Last Thursday morning, I
woke up thinking about what it would be like to consciously dedicate my day to
being “God-like”: greeting every event
and every person I encounter as God would.
It seemed like a good challenge, so I gave it a try. I lasted 13 minutes – I hadn’t even gotten
out of bed yet. Obviously, I need more
practice being God-like, and that’s exactly what our readings and the Solemnity
of the Most Holy Trinity call us to do.
A central theme of the
early Greek Fathers of the Church is something called theiosis or deification,
which are just fancy words for “becoming God-like.” Origen, Gregory of Nyssa and Basil the Great
all taught that “the entire purpose of the
Christian life was to make us, not simply better people . . ., but to make us
divine.[1] Becoming God-like is our Christian
Mission in a nutshell. We pray for it at every Mass, through your humble deacon, when
he mingles the water and wine at the beginning of the Liturgy of the Eucharist,
saying: “By the mystery of this water
and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to
share in our humanity.” Remember, man
and woman were created to be like God.
While sin has tarnished our likeness with God, the Father never stops
calling us to return to our original state of grace, to share in the divine life,
to become God-like again. So much so,
that “God became flesh . . . to bring us to divine life.[2]
So what is God like?
Well, today’s readings teach us that God is merciful and gracious, slow
to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity (Exodus 4: 6); they tell us that our
God is holy, glorious, praiseworthy and exalted (Daniel 3:52). I guess you’re starting to see why I failed
at being God-like in just 13 minutes. Most
importantly, though, we learn from Scripture what every football fan has engraved
on his or her subconscious – John 3:16: “God so loved the world that he gave
his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might
have eternal life.” All of the
characteristics we attribute to God can be boiled down to that one – love. God is love, and so to be God-like, we have
to participate in the community of love that is the Trinity.
We’re all familiar with the Trinity – we’re
baptized into the faith in the name of the Trinity, and we place ourselves into
the dynamic life of the Trinity every time we cross ourselves. But do we really understand what we mean when
we profess one God in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit? The short answer is no. We can’t.
The Trinity is a mystery that’s inaccessible to the human mind; it’s an
object of faith only because it was revealed to us by Jesus.[3]
So how are we supposed to become
God-like when we can’t fully understand what the Trinity is? The answer is found in that one central
divine attribute: love. Even if we don’t understand the Trinity, we know
that “[l]ove is to will the good of another.”[4] And Saint
Augustine adds that love is Trinitarian; it’s comprised of three things: a lover, a beloved and the love itself.[5] If we
understand the Father as the lover, Jesus as the beloved, and the Holy Spirit
as the love that flows between them, we can see our path to participation in
the divine life clearly. “In the
Trinity, three Persons engage in a mutual and self-giving activity that is so
complete it makes them a dynamic unity.”[6]
It makes them a community of love. So to enter into the divine life, we need to
love, and we need to let ourselves be loved.
We need to be a community of love.
Our challenge, then, is obvious: we don’t always love. We tend to be individualistic. We often will our own good and not the good
of another, so we prioritize looking out for number one. We act as if we’re in competition with each
other, and we seek advantage over one another.
We fear our neighbor, assume negative intent, and we lash out at others with
no attempt to understand their motives or their circumstances. Our problem is that too often we aren’t very God-like;
we fail to live as a community of love.
If you don’t believe me, check out Facebook, the daily news feeds, and
the gossip at the water cooler.
Trinity Sunday is the perfect time to rededicate
ourselves to living as a community of love. And it starts right here at Mass, where we
come together as a community of love to share the Eucharistic meal. But the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the
love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit “have to remain with us always
and bear fruit beyond the Eucharistic celebration.”[7] We need to heed the instruction at the end of
Mass: “Go in peace, glorifying the Lord
by your life.” Strengthened by the
Eucharist, we need to encounter the world as God does – with love. We need to go in peace and be God-like.
I have to admit that those 13 minutes last Thursday
morning were the best 13 minutes of my day.
I prayed for the health and well-being of my family and friends (I may
have even thrown world peace in there); I was thankful for my many blessings;
and I was happy. Then I began to think about
how I could be God-like at work. That’s
when I failed – for the silliest of reasons.
I started thinking about a negative situation that I might face later in the day – not a real
issue, a potential issue. I worried
about what I’d say and do; and I began to have negative thoughts about the
people who might be involved. They
hadn’t even done anything yet. I failed
because I stepped outside of the community of love and retreated into the dark
recesses of my own selfishness. Imagine
how much better my day would have been if those 13 minutes had become 13 hours,
or even a whole day. Imagine how much
better our world would be if we all tried to be God-like, even for just 13
minutes.
[1]
Robert Barron, The Strangest Way: Walking the Christian Path (Maryknoll,
Orbis, 2002) at 29.
[2]
Mary M. McGlone, “God for Us,” National
Catholic Reporter, vol. 53, no. 17 (June 2-15, 2017) at 23.
[3]
Catechism of the Catholic Church,
Glossary.
[4]
Catechism of the Catholic Church
1766, citing St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II, 26 4, corp. art.
[5]
Augustine of Hippo, De Trinitate, ch.
2.
[6]
John Shea, The Spiritual Wisdom of the Gospels
for Christian Preachers and Teachers: Following the Mystery of Love
(Collegeville, Liturgical Press, 2010) at 205.
[7]
Catechism of the Catholic Church
1109.
