(This is the second post in a series composed for the season of Lent. As noted previously, I am reading “The Orthodox Way”, by Met. Kallistos Ware, and am borrowing his chapter titles for my posts. Although I use his reflections as my starting point, Met. Ware should not be blamed for anything I write here. Indeed, I can only imagine that he would be horrified if he knew… 😉 ) 

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

How readily the words of this short prayer form in my mind and roll off my lips. The sign of the Cross, with its words and gestures, was probably one of the first prayers I learned as a child.

Yet the triune nature of God is far from universally accepted much less understood in Judeo-Christian faith history. Jews, Muslims and Jehovah Witnesses, for example, do not see God as three Persons in one God.

Even among those of us who embrace the Trinity, there is much confusion. Most disastrous are the controversies, such as the filioque, that have aroused passions to the point of schism.

I have no interest in discussing these or even giving them much consideration. The mystery of God is beyond me. I shall not try to define Him.

Even setting all of this aside, however, many still find the notion of Trinity confusing and nearly impossible to fathom.

A large part of our problem, I believe, is that we cannot truly comprehend union, as much as we long for it.

In trying to find our way out of this conundrum, we make God far more complicated than is either necessary or helpful. It is not the Trinity Who is so complex as it is the many words we generate is trying to explain what words cannot express.

Union is utter simplicity.

Union is Oneness in being, no divisions, no parts.

But union also requires otherness. Union cannot be described in singular terms any more than love can.

While in psychology we may speak of learning to love oneself, what is meant (or should be meant) is learning to love the God who dwells within us.

When we come to realize the love of God alive within us, it is not the “self” that we love in return – but Another.

Having discovered this divine process within, there is no longer room for doubting, neglecting or despising the self created and so profoundly cherished by God.

It is in and through this process that we are healed.

Self-love approached apart from this process constitutes an unhealthy egocentrism and must be rejected as the work of the enemy.

What we experience in this healing is but a foretaste, a glimpse as it were, of the dynamic love within God.

However, unlike the healing love we cannot live without, the love that unites Father, Son and Spirit is freely chosen.

It is perfect and has been from all eternity. It so defines love that every other love is but a shadow of it, a longing for the completion it represents.

Being three Persons, God loves selflessly, completely, eternally as One Being… Father loving Son loving Spirit.

Yet this union is not a fusion – each Person is distinct and must remain so in order for the love to continue as an ever-living reality.

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I am afraid I have created too many words. I cannot explain Him any more than anyone else… His three-ness, His one-ness…

And yet the Trinity is so incredibly important that I cannot walk away from Its truth as I can with other controversies about God.

In Christianity, God is revealed to us as Trinity, a truth that has far-reaching implications for our faith:

• To know that God is Person – He is not merely formless energy or “something out there”.
• To know that God is love, loving within Himself, in perfect, selfless union.
• To know that God desires our love, our worship, our service, not for His sake (ego on a cosmic scale), but because perfect love invites participation.

Yet just as importantly – or perhaps more importantly – awareness of these truths about the Trinity is fundamental to knowing how we are to live now, as we navigate through this life to join the Life of God.

The Son has instructed us to love one another as He has loved us – and He loves us as He loves the Father and the Spirit.

To live in union with the Trinity, is to follow this Way, to “reproduce on earth the mystery of mutual love that the Trinity lives in heaven”. (The Orthodox Way, Met. Ware).

In so doing, Met. Ware tells us that we create icons of the Trinity in every social unit of our lives. Our families become icons of the Trinity – our churches, our schools, our workplaces…

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I do not know how to be an icon.

But this, of course, is the point. Never was I intended to undertake this alone.

Let us begin the journey toward union.

Let us walk together in His truth.

May we love one another in Him without end.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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