Three in One

Who is God?

Let us begin by first talking about faith. When I say the word faith, I would expect you would understand that as your belief in God and that is a valid understanding of faith. But, another word for faith is trust. Faith is what you put your trust in. When we are talking about religion, we are talking about faith in a God or gods. Aetheists are people who do not believe in God, but they still put their trust in something. For many, they put their faith in science, so science becomes their god.

The word religion means relationship. What makes the various religions of this world different from one another is their relationship with God. For example, Christians call God Father for he has revealed himself to be our Father in heaven. This is highly offensive to the Muslims because to them God is supreme and would not lower himself to call his creation his children. We have vastly different relationships with God. So, if we want to begin to understand the Catholic religion, that is the Catholic relationship with God, we have to begin by understanding how God has revealed himself to us.

The problem here is that we are trying to define an infinite God using very finite terms. In other words, we are trying to define the limitless by very limited means. It would be easier to pour all the waters in the ocean into a thimble than for us to fully define who God is. A creed is a statement of faith. Every Sunday we say our creed at Mass. Our creed says this about who God is –

I believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible.

I believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages. God from God, Light from Light, true God from True God. Begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father. Through him all things were made.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, and with the Father and Son is adored and glorified.

That is a lot. Let’s break it down so we can better understand it.

I believe in one God. We do not have three individual Gods, but just one God who reveals himself to us in three unique persons. This is a triune God, three in one. We are human beings. It is said that God is being itself. More accurately, God is greater than reality. He has no beginning and no end. He exists outside of time and space. All of reality, all of time, from the very first moment until the very last moment, exists inside of God all at once. For God, every place, all of the vastness of space, heaven, hell, earth, and everything in between is here, every moment is now. There is no past, present, or future for God. There is just now and now is every moment all at once.

This one God manifests himself to us in three distinct persons. The first person of God is God the Father. As our creed says, through the Father all things were made, visible and invisible. We are natural creatures and live in the natural, or visible world. There is also the supernatural world which is invisible to us. The supernatural world is where spiritual beings like angels and demons dwell. It is also where all people who have passed from this world to the next are. The natural and supernatural worlds exist together but the supernatural is veiled to our eyes.

The second person of God is known as the Logos or the Word of God. In the fullness of time the Word humbled himself and became incarnate, meaning he took on flesh, becoming one of us in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. He came to reconcile us to the Father, repairing the damage that was done by the disobedience of our first parents, Adam and Eve, in the Garden of Eden. He brought salvation and redemption to mankind. As our creed says, he was God from God, light from light, true God from true God, consubstantial with the Father. Consubstantial is a word that means of the same substance. Jesus and the Father are of the same stuff. The Father wasn’t one God and Jesus another. They were the same God.

Jesus was fully human and fully divine. He had a human nature and he had a divine nature and the two were never in conflict with one another. This is a challenge for people to understand. How can Jesus be 100% one thing and 100% another thing at the same time? No one can be 200%. Here is a visual that might help you to better understand how this works.

On the left side of the room we have a red light. When the light is on it fills 100% the room with red light. Everything in the room looks red. This represents Jesus’ human nature. On the right side of the room we have a blue light. When that light is on it fills 100% of the room with blue light. Everything in the room looks blue. This represents Jesus’ divine nature. When we turn both lights on the room is filled 100% with the red light and 100% with the blue light. The two do not compete with each other. Everything in the room looks purple. Now, if we take a box and place it in the center of the room, when we look at the left side of the box the box will be red. When we look at the right side of the box the box will be blue. When we look directly at the box the box will be purple.

We can see Jesus’ dual natures represented like this when we read scripture. Sometimes we see Christ’s human nature when he is doing something like weeping for his deceased friend or when he becomes angry in the temple. Sometimes we see his divine nature when he does things like forgive sins, heal the sick, or raise the dead. Most of the time we will see Christ’s combined natures working together.

The third person of God is the Pneuma, which is Greek for breath or wind. We refer to him as the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the Holy Breath of God. In the creed we say that we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son and with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified. In the beginning God, the Father, used his Holy Breath to proclaim one Word. That Word was Jesus and through that Word came forth all creation. All things were created through him. All things were created for him. He is before all things and through him all things are held together.

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is what we call the Trinity. One God, three persons.

What is our relationship with God?

