Fr. Michael Williams

Whilst writing his great book, on the Trinity, St Augustine encountered a young boy on the beach who was attempting to put the ocean inside a small bucket. Augustine told him that he was trying to do something that was impossible. The boy replied to Augustine, by telling him, that he was doing something impossible by trying to explain the Blessed Trinity in his book. St Augustine took this lesson on board and came to understand human limitations in regard to speaking about God. St Augustine would go on to say, ‘If you understand God, it is not God that you understand’. The human mind cannot understand God. Whatever we can say or think about God, falls infinitely short of who God actually is. Whenever we speak of God, we must acknowledge that we are finite creatures, speaking of an infinite being.

However, despite our human limitations, God has revealed Himself to us, so that we are able to know and love Him. At the beginning of St John’s gospel the evangelist tells us, ‘the Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us’. The letter to the Hebrews says something similar, ‘God has spoken to us in the Person of His Son’. The mystery of the Incarnation, God becoming man, makes known to us, ‘the goodness, the wisdom, the justice and the power of God’ (ST IIIa, q1, art 1). In the Person of Jesus Christ we see the face and the attributes of the invisible God. Jesus says to the apostle Philip, ‘Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father…I am in the Father and the Father is in me’. The reason God entered into our human history, so that we could enter into His eternal life.

Divine Revelation tells us that there is only one God, but Christ has also revealed to us that God is not solitary. The Sacred Scriptures speak of the plurality of God. In today’s gospel, Jesus speaks of His unity with the Father and the Spirit. Later in St John’s gospel Jesus will pray that His followers, ‘may be one’ with Him and the Father. If we go back to the first chapter of the Bible from Genesis, God speaks of His plurality, ‘Let us make man in our own image, in the likeness of ourselves’. God’s revelation that He is a communion of Persons is present throughout the Bible. I remember a Jewish scholar, who became a Christian, saying that he had no problem with the idea of the Trinity, because the Jewish Scriptures speak forcefully about God’s manifold being. And on this plurality in the one God the papal preacher, Fr Raniero Cantalamessa makes a salient point, ‘Who would God love if he were absolutely alone? Perhaps himself? But then his love would not be really love, but rather egoism or narcissism’. Love requires a communion of persons.

The implications of our belief in God who is Three, and One, are massive. We are created in the image and likeness of the Trinitarian God. Therefore we bear God’s imprint in the depth of our being. So we too are called to live in a communion of love and life, that is characterised by both unity and diversity. The family is especially called to reflect the life of the Trinity.