened and inspired by Christ the light, healed from the many wounds of life, found when we lose our way, forgiven when we need that, given a purpose for our lives, and helped to face our deaths. This is all “being saved.” And finally, we have the Spirit, the accompanying love of God, gracing us to help us in the mission Jesus gives us, to be the light of the world. Because we experience these three ways of God’s love, we reason back to God’s very self. The abstract language of trinitarian doctrine is talking about this threeness of loving in God. And God does not keep that love locked up in the divine self. The trinitarian self-giving God who is love pours threefold divine love out into the universe and into our hearts.
— Blog entry by Sister Mary Garascia
The post May 31, Trinity Sunday, Three Loves: a Sunday Scriptures blog first appeared on Sisters of the Precious Blood.