Love of the Triune God Dt 4:32-34, 39-40; Ps 33:4-5, 6, 9, 18-19, 20, 22; Rom 8:14-17; Mt 28: 16-30 A verse from the Psalm response this Sunday acclaims, “See the eyes of the Lord are upon those who fear him, upon those who hope for his kindness.” It reminds me what some of my Irish relatives would say about any harrowing experience — “that will put the fear of God in you.” But there are different kinds of fear, and when the Bible speaks of “fear of God” it doesn’t usually refer to the fear that God can do something terrible to us. The Hebrew word for “fear of God” is “yirat,” usually translated into the Greek as “phobos.” Perhaps the better translation would be “awe” — the overwhelming experience we sometimes have when we encounter something truly amazing, something so beautiful or powerful that it can take our breath away. This Sunday we celebrate Trinity Sunday, the feast that rounds off the long and glorious season that stretches from Easter through Pentecost. The notion of awe before the mystery of God is truly appropriate for this feast. That is the spirit of our first reading from the Book of Deuteronomy. Moses reminds the people how amazing it is — how “awesome” — that the God who created the universe should care about an insignificant people like Israel. “Did anything so great ever happen before? Was it ever heard of?” “Did a people ever hear the voice of God speaking from the midst of fire, as you did, and live?” he asks. Drawing on the profound portrayal of God’s presence in the Scriptures, the early Christians were inspired to conceive of God as “trinity” — three persons in one God. The Bible portrays God as the creator and source of all life; the Bible portrays God as a dynamic and vivifying Spirit; and the New Testament believes that in the humanity of Jesus we discover the Word made flesh, true God and true man. Philosophers and theologians over the centuries have reflected on this mystery of the Triune God, trying to probe its meaning. All such efforts, however, fall short and provide tiny glimpses of the transcendent beauty and power of God. The older I have become, the more I find myself turning less to philosophical categories to try to grasp the mystery of the Trinity. More compelling, I find, is to think of the inner life of God as a vortex of love and relationship. This notion, too, has been part of the church’s grappling with the Trinity through the ages. The very heart of God is relational — a burning and dynamic mutual love among Father, Son and Spirit that defines the essence of our God. It is that irrepressible love, in the view of the Scriptures, that spills over into God’s creation of the world with all its beauty and order and goodness. It is that divine love that creates the human person, male and female, and embeds in the heart of humanity a capacity for love as well. That divine love eventually forges a people and gives them a destiny. The ultimate expression of that love is embodied in Jesus Christ and his total giving of his life for us, a divine love that pours out into the world through the power of the Spirit. In the Gospel passage for today, the finale of the Gospel of Matthew, the Risen Christ sends his disciples to “all nations” and promises to be with them until the end of the world. Thus, the Christian story is essentially a love story. That is the reason why Paul, in the second reading from his Letter to the Romans, says we are not given a “spirit of slavery to fall back into fear.” Here Paul speaks of the negative kind of fear or terror. No, we have received a Spirit of adoption that enables us to speak as “children” of a loving God, as “heirs” of God’s kingdom. Our ultimate destiny is to be enveloped in the burning love of the Triune God. Perhaps unimaginable for us, but no less true.
About the Author Donald Senior was president emeritus, chancellor and professor of New Testament studies at Catholic Theological Union, 5401 S. Cornell Ave., until his death on Nov. 8, 2022.