The English language is usually a vocabulary rich language, meaning we have many words for the same thing. Take for instance the word walk. To walk means to travel on foot between two points. Instead of saying walk I could say amble, stroll, lumber, sashay, trudge, stride, wander, trek, tread, or storm. Each of these words means to walk but in a particular manner. When we use them, you understand exactly how I am walking.

When it comes to the most important word in any language, English is sorely lacking. The most important word in any language is love. In English love means a whole variety of things. I love my wife. I love hockey. I love my pet squirrel. I love pizza. Love has been used in so many ways that it has almost become meaningless.

In Greek, which the New Testament of the bible was written in, they have many different words for love. We have eros, from which we get words like erotic. Eros is the love of passion, lust, and pleasure. We have storge, which is a protective love, like the love between parent and child, or patriotism, love for one’s country. We have ludus, which is a playful love. It is the affection between young lovers. We have mania, which is obsessive love. We have philia or brotherly love or friendship. From this we get words like Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. All of these types of love are earthly loves. They are types of love we share with one another. There is a greater love than these.

The highest form of love is agape. Agape is selfless, sacrificial love. It is unconditional and bigger than ourselves. It offers boundless compassion and infinite empathy for everyone. Saint Paul explains this love in 1 Corinthians in that famous passage we hear at almost every wedding.

Love is patient, love is kind, it is not jealous; love does not brag, it is not arrogant. It does not act disgracefully, it does not seek its own benefit; it is not provoked, does not keep an account of a wrong suffered, it does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; it keeps every confidence, it believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. Corinthians 13: 4-8

If the essence of God could be captured in one word it would be agape. God is perfect sacrificial love. God has knowledge. God has power and authority. God is love. From this love all existence flows.

There are three rules for love that even God with his infinite power and knowledge respects. The first rule of love is that for love to exist there has to be a giver and a receiver. Sacrificial love could not exist if there was nothing to sacrifice for. If God had to depend on his creation to receive his love, he would cease to be God, for there would be something greater then himself. This is one of the reasons we have a Trinity. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit share an infinite, sacrificial, agape love between themselves. God needs nothing from his creation.

The second rule of love is that love has to be freely given. Love cannot be forced. There is a particular term for forced love and it comes with a prison sentence. God cannot force anyone to love him or anyone else. Love is a gift freely offered. It is not always accepted or returned.

The third rule for love is that for love to exist there has to be a choice. If there is no choice but love then love is being forced. This is why the tree of knowledge was put in the Garden of Eden. This is one of the reasons there is suffering in this world. Suffering exists so that love can exist.

One attribute of love is that love longs to grow. The Trinity is perfect on its own, but because God is love he longs to increase that love. Love is increased when it is shared. God created reality so that he may share his love with it. God’s love is infinite. It knows no beginning and no end. We were created by Love, for Love, through Love, to be loved, and to love. Let me clarify this a bit. We were created by Love, God the Father, for Love, God the Son, through Love, God the Holy Spirit, to be loved by the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and to love, God first and each other as God has loved us. This is the meaning of life.

Because God is all good and bestows on to us every good gift, including the breath in our lungs, we owe God our love, our adoration, and our worship. Observant Jews pray three times a day, morning, noon, and evening. It is what the Catholic Church based her Liturgy of the Hours on. The LOTH is the official prayer of the Church. It is broken up into seven periods – the Office of Readings, Morning, Daytime (broken up into Midmorning, Midday, and Midafternoon), Evening, and Night. All clergy are required to pray these hours. Deacons are only required to pray Morning and Evening hours. Priests and Bishops have to pray five. Many of the religious orders, the monks and nuns, they will pray all seven.

The Shema is the centerpiece of Jewish prayer. It begins with a verse from the sixth chapter of Deuteronomy. It goes –

Hear O’ Israel, the Lord is our God. The Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart and with all of your soul and with all of your strength.

This verse applies to us just as much as it applies to the Jews. We are to love God above all other things. He is to be first in our lives. This is what we owe God for his unlimited love for us. We love God before all else. He comes before our spouses, our children, even our own lives. This is what it means to be in right relationship with God.

God is a Trinity. The Trinity is the perfect family. God wishes to adopt us into his family so that we can live with him forever in heaven. The choice is ours. He has shown us the way but it is up to us to follow that way. He has given us the Church to teach us this way.

