Have you heard of the term “hierarchy of truths” and wondered about it? It was a term used in the Vatican II document, Decree on Ecumenism (Unitatis Redintegratio). It means that some truths of the Catholic faith are more foundational, more fundamental, more central than others. It DOES NOT MEAN that some truths of the Catholic faith are MORE OR LESS TRUE than others. It DOES MEAN that some truths are the ones that others are built on. With that in mind, I was sent on a real prayer adventure this week when I read in the Catholic Catechism:
234 The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of Christian faith and life. It is the mystery of God in himself. It is therefore the source of all the other mysteries of the faith, the light that enlightens them. It is the most fundamental and essential teaching in the “hierarchy of the truths of the faith.” The whole history of salvation is identical with the history of the way and the means by which the one true God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, reveals himself to men “and reconciles and unites with himself those who turn away from sin.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 234)
I’ve heard more than one Trinity Sunday homily that said in effect, “This is a great Mystery that we can’t appropriately talk about or understand. Nonetheless, it is true.” People go back to St. Patrick’s explanation to the Irish, using a shamrock.
In many ways that makes sense. How can there be one God is three persons? How can there be God who is a community of himself?
It IS a Mystery, but at least the outlines and power of it are contained in the catechism. What the catechism says in paragraph 237 is important: “But God’s inmost Being as Holy Trinity is a mystery that is inaccessible to reason alone or even to Israel’s faith before the Incarnation of God’s Son and the sending of the Holy Spirit.”
We can understand it enough to appreciate it through the power of the Holy Spirit–who is part of the Trinity. Wow! God residing in me and residing in the church can help me understand the foundational and greatest Mystery: That God is one God in three loving persons.
In paragraph 238 through 263, the catechism opens up the Mystery of the Holy Trinity as the Mystery of God’s Love. Let’s look at that explanation as related to today’s readings.
John 16:12-15
Here, toward the end of his “Farewell Discourse” on Holy Thursday, Jesus speaks of how he, the Father, and the Spirit are one, and how the Holy Spirit will help the disciples (and the Church through the ages) come to understand that they are One, yet also separate persons. In other verses of this discourse Jesus speaks of love and the necessity of it, because love is the nature of God.
Peter Kreeft, in his reflection on today’s readings in Food for the Soul, gets at why this is so important:
“The most beautiful, most loved, and most popular verse in the Bible is “God is love.” (1 John 4:8). The most puzzling, most misunderstood, and most unpopular doctrine in the Bible is the doctrine of the Trinity. Yet the two are one. They are identical. They say exactly the same things. Genuine love, unselfish love, altruistic love requires at least two persons, not just one. If God is only one person, God cannot be love itself but only a lover. And in that case, until he creates creatures, until he creates others to love, God could not be an unselfish lover, only a selfish lover of himself; so in that case “God is love” would depend on us. Before God created us, God could not be unselfish love of other selves because there were no other selves.” (p 655)
So God could not just be one, because the core of God is self-giving love, which must have another to love. For whatever reason, that way of thinking about the Trinity holds me, intrigues me, satisfies me at a deep place. It is a logic for seeing God as a loving God. This is not a sentimental love, but one that incorporates some tough characteristics that don’t always seem loving to us: making things in nature work for a common good (that includes the food chain), giving free will, but not freedom from consequences, accomplishing much through pain and sorrow as well as comfort and joy.
Proverbs 8:22-31 and Romans 5:1-5
How do the three Divine Persons work together? What is the design? This selection from Proverbs describes it. The Wisdom of God manifested itself in its fullness in Jesus, the Christ. But Jesus, as the second person of the Holy Trinity, was present in the beginning, as the Divine Design—Wisdom.
This Divine Wisdom created humans “in the image of God.” It created humans with an ability to know the “natural law” of Love. It also created humans with the ability to choose to obey the natural law or not. We are not like animals who do what they do because of instincts. They don’t have to reason or choose to be cat, hen, or tiger. They learn how to catch a mouse or use a litter box, to build a nest or drink from a watering can. But there is no inherent need for moral theology to do it.
Because we love in a way beyond nature–or not–we humans have free will, the capacity to choose to love in the way God loves–or to love like the movies love–or not to love at all. We can choose to be faithful in marriage–or not. We can choose to care for our children–or not. We can create a just society–or not.
And, of course, because of those “or nots,” we can and do sin. We can sin so much that we ignore, rebel against, or even kill God incarnate, as we did when Jesus was crucified.
Think about it, the Divine Design set up, from the beginning, for the second person of the Holy Trinity to become man and for God to experience death as human in order that all humans could experience the eternal life of God.
Wow!
It also was and remains God’s design that we be “justified by faith.” We have “gained access by faith to this grace in which we stand, and we boast in hope of the glory of God.”
Putting It Together
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are a tag team whose work is to save and guide each and every person toward living within the love that is the Holy Trinity.
As the catechism says, “Hence the whole Christian life is a communion with each of the divine persons, without in any way separating them. Everyone who glorifies the Father does so through the Son in the Holy Spirit; everyone who follows Christ does so because the Father draws him and the Spirit moves him.” (CCC 259)
This is why we have a Sunday to honor that which we can barely understand: This is a Sunday to honor the inherent love in God’s self that enables us to be lighthouses (or candles in the wind) of that love in a world which always has the capacity to choose life-in-God–or not.
The hierarchy of truths, interestingly, starts at the bottom, not the top. What is most important is most foundational: who God is in his nature; who God is in com-munion within Himself.
The catechism is right. I can’t understand that from reason. And the catechism is right. I can grasp it in faith.
Prayer:
Lord, as I have struggled, researched, thought, and prayed with the doctrine of the Trinity this week, I’m not sure I can explain what I believe: that God’s nature is truly love, that love can only be truly had within the natural law commandments of God, that God inherently loves, that I must grow to love as God loves. That God loved before there were creatures. That none of this makes logical sense, yet, it makes faith sense.
It leads me to trust, Lord. Somehow, this journey of trying to figure this out leads me to trust You more. Thank You, Lord.
