Trinity Sunday in Light of the Theology of the Body

I posted along these lines a couple of years ago, but maybe I can amplify a bit. And If you don't remember what I wrote in 2010, you shouldn't be bored now.

A classic statement of the doctrine of the Trinity is found in what is called the Athanasian Creed (which was probably written in southern France several hundred years after the time of St. Athanasius). In part it says,

"Now the catholic faith is that we worship One God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity, neither confounding the Persons nor dividing the substance. For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, another of the Holy Spirit. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, is One, the Glory equal, the Majesty coeternal," and later, "The Father is made of none, neither created nor begotten. The Son is of the Father alone, not made nor created but begotten. The Holy Spirit is of the Father and the Son, not made nor created nor begotten but proceeding. … And in this Trinity there is nothing before or after, nothing greater or less, but the whole three Persons are coeternal together and coequal."

But this has often seemed abstract. We believe it because it is defined dogma, because Jesus speaks of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That's fine as far as it goes, but it can seem to be a truth without consequences. Thanks to Pope John Paul II, it no longer seems so. Possibly others had this insight before him, but it is through the explanation of his Theology of the Body that I have learned this.

In 1976, as Archbishop of Cracow, he wrote a work called "Sources of Renewal," in which he says the the Trinity is the central element of the faith, to which all other truths are related: it means that God is a communion of persons, and this shows us the nature of our communion with God and with one another. The Book of Genesis tells us that God created humanity in the image and likeness of God. Says John Paul, "Man resembles God not only because of the spiritual nature of his immortal soul but also by reason of his social nature, if by this we understand the fact that he 'cannot fully realize himself except in an act of pure self-giving.'"

The thing is that God is not just a solitary being but a communion of persons who love one another totally, who give themselves totally to each other, and whose love is creative. That is why the greatest commandments are to love God totally, that is with our whole heart, with our whole soul, with our whole mind, and with our whole strength, and to love our neighbor as ourself. These are not merely arbitrary rules. They are what it means to be the image and likeness of a God who is a Trinity of loving persons.

Families and friendships provide occasions for us to love and to give ourselves to others — to be in a communion of persons. We can even do so in dealings with co-workers and and acquaintances and even in chance encounters. Hermits, too, can be in a communion of persons when they give their lives in prayer for their fellow human beings — they are in communion with God and men. But it is in the reciprocal relationships that the image of God as Trinity, as communion of persons, is most clearly visible. And certainly the highest and deepest form of such a communion is in marriage.

According to Genesis, it is as male and female that God creates humanity as a communion of persons. In his Theology of the Body, Pope John Paul says, "Since they are formed in the image of God also inasmuch as they form an authentic communion of persons, the first man and the first woman [are] the beginning and model of that communion for all men and women who in any period unite with each other so intimately that they are 'one flesh.'" He adds that "[p]rocreation is rooted in creation, and every time it reproduces in some way its mystery." As Christopher West explains John Paul's teaching, "[S]exual union is only what it is meant to be as an authentic communion of persons when it is performed in union with God as an expression of his own Trinitarian life — the life of the Holy Spirit. There is no two-tiered distinction between nature and grace here. It is of sexual union's very 'nature' to be full of grace — to be in some sense a sacramental expression of the mystery and inner life of the Trinity." In other words it is a physical, bodily, image of the Trinity.

Furthermore, we can also be in a communion of persons with God.

Today's feast, then, doesn't proclaim some abstract doctrine, important perhaps to theologians, but irrelevant to our daily lives. In a very real way, it tells us something of what it means to be made in the image and likeness of God — what it means to be fully human. And in that way it invites us to reflect on our own lives as communion(s) of persons (and perhaps on how we can make them better in this respect).