One way we can visualize the Trinity is to look at a three-wicked candle. There is only one candle, but three individual and distinct flames. Each flame draws its life from the same wax. Each flame produces its own light and the flames never compete against one another. The wax they melt combines into one pool, indistinguishable from the other.

One candle - One God

Three flames - Three Persons of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit

The pools of melted wax - Three individual wills, separate but indistinguishable from one another.

Fulfilling the Law

“Do not presume that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke of a letter shall pass from the Law, until all is accomplished!”

Matthew 5, 17-18

The Mosaic Law was given to the tribes of Israel for a couple of different reasons. The first was to direct them how to live in right relationship with God and with one another. A secondary reason was to set them apart from the rest of the world. This was to keep them from becoming like the world, which ultimately leads away from God. They were meant to be the shining example of how humans were supposed to live. The Law itself did not set the tribes of Israel apart from the world but it was their obedience to God in following the Law that did.

Jesus told his disciples that he did not come to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it. Even the most scrupulous Jew, who followed every jot and tittle of the Law, did not fulfill it. What made Jesus’ observation of the Law different?

One of the greatest Hebrew words is hesed. There is no direct translation of the word hesed into English. Words like mercy, love, compassion, grace, and faithfulness relate to the word hesed, but none of these fully grasps the concept. Hesed describes a sense of love and loyalty that inspires merciful and compassionate behavior towards another person. I have heard it said that being hesedic means to do more than the Law requires. To be called hesedic is one of the greatest compliments a Jew can give you.

Yet, Jesus teaches us of an even greater love than hesed. The Greek word used is agape. For Christians, agape is sacrificial love. It is the total giving of self for another. Hesed is the highest form of natural love. Agape is the fulfillment of hesed and is the perfect, supernatural love. God is agape. God is perfect, sacrificial love that knows no bounds.

So how did Jesus fulfill the Law? Jesus was the living Law come down from heaven. Being sacrificial love himself, he did not simply observe the Law but he lived the Law sacrificially. When fulfilled, the Law is not an observation that initiates an inward action. The Law is meant to be the beginning of sacrificial love, not just towards God, but towards all of creation. The Law, when lived inwardly, is useless. As we see in many of the scribes and Pharisees of Jesus time, their hearts were closed to sacrificial love due to their pride of inward observance to the Law. St. Paul is our greatest example of someone puffed up with pride in his scrupulous observance of the Law. He cast it all aside when he learned of agape and the true reason for the Law.

As Christians, we are not called to simply obey the Ten Commandments. We are called to fulfill the Commandments. We fulfill the Commandments the same way Jesus did. We live them sacrificially. To sacrifice for the Law means to put the object of the Law before ourselves. Most of us are casual observers of the Law, obeying what it says when it aligns with our lifestyles.

Take for instance the first commandment – You shall have no other gods before me. Most of us can recognize the command to worship God. How often does this command fall second to sleeping in on Sunday, attending youth sporting events, vacations, skipping Mass because we don’t like the weather, or for fear that we may catch whatever illness is making the rounds? No one expects anyone to put their life at risk by traveling during inclement weather. Keeping people healthy was one of the reasons we were given when Mass was suspended during the covid chaos. But, to follow this commandment sacrificially means we need to be willing to die to worship our God. This is something our brothers and sisters in Africa do every day. They do not hesitate to walk eight or ten miles in all kinds of weather to attend a Mass, that if they were discovered, they would be martyred for their faith. To love God above all other things includes our very lives.

Fulfilling the commands sacrificially also extends to the commands we were given for how we live in right relationship with one another. Thou shall not commit adultery; the six commandment. For someone obeying the Law this means not to cheat on one’s spouse. For someone living sacrificially, we fulfill this command by giving our lives for our spouse. We love them by serving them. We are willing to die for them if necessary. When a spouse is sacrificing for another divorce, is not only not an option, it is not even a thought.

Because he fulfilled the Law through sacrificial love, Jesus was able to boil the whole law down to just two commandments –

“But when the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him: “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, and with your whole soul, and with your whole mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Upon these two commandments hang the whole Law and the Prophets.”

Matthew 22: 34 – 40

We are to love both God and each other with the same love God has for us; agape, complete sacrificial love. This is what it means to fulfill the Law.

