The Father’s House: Discovering Our Home in the Trinity

Introduction

Every human being carries, in the depths of his or her heart, three fundamental questions. First, the purpose question: What is the purpose of life ? Second, the identity question: Who am I ? Third, the love question: How do I find love ? You and I cannot really live or flourish without solid and true answers to the three questions, and how we answer them is decisive for the direction of our lives. The aim of this book is to offer answers, not according to one more theory or worldview currently on offer in our culture’s marketplace of ideas, but according to the Gospel of Jesus Christ as the Church has lived it and understood it for thousands of years. The Gospel is essentially the announcement that God himself has opened up the way for us to go to him—to live in the Father’s House in the heavenly places. It is the way of friendship with Jesus Christ, drinking deeply of his Spirit of Love, in the great communio of the Church.

The first three chapters of the book lay out the Gospel answers to the three questions. Once we have learned these answers, the next question becomes how to live according to what we’ve learned—how to walk in the way of friendship with the eternal Son of God in our midst. The second three chapters, therefore, lay out some traditional, time-tested, and true guidance on the practicals of the way. The way of friendship with Jesus Christ is essentially a path to radical healing of the heart, a supernatural healing and elevation of our souls, a renewal of the image of God in us by grace. Chapter Four starts down the path of healing by telling of a certain illness or pathos of the heart coming down to us from the fall—a primordial event of sin at the origins of the human race that affects us all. Learning something of the effects of the fall reveals much about ourselves, our conditions, and our identities. Next, Chapter Five unpacks the law of love by which we are called to live, and Chapter Six explores the Beatitudes, since the law of love and the Beatitudes sum up the whole way of friendship. Like life itself, the whole book leads in the end to the Father’s House.

For God has been pleased to adopt us in Jesus Christ, and this book is essentially an extended meditation on the meaning of filial adoption by grace—what it is and how to live it. The expression filial adoption might sound abstract and removed from real life, but the mystery it names is most real and concrete. This book is not academic, but was born from real life. It was born from years of offering retreats, campus missions, a variety of talks, and spiritual direction to college students and young adults all over the United States and beyond. It was born from thousands of conversations and ministry events with young people over more than a decade—including many people who have suffered much in their lives. Real people raised their real questions and found real answers in the grace and truth of filial adoption. Those personal conversations and pastoral circumstances have inspired the writing style of this book. For the aim of the book is communio: so that you may have fellowship with us (1 Jn 1:3).

In the great communio of the holy Church of God, ancient curses are broken, old sins are washed away, and the demons of days gone by are finally put to flight. Something new begins in the soul by grace. What begins is eternal life—personal familiarity with the living God who dwells in unapproachable Light (see 1 Tim 6:16). Thanks to our Baptism, he shines now in the depths of our hearts to give us a knowledge of his glory shining on the face of Jesus Christ (see 2 Cor 4:6). What has begun at the center of our souls is a new perception of the Presence, an awareness of divine Love, a true taste of first fruits from the new world to come. It tastes like joy based on the truth.¹

Chapter One

The Holy Trinity

What is the purpose of life? There could hardly be a more fundamental question, and how one answers this question establishes the orientation of one’s entire life. Many people, it seems, live for some package of personally preferred earthly goods: pleasure, money, power, honor, success, relationships, social and political causes, or some combination of such things. Such things are good in themselves, but in the end no package of earthly goods can perfectly or ultimately satisfy us. For in the end, the purpose of our lives is either God or something other than God, and everything other than God is far less than God. Anything less than God is something finite. And nothing finite satisfies the human heart—not perfectly, not ultimately. Yet in what sense could God be the purpose of life? How could God ever be the joy of our hearts? The answer comes to us in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Gospel is called good news precisely because it is the explanation of how God has become the purpose and the joy of our hearts by grace.

All human beings are able to know at least something of the existence of God and his attributes just by reflecting upon the world of nature. Although we cannot sense God directly like things in the environment, God is also not simply hidden from us. For the whole world of nature is essentially an order of signs from God—especially the greatness and beauty of the world (see Wis 13:1–9; Ps 19; Sir 42:15–43:33; Rom 1:19–20). What is going on within God, however—his interior life and ultimate purpose for creating the world—is simply an unknown to human reason. Looking at the world of nature will not tell us. It is his secret to share, and in the Gospel, he shares it.

