The Trinity: On Loving Love Loving

James Hanvey SJ

‘The name we give to God, The Trinity, marks the depth and
height of the Christian knowledge and experience of who God
is.’ In anticipation of the celebration of Trinity Sunday, 30
May, James Hanvey SJ considers how we might begin to think
and speak about the loving relationship between Father, Son
and Spirit into which we ourselves are welcomed.

One of the most familiar things have to remember that our

Photo by Lawrence OP at flickr.com

we do as Catholics is to make language must be humble,

the sign of the cross in the name partial and inadequate. If it
of The Father, The Son and the were not then it could not
Holy Spirit. For Christians this speak truthfully of the reality of
is the name of God, The God who cannot be contained
Trinity. Whenever we go to within our speech. The point of
Mass we are gathered in that our attempting to put this
name and at the end we are luminous, holy reality into the
blessed and sent in that name. poor rags of language is not to
We are baptised into the name obscure but to point the way –
of Father, Son and Spirit and the way from thinking and
throughout our lives that three- speaking to the life of the
fold name accompanies us. The mystery itself. So, when we
ancient gaelic prayers see it as speak of the Trinity as a
an encompassing, so that all our life is gathered into mystery we do not mean that we should not think or
the Trinity. speak about it but rather that its meaning is
inexhaustible. On the contrary, then, we can never be
The strength of the Triune be our shield in done thinking and speaking and coming to an adoring
distress wonder that we have been given such an extra-
The strength of Christ, His peace and His Pasch, ordinary vision of God’s own life. So what do we
The strength of the Spirit, Physician and health, mean when we say ‘three persons, one God’? Well,
And of the precious Father the King of grace.
we’re not talking arithmetic. If we are then, clearly,
we’re going to get into trouble and our Trinity will
This binding of the Name is no empty or ritualistic
seem nonsensical.
formula but the proclamation of the heart of
Christian life and faith.
A helpful way of coming to understand what we mean
is to think of the three primary colours: red, yellow
The name we give to God, The Trinity, marks the
and blue. If you divide a piece of paper into three
depth and height of the Christian knowledge and
sections and paint each section a different primary
experience of who God is. It is completely unique to
colour, then spin the paper very quickly it will appear
Christianity. Too often our understanding and exper-
white. It is a simple illustration of oneness and three-
ience of God as Trinity is dismissed as a mystery or
ness. It makes the point that the ‘oneness’ is dynamic
presented as some sort of paradox or conundrum:
but does not diminish the three. In the long struggle
‘three persons, one God.’ Now, of course, God is the
to speak about the Christian experience of Israel’s
absolute mystery of our lives and because we, as finite
God one of the great insights was that God’s oneness
creatures, have only very limited ways of expressing
is also a unique oneness. It entails and indeed requires
the transcendent glory of God’s Trinitarian life, we
the living relationship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit: unfathomable, inexhaustible, eternally complete and
oneness cannot be thought without these relation- creative. Yet, here is the great wonder. We only know
ships and vice versa. We always have to think them this because the Father gives Himself to be known in
together. His Son and the Son gathers us into this eternal self-
giving through and in the Spirit. In other words, the
But that opens up another problem about the word fact that we can speak at all about God as Trinity is
‘person’. When we use it in the special context of the already a sign that we are beginning to participate in
Trinity it doesn’t mean what we normally mean by God’s Triune life: we know and experience that the
person. Even Augustine had to admit that when we Trinity is Love Loving us. This is what we call grace.
spoke of ‘person’ in the Trinity we really had no The whole of the Church’s liturgy lives out of this
understanding of what we meant. The best we can do knowledge. It is our act of love, both a confession and
is be clear about what we don’t mean: we are not a proclamation – ‘a great cry of wonder’ – that in
speaking of three individual centres of independent loving us the Trinity takes us into these relations of
consciousness and wills, and, of course, we are not life, so that we learn again how to love by particip-
speaking of three ‘bodies’. If we thought this way, it ating in Love. Literally, by ‘being-in-Love’.
would not be a Trinity but a club – a very exclusive
club! Yet once we’re clear about what we don’t mean In this way we can see that the life of grace is a
we can begin very tentatively to glimpse something Trinitarian life and that grace is itself a relationship
profound: that ‘person’ in the Trinity points us to the through which and in which we learn love. The
eternal relationship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit Trinitarian Life of God is our school of Love and by
and that these relationships both distinguish them loving we come to Love loving and that is our
from each other but simultaneously open up a union sanctification.
in which each dwells in the other. The Trinity is a sort
of ‘communion’ (co-union). All this is beautifully and simply expressed in the
great prayer of the Mass: ‘Through Him, with Him,
This has two important consequences for us. First, if In Him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, All Glory and
they ‘indwell’ in each other then they also reveal each honour is yours Almighty Father. Forever and ever,
other: to know one is to know all and to know each in Amen.’
their distinctness and in their communion. Second,
we know that these relationships are relationships of This the prayer of our life.
love. The Trinity is the revelation that God is Love.
Now we get Love wrong if we think of it as a ‘thing’ –
something we can possess or control. It is a
relationship and it is a verb – we can only ‘have’ love
by loving, by participating in a relationship of love. Rev. Dr. James Hanvey SJ lectures in Systematic Theology at
So, the Trinity is Love Loving – dynamic, Heythrop College, University of London.

The Trinity: On Loving Love Loving 2

www.thinkingfaith.org James Hanvey SJ

Copyright © Jesuit Media Initiatives 28 May 2010