Oath to the Death

An African priest was praying before the Blessed Sacrament in the chapel in his small village. A gunman entered the chapel and ordered the priest to his feet.

“Why do you kneel before a piece of bread?” the gunman asked. “Kneel before me instead.” .

“This is not a piece of bread,” the priest responded boldly. “This is the body, blood, soul, and divinity of my Lord Jesus Christ. I will only kneel to him.” .

The gunman laughed. “Do you actually believe that is Jesus?” he chuckled. “I will prove to you that it is just bread. When I shoot it, it will just crumble and break. It will not scream. It will not bleed. If I shoot you, you will scream and bleed and plead for your life.” .

The priest stepped between the Blessed Sacrament and the gunman. “If you must shoot someone, shoot me instead,” the priest begged. .

“Are you willing to die for this piece of bread?” the gunman said in disbelief. .

“When you look at the Blessed Sacrament all you see if a piece of bread. I believe that this is Jesus himself. I believe this because he tells me it is so. I trust Jesus when he says that this is his body and his blood. I believe in my head and I trust in my heart. I love him even more than I love my own mother. He died for me. I am willing to die for him. You think the worst you can do is to take my life from me but in doing so you free me to be with him. I do not fear this. Do what you came here to do.” .

The gunman lowered his rifle and stared at the priest. He stared quizzically for a moment. He shook his head, and turning, he walked out of the chapel and left the village. .

In the Lord’s Prayer we ask the Lord not to lead us into temptation. In Greek, the prayer asks that we not be put to the test. The test we ask not to be put through is the test of Peter. When facing death, will we deny Christ? As bold as we believe ourselves to be, none of us knows how we will answer that question until it is put to us. If a gunman were to walk into Mass and order anyone who believes that Jesus is truly present in the Eucharist to stand and be shot for their belief would you be willing to stand when simply sitting would save your life? .

Yet, that is the statement we make when we present ourselves to receive him in Holy Communion. We don’t go to communion just to get something. The Eucharist is a Sacrament and a Sacrament begins with an oath to the death. Before we receive the Lord in the Eucharist we renew our oath to live for him and die for him if necessary. We reaffirm this oath with our “Amen” after the communion minister says, “The body of Christ.” .

There is a desire within the Church today to give the Eucharist to as many people as possible. There are many who support, and even demand, that the Church give the Eucharist to divorced and remarried Catholics, to those who embrace a same-sex lifestyle, to those living together playing house, and those who are transgendering, just to name a few. There are even those who want to open up Holy Communion to those who are not even Catholic. These desires are founded in a false sense of love. We want to be inclusive. To share Jesus with everyone regardless of belief. This is a noble thing but one that lacks understanding of what receiving the Eucharist actually is. .

To receive the Eucharist is to take an oath to the death that one will live for Christ and die for him if necessary. We offer our lives as collateral when we take this oath and when we willfully break this oath we forfeit that collateral. To live for Christ means to follow his commands and his teachings to the best of our ability. We believe that Jesus taught his disciples and that these teachings have been handed down to us through his Church. When someone disagrees with an official Church teaching they do not disagree with the Church. They disagree with Jesus. .

It would be wrong for the Church to demand that anyone take an oath to the death when they either do not understand what that oath requires or they do not believe what the Church teaches. You cannot be in communion with Christ and his Church if you do not believe what they proclaim and teach. .

The Church is currently in the middle of a three-year Eucharistic revival. This is meant to renew our love and reverence for the source and summit of our Catholic faith – Jesus in the Eucharist. This renewal has to begin with a proper understanding for what the Eucharist is and the oath we take when we receive him. We need to receive Jesus on his terms, not ours. Even the manna that came down from heaven to sustain the tribes of Israel had rules for its collection and consumption. The Eucharist is the true bread that comes down from heaven. To receive him properly is to have life within you. We eat to our condemnation every time we receive him improperly. It is false love to allow someone who is not properly disposed to receive Holy Communion. .

We are called to love one another with the same love God has for each of us. We are called to love one another with sacrificial love. True love is not giving someone something that will do them harm. To truly love someone is to keep from them something that will do them hard regardless of how much they want or demand it. .

Remember this the next time you present yourself to receive Holy Communion. Ask yourself, “If I had to be shot after receiving Jesus would I still be in this line?” If the answer to that question is no you shouldn’t be in that line. .