Trinity Within

Pope Benedict's angelus address yesterday, during this week after Trinity Sunday, was unusually beautiful and clear. This is another exmaple of this pope's ability to preach about the most complex and deepest of the Christian mysteries in a manner that is accessible to all and inspiring to even those without any theological education.

I have not been able to find the entire text online in English (for the Italian, see here), but Zenit has excerpts from the address:

Christ revealed that "God is love 'not in the unity of a single person, but in the Trinity of a single substance,'” the Holy Father said, quoting the preface."The Trinity is Creator and merciful Father; Only Begotten Son, eternal Wisdom incarnate, dead and risen for us; it is finally the Holy Spirit, who moves everything, cosmos and history, toward the final recapitulation," the Pontiff explained. "Three Persons who are one God because the Father is love, the Son is love, the Spirit is love. God is love and only love, most pure, infinite and eternal love.""The Trinity does not live in a splendid solitude," he added, "but is rather inexhaustible font of life that unceasingly gives itself and communicates itself."Benedict XVI said one could get a sense of the Trinity simply by observing nature from the most elementary cellular levels to the planets, stars and galaxies."The 'name' of the Most Holy Trinity is in a certain way impressed upon everything that exists, because everything that exists, down to the least particle, is a being in relation, and thus God-relation shines forth, ultimately creative Love shines forth," he said."All comes from love, tends toward love, and is moved by love, naturally, according to different grades of consciousness and freedom," the Pope affirmed."Every being," he continued, "by the very fact of existing and by the 'fabric' of which it is made, refers to a transcendent Principle, to eternal and infinite Life that gives itself, in a word: to Love." Benedict XVI affirmed that there is proof that human beings are made in the image of the Trinity, because "only love makes us happy, because we live in relation, and we live to love and be loved.""Using an analogy suggested by biology," he concluded, "we could say the human 'genome' is profoundly imprinted with the Trinity, of God-Love.”

This gives me great ideas about our own presentations to eighth graders. Part of our job consists of presenting chastity to eighth graders, and it is impossible to speak of chastity without reference to the Trinity. Why is this so? Simple.

We've all heard that we "look like our mom" or that we "look like our dad." By looking at a child, we are able to understand something about its parents, and by looking at the parent's features, we are able to understand that the child has its "father's nose" or its "mother's cheeks." We are, in a certain sense, made in the image and likeness of our parents.

We've also all heard from the very beginning of the Book of Genesis that we are made in the "image and likeness of God." Well, if we are made in the image and likeness of God, and God is Trinity, and God is also Love, then it is impossible to understand who we are as human persons without reference to the mytery of the Three Persons of the Trinity who dwell with each other in a communion of self-giving love. This, I think, is one of the deepest insights that has been at the forefront of the teaching of both Pope Benedict and of John Paul II. It is certainly a fundamental insight, and "thesis" of the Theology of the Body. We are made in the image of the Trinitarian God, three Persons who dwell in a relation of self-giving love with and to one another, and we can only find ourselves through the living out of this gift of self (see Gaudium et Spes 24).

Thus, Pope Benedict is reminding us --and this is one of the important features of the Trinity Sunday--that when we think of being in the "image and likeness" of God, it is not just through our ability to think and to choose, reason and intellect, but also, and perhaps more importantly, in our ability to enter into relationship with one another, in the midst of a community of love. We are therefore called to live out God's image by living in a communion of love, with our spouses, our children, at the parish level, and even in the relationships we establish in the professional arena.

I find Pope Benedict's speech fascinating, since many modern biologists (mostly atheistic materialists) are also arguing that human beings are pre-programmed genetically with a "morality gene." I don't find a problem with this. It simply is further scientific proof that we, as human beings, have the first precept of the natural law written into our very genetic strucutre: to do good and avoid evil. As Christians, however, we understand that love is the fulfillment of the law, and the only way to live out who we are to be is to be governed by thi self-giving, relational love of which Benedict speaks.

I will write more about this later, especially as it relates to the Christopher West debate--although this has been raging on the blogs, I hope to contribute my own thoughts about it, from a persepctive that I do not think has been raised by either West, Schindler, Smith, or Waldstein. More on that later...