Compelled by Love

The celebration of the Feast of the Holy Trinity does not occur in a vacuum. It follows immediately after the day of Pentecost; that is, upon the realization of the completeness of the Godhead. The three parts of the Godhead may be expressed in various ways: such as, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, or  Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer. Borrowing from the indigenous people another way of expressing this mystery is simply, Flesh, Force, Spirit. St. Paul puts it this way: The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit; grace, love, communion. Regardless of how it is expressed, it resides firmly in the event of Pentecost, which is not just a day on the calendar in which we all wear red, but is the foundation for all of Christendom. 

And so picking up where I left off on the Feast of Pentecost, I am going to continue with another writing from Benedictine monk, Bede Griffiths, whose 50 year ministry in India and Hindu influence will be clearly visible: 

“At Pentecost the disciples were ‘filled with the Holy Spirit.’ They underwent a radical transformation. Something happened which transformed them from a group of weak and spiritless men into a community of believers who set out to change the world. This something was a mystical experience. It was a breakthrough beyond time and change, beyond the agony of suffering and death which they had experienced in the crucifixion, into the world of absolute reality, which was summed up for the Hebrew in the name of God. They experienced God; they ‘realized Brahman,’ as a Hindu would say, they “Knew the Self, the Spirit, the eternal Truth, dwelling in the heart.” 

The transformation that comes from experiencing God cannot be overstated. It is in knowing God that all right action proceeds. It is not static. That is to say, for instance, when meditation is recommended, it is for the purpose of experiencing God, but it is not the end game - it is only the beginning. Prayer is the starting place. Out of the transformation that comes of knowing God, whether in prayer or in some other transcendent experience, one is moved to action. Jesus makes this clear with his final directive: Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” The key words here are “go, teach, obey.” However, the experience of the Godhead, who is both transcendent and immanent in nature, comes before the word, “go.” There are countless examples of persons who have been transformed by their experience of God, and we look to them for guidance - ways in which to lead our own lives, how we might fully express the faith that is in us. Here are but a few:

Dorothy Day founded the Catholic Worker movement, which offers hospitality to the poor, and went to jail dozens of times to protest war and economic injustices. She wrote: 

“All through those weary first days in jail when I was in solitary confinement, the only thoughts that brought comfort to my should were those lines in the Psalms that expressed the terror and misery of man suddenly stricken and abandoned. Solitude and hunger and weariness of spirit - these sharpened my perceptions so that I suffered not only my own sorrows but the sorrows of those about me. I was no longer myself. I was a man. I was no longer a young girl, part of a radical movement seeking justice for those oppressed. I was the oppressed. I was that drug addict, screaming and tossing in her cell, beating her head against the wall. I was that shoplifter who for rebellion was sentenced to solitary. I was that woman who had killed her children, who had murdered her lover.” 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor who escaped the Gestapo in 1939, opposed Hitler and was arrested and hanged for being part of an underground movement to assassinate him. His profound writings remain a Christian witness in the face of abject evil. He wrote:  “Christianity stands or falls with its revolutionary protest against violence, arbitrariness and pride of power and with its pleas for the weak. Christians are doing too little to make these points clear rather than too much. Christendom adjust itself far too easily to the worship of power. Christians should give offense, shock the world far more then they are doing now. Christians should take a stronger stand in favor of the weak rather than considering first the possible right of the strong.”

Thomas Merton was a contemplative monk in the Trappist order. He came out against the Vietnam War and died mysteriously in Bangkok, Thailand, after giving a lecture to a group of nuns and monks on Karl Marx and monasticism in 1968. He wrote: “Jesus not only teaches us the Christian life, He creates it in our souls by the action of His Spirit. Our life in Him is not a matter of mere ethical goodwill. It is not a mere moral perfection. It is an entirely new spiritual reality, an inner transformation.” 

Oscar Romero was the archbishop of El Salvador during the civil war that ravaged that country in the late 1970’s through the the 1980’s. He was constantly harassed by the Vatican when he took opposition to conservative, wealthy landowners and the military. He spoke out on behalf of social justice and was eventually shot down while celebrating the Mass by the military. He said this, shortly before his death: “You can tell the people that if they proceed in killing me, that I forgive and bless those who do it. Hopefully, they will realize that they are wasting their time. A bishop will die, but the church of God, which is the people, will never perish. The church would betray its own love for God and its fidelity to the gospel if it stopped being a defender of the rights of the poor, or a humanizer of every legitimate struggle to achieve a more just society… that prepares the way for the true reign of God in history. When the church hears the cry of the oppressed it cannot but denounce the social structures that give rise to and perpetuate the misery from which the cry arises.”

As I hope you can see plainly, the Trinity is not a doctrine. It is the fullness of the Godhead. But it means nothing apart from our personal experience of it. The Trinity is love. What we celebrate today is divine, self-giving love, from which we are driven to right action. Any action, not rooted in love, is misguided. 

Mechtild of Magdeburg described it this way: “From the very beginning God loved us. The Holy Trinity gave itself in the creation of all things and made us, body and soul, in infinite love.” It is from the intimate knowing of this infinite love, the experience of the self-emptying Godhead, that we are compelled to do the righteous work of the Gospel: Go, teach, obey.