Everyone has an inner life. It conceals who we really are in some sense and our reasons for doing what we do. What is going on inside us, and our true intentions, are not always revealed to those on the outside. God too has such an inner life. Yet the story comes down to us from the prophets and apostles of old that God has revealed his inner life to them. It began with a gradual revelation of his secret plan for the world, and it led up to the revelation of a secret personal life he enjoys within himself. The secret of his interior personal life is called the mystery of the Holy Trinity. The mystery of the Trinity is that the one God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—three divine persons in one divine essence. Such a revelation of the inner life of God is mysterious indeed, but it is not meaningless. On the contrary, the Trinity is most meaningful thing of all. How so?

Every day, Catholics make the sign of the Cross and say: In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Few Catholics fully realize, however, the mystery and the magnitude of the words. The words tell us the reason for the world. God created it all—the sun, moon, and stars, the seas, all they contain, the dry land too, and all of humanity—so that we might enter into the amazing and awe-inspiring life of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The purpose of life, then, is for us to enter into the Holy Trinity.

A First Encounter with the Holy Trinity

The Holy Trinity created us in order to adopt us. The great work of God, the God who is three in one, is to take us into his House and make us his own in love. The point is simply for us to live in God, and enjoy God, forever. For what could be better than God? What could be better than knowing, loving, and enjoying the Holy Trinity? Such a proposal might sound abstract, or rather removed from our experience, but in fact it touches on real life. I have seen it speak to the deepest questions of the human heart.

Many years ago, when I was a deacon, a young woman approached me, making inquiries about the Catholic Church. She was raised a Mormon but had ceased practicing during high school. She looked into evangelical Christianity, but she was still searching for something more. She had a Catholic boyfriend at the time and wanted to learn something about the Catholic faith to impress him, but she insisted explicitly that she would never become Catholic. In our first meeting, she asked about the main teaching of the Catholic Church. I replied that the primary teaching and the main point of God’s revelation to us is the mystery of the Holy Trinity. As the conversation continued, she found the Holy Trinity deeply captivating. Indeed, it struck her so much that she began to investigate the Catholic Church more seriously, and contrary to her initial declaration, she eventually entered the catechumenate.

Over the course of months, her pondering of the Trinity continued and her captivation grew. When the time came to discuss the mystery of the Trinity in her weekly catechetical sessions, her anticipation was real and her excitement was great. By this point, she had developed many relationships with Catholics, and she told them how excited she was to discuss the Holy Trinity. Much to her dismay, the typical response from her Catholic friends was something like this: Oh, the Trinity? Well, don’t worry about it. It’s just a mystery.

As sometimes happens, the convert understood the significance of the Trinity more than the cradle Catholics. For her, the Holy Trinity was the key that opened the door to a new and higher form of life, greater than anything she had ever known before. But most cradle Catholics she spoke to were a bit oblivious to what the mystery means for us and our lives. Though in some sense they believed in the Trinity, and even made the sign of the cross every day, it was not obvious to them that the Trinity is the purpose of life and the reason for the world. Whether we are cradle Catholics or converts, this connection may be new to some of us too. Perhaps we have never thought or heard of any connection between the purpose question and the mystery of the Trinity. Perhaps no one has ever explained that you and I can enter the Holy Trinity or how anyone might do so. It is high time, however, for Catholics to hear this good news and learn how to enter that bright place.

Even when we hear the point clearly, though, it may not initially sound very fulfilling. It might sound abstract and rather removed from real life. Some might object: You say nothing could be better than knowing, loving, and enjoying the Holy Trinity, but I can think of many things a lot better than that! And one might go on to name one or more things from one’s package of personally preferred goods.

In response, it is important to say that no one is proposing that the purpose of life is knowing, loving, and enjoying God instead of the good things of this world. Rather, the Gospel proposes that knowing, loving, and enjoying God is the ultimate purpose of life and the true center of the human heart. God has given us the good things of this world—many finite goods—to be secondary in our lives. The secondary goods have their place in a life of participating in the Trinity, but it is not the first place. The primary thing is our relationship with God and the life of knowing, loving, and enjoying