Trinity and Community

Message from Fr. Jose Koluthara, CMI

Lord Jesus, help us to foster the interpersonal relationships in our community contemplating the mystery of the Trinity.

My Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Today, Trinity Sunday, we pause to consider mystery in our lives. The difference between mystery and problem is vast. A problem is something we can solve.

Managing to pay all our bills each month is a problem. Mystery, though, is not something that can be solved or managed. We all live with mystery, although we may not be aware of it. One of the most fundamental mysteries of all is life itself. We recognize it, we cherish it, we fear losing it, but we do not understand it anymore than we grasp its end – death. Do we understand love? Try to explain why you love someone, you will always fall far short of the truth.

Nicodemus was faced with mystery, and he resorted to problem solving, He was a leader in the community, a Pharisee of high repute. But he was also drawn irresistibly to the person of Jesus. Prudently, he went to Jesus under cover of darkness, seeking to resolve his dilemma. But Jesus spoke of belief, not solutions. Belief has to do with entering into mystery. Jesus startled Nicodemus by telling him he must be born again, of water and the spirit. Reduced to a problem, this makes no sense. As mystery, we believe.

It was faith that prompted Paul to conclude his second letter to the Corinthians with this blessing: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you”. Reason did not bring Paul to this declaration of Trinity, only faith, the acceptance of mystery.

The Trinity is not unreasonable, it is beyond reason. Augustine admitted, “I can experience far more than I can understand about the Trinity”. Theologians such as Leonardo Boff and Elizabeth John describe the interrelatedness of the Three Persons as community. God is not a dominant ONE, cut off from any relationship with others. Nor is God just two figures, Father, Son, absorbed in each other. But, as Boff suggests, God is the eternal spilling over into a third person, the Spirit, who “forces the other two to turn their gaze from themselves in another direction.”

Theologian Belden Lane continues, “God then, is a community of differentness bound together in unity. The Trinity continually seeks new webs of interconnectedness, while at the same time remaining separate and wholly itself”.