THREE IN ONE

“Three Persons, one God”…many have tried to explain this holy mystery. Sr. Romana, my third-grade teacher at St. Genevieve in Windsor, Canada, said it was like the maple leaf ~ one leaf with its three distinctive parts. Fr. Gabriel, a Franciscan friend, told me that the Holy Trinity was like electricity ~ which gives power, warmth, and light (reflective of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). A child I was tutoring in Chicago, Jacqueline, shared her fourth grade book with me that sought to explain this mystery by reference to an apple, with its skin, meat, and core ~ each part with its claim to being an apple, but incomplete without the rest.

Just as the definition of a family seems meaningless if defined merely by the technical requirements of two parents and a child, but rather must have the glue of love to bind them…and thus makes them a real family, so, too, any logical attempt to define the Trinity without this love is incomplete.

As a youth I read Alexander Dumas’ classic, “The Three Musketeers”, who are really four ~ D’Artagnan, and his three comrades, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. The novel tells the romantic story of these inseparable friends who live by the motto: “All for one, one for all” (“tous pour un, un pour tous”). Perhaps this sense of loyalty, commitment, and fellowship best captures what the Holy Trinity is all about.

Jesus gives us some insight on this in his closing prayer the night before he died, “Father, I pray that they may be one…as you and I are one, you in me and I in you.” (Jn 17:21) What makes us one with God and with each other is none other than love. Love is the very essence of God…and the mystery of the Holy Trinity tells us that love by its very nature must be shared…it is relational. God is relational…and so are we. It is our nature, too.

Recently, a dear friend and I went to the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, and we saw this relational love in action with the creatures there. We marveled at a stork which brought grass and clover in his beak to feed his mate as she sat in a nest (presumably waiting to hatch her young ones). Later, we enjoyed watching a young gorilla playing with its father, throwing straw at him, and even throwing itself at the father’s huge chest, while the proud papa playfully and gently brushed it away with his powerful arm.

All of God’s creatures seem to be hard-wired to reflect the image of God’s relational nature. This is especially true of those of us who are created in the “image and likeness” of God. We were made to be “one”…a family…not soloists. Indeed our deepest longing is for intimacy…to be able to share with another the depth and breadth of our being. As God said upon creating us, “It is not good to be alone.” Human beings need relationships. Only together in a community of love do we discover the joy of our truest self.

What is the Trinity? It is a triangle with God, Others, and Us at each respective point…incomplete unless all three are inter-related. It is God’s first and most important lesson to us, by the very act of God defining Self as “Three in One”.