The Feast of the Holy Trinity


One of the things that fascinates me about the history of science and physics is the way we keep pulling back layers of our universe. There was a time when a rock was just a rock. What’s that rock made of? It’s made of rock. You could smash up the rock, and you’d just have smaller rocks. Then we figured out that rocks are made up of smaller minerals and elements. Modern chemistry was born when we discovered that everything’s made up of a number of elements. It was like peeling back a layer of existence: where we once saw rocks and wood and water and air, now we detected nitrogen and oxygen and carbon and hydrogen. It seemed we’d found the constituent bits of the universe, out of which everything is made.


But then we found another layer underneath the elements. Even these incredibly tiny elements turned out to be composed of more fundamental bits, protons, electrons, neutrons. It was in just 1968 that physicists found an even deeper layer under that; protons and the like seem to be made up of smaller bits called quarks and leptons and bosons. Now some physicists are exploring string theory, pondering a layer of reality yet deeper again. There’s no actual evidence for String Theory; for now it’s just a mathematical model whose elegance is suggestive and captivating.

Objects, minerals, elements, atomic particles, quarks, 11-dimensional superstrings... I could geek out about physics all day, but the point I want to make is that we’re interested in that project of peeling back the layers to find out what’s really fundamental, what’s really basic, what’s really at the heart of it all. And as fascinating as physical sciences are, we’re interested in much more than material reality. We’re interested in meaning, purpose, the life of the soul. You can describe all the particles that make me up, but you haven’t described me. We have the intuition, the certainty, that if we get to the very basics of material reality, there is still something deeper than that, more fundamental. We become philosophers when we begin to ask “Why?” And we become theologians when we begin to ask “Who?”

The Christian revelation claims to be an answer to this question. The deepest strain. The most basic layer of being. Pull back all the layers of existence, and what you’ll find at the center, what you’ll find in the heart of it all, is love. Not love as a sentiment or an emotional state that comes and goes, but the love of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Ponder this sometime when you’re in a pondering mood. Love is not one of the things God made. Love is not one of the characteristics that God has. Love is not created. No, we say with the First Letter of John that God is Love. And if love is not just something God has, but Who He Is, then the idea of the Trinity begins to become more clear. Because there can be no love in a solitude. God is not a solitude. God is a relationship of Father, Son, and Spirit.

And we are made in His image. Remember that next time you’re tempted to try to make it on your own. Remember that next time you’re tempted to give up on a relationship that has become difficult.

In our moments of clarity, we understand that there is nothing in life more fundamental, more basic, than our relations with those around us. And in the Christian religion, we find this intuition at the very heart of our doctrine. God made Adam in His own image, and so He said that it was not good for Adam to be alone -- because God is not alone. God is an eternal ecstasy of self-gift.

God is an eternal ecstasy of self-gift, and living in His image and likeness is not something that can be done just on Sunday morning or as a sort of hobby. It isn’t a component in your life, like you’ve got family, work, play, and religion. It’s an all-consuming project that fills your whole life, gives order to everything you do. It gives you a lot of humility, because we’re all failing at it to one degree or another another. But it also gives you serenity and peace, knowing that you are living your life plugged in to the most basic, the most fundamental thing. The Trinity, and our creation in Their likeness, give us the answer to the deepest questions. The challenge and purpose of our lives is to live them accordingly. The challenge and purpose of our lives is to give ourselves away.

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