It's simple---or is it?

 

There’s a little story of a bishop who, when officiating at a Confirmation, asked the young people to explain the Trinity.  The class clown stood up and mumbled something quietly.  The bishop remarked, “I didn’t understand that.”  The kid spoke up louder, “You’re not supposed to, it’s a mystery.”  While the bishop and the rest of the congregation in attendance chuckled, the fact is that the Church has wrestled with all manner of ways to understand a “Three-Person” God.  It's a mystery that takes more faith than words to explain.  For most of my life, and I’ll bet for most people, “It’s a mystery” was enough.  That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to understand the Holy Trinity on a deeper level because it is, as the Catechism states, “the central mystery of Christian faith and life.  It is the mystery of God in himself.”

We’ll never be able to grasp the reality of the Trinity – one God, three persons of Father, Son and Holy Spirit – until we experience the fullness of God’s love in our eternal life.  This hasn’t stopped us, though, from trying to get our heads around this idea of the Trinity.  Church history is filled with attempts to tie down its meaning, all of them coming up short and many of them earning heresy status.

If we’ve failed to tie down the mystery of the Trinity through theological concepts, we moved to analogy and art.  Just a few examples include the equilateral triangle; three intersecting circles; circle within a triangle; St. Patrick’s shamrock; and the famous icon by Andrei Rublev depicting three identical persons around one altar. Again, each comes up short.

But this shouldn’t surprise us.  Imagine trying to perfectly represent love.  Imagine being asked to define in words or a picture a relationship that grips us at the very core of our life.  The love of a parent for a child, the bond of husband and wife, or the friendship with the one who knows us best are beyond words, beyond art, beyond poetry, beautiful as they might be.  They always come up short.

Father, Son and Holy Spirit is the most real and profound relationship that exists.  The gospels tell the story of the Son of God sent by the Father to reveal the depth of God’s love for us, and how, through the Spirit, we’re sent – in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit – to love as we have been loved [Matthew 28:19, John 13:34].

We enter the mystery of this Trinitarian relationship just as we do in any other relationship.  We begin with a personal relationship, by coming to know the other and allowing the other to know us.  We begin by spending time with Jesus and opening ourselves up to Him.  When this happens, all our other relationships begin to reflect – even if imperfectly – the perfect relationship of love of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  It all begins with the mystery of falling in love and allowing ourselves to be loved in return.

But...Do you love Me?

 

I consider myself somewhat a romantic.  As a result, I’m a sucker for a good musical (they’re best if performed live, but a good movie will suffice) and ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ has always been one of my favorites.  In this show two of the principal characters, Tevye and Golde, sing a duet.  The song is “Do you Love me.”  Tevye, who is married to Golde asks her, after these many years of marriage, “do you love me?”.  At first, she resists even answering; but he keeps asking and she then answers that for 25 years she has looked after him, cared for the family and done so many things, but she doesn’t use the words he longs to hear.  So, he asks again, and she replies, ‘I’m your wife’ and goes on to speak about the many aspects of their relationship – still stressing the actions she does for him – like being with him, sharing intimacy together etc.  Finally, after he persists, she says the word ‘love’.

In the end they both sing that saying they love each other may not change the way they’re together nor affect the many actions they do for each other, but it is ‘nice to know’.

Jesus and Peter might be said to have a similar dialogue in John’s Gospel [John 21:15-19].  Jesus wishes to reassure Peter that he’s close to Him, that He and Peter will share a bond of no less than love itself and that Peter for his part only need to assent to this.  Because we read this text translated to English, the word ‘love’ seems to be used equally by Jesus and Peter.  But in fact, Jesus and Peter are using different words for ‘love’.  It seems Peter can’t bring himself to use the same deep and intimate word for ‘love’ that Jesus is using, preferring instead to use a ‘softer’ word.  Finally, it’s Jesus who changes His terminology and uses Peter’s language so as to reach a point of unity and communion between them.

And the ‘assent’ that Jesus is seeking is one of the heart – not just an assent of mind and will.  This is so that Peter may be a true leader for the people; because leadership in the vision of Jesus requires not just competence, or energy and availability, true as they are, but it requires relational commitment to the people.  For Jesus to be a leader is to be a person with a heartfelt love for others and someone who lives only to serve.  This often also entails a sacrifice of self for others.

What’s more, Peter is being asked to now care for a flock that has become more sedentary and settled.  That is, we see it reflects the life of a Christian community that has lived in the light of the resurrection for many generations already and who are at home with the Spirit’s influence in their lives. The church in the Johannine vision is more established and requiring more attention to its internal needs.  Peter is being asked to exercise a ‘pastoral’ role and not only a missionary one (more suited to the evangelizing mission of the early church).  Thus, we see in the scene the movement from fishing (missionary work) to a commitment of ongoing pastoral care (and thus the symbolic image of the church as a flock needing care and nourishment i.e., ‘feed my sheep’).

This balance of the church missionary, and the church pastoral is one we live to this day.  Whether we serve the Lord in missionary outreach or in pastoral care of the community itself, let our actions always be a response to his call ‘Do you love me?”.  Let’s take consolation too in the reality that all our service will find its nourishment in the Eucharist – as does Peter in his meal on the beach with Jesus.