Sunday, June 15, 2025

15 June 2025 - the three in one

Today's Readings
(Audio)

I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now.

Jesus did not immediately launch into a lecture on the finer points of Trinitarian theology. Rather, he presented that theology as a lived reality by the way he lived in relationship to his Father and to the Spirit whom they shared. He showed that he was one who was truly a divine person, capable of every divine prerogative including forgiveness of sins. Yet no one ever lived in such complete dependence on and obedience to God the Father as Jesus did. He was God, yes. But he was also God from God. The Spirit too, was like this. He had fullness of divinity within himself, but was clearly the Spirit of both the Father and of the Son. Hence it was given to him to take from what Jesus and the Father had in common and declare it to the disciples. Everything that the Father had belonged to Jesus. So too did everything that belonged to them both also belonged to the Spirit. 

The human nature of Jesus shows how created beings can participate in the life of the Trinity. Observing his life helps us to realize that the Trinity isn't trivial, something to be understood for the sake of academic knowledge. It is rather a living reality, one which can alone give completion to our lives. Nothing defined Jesus more than his relationship to his Father in the Spirit. We are meant to share in the Sonship of Jesus, crying out "Abba! Father!" through the Holy Spirit just as he did. The Spirit makes us by adoption what the Son is by nature. 

But when he comes, the Spirit of truth,
he will guide you to all truth.


The Spirit can help us to study. But this is not the primary way he guides us into all truth. Rather he does so by being our point of access to the life of God, breathed into us, making us new creations. It is by living life under his power and by his direction that we come to a deeper understanding of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one that is based on participation more than rational comprehension.  The more we live from this reality the greater are the depths to which we can go. We may say of it that in this case loves precedes understanding. But as to understanding, we sometimes find the necessity to speak and try to organize the words we use to talk about this mystery, putting guardrails in place so we don't confuse ourselves too much when we try to speak of what we first experience. Speaking of it wrongly tends to lead to heresy, which has consequences that affect not only our rationality but also the way we live out our spiritual lives. There is nothing so fundamental to Christianity as the Trinity. And so any mistakes about it will impact its ability to be the source from which God's love is poured out into the world. 

The Holy Spirit wants to draw us deeper and deeper into the mystery of God. He wants to guide us into all truth by making the truth something that is a lived experiential reality for us. He has the power to enliven the pages of Scripture and the teachings of Tradition so that they become revelation in the hearts of believers, to the point where believers' lives, and not just the words, speak of the glory of God.

Graham Kendrick - We Believe

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