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Trinitarian Life of the Family – May 19, 2016

God is one, but He is not alone or solitary. God is a communion of Persons. He is the Most Holy Trinity, an eternal communion of three divine Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is the central mystery of the Christian faith. (CCC 261) St. Patrick converted Ireland with the Trinitarian analogy of the Shamrock: three leaves, one clover. God is an eternal unity of three distinct divine Persons, each of whom is wholly and substantively God. They are consubstantial and equal to each other. The three Persons of the Trinity are relational to one another in two internal divine processions: The Father eternally generates the Son, and the Holy Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father and the Son. (CCC 254) The one Godhead is an inter-relational Being of three Persons. In short, God is a family.

Man is ontologically created in the image of the one Trinitarian God. As God is a family, so is man created in His image as a relational being made for families. After God creates Adam, He says, “It is not good that man is alone.” (Gen. 2:18) Man by himself did not yet fully represent the relational nature of God. With that, God creates Eve, the first woman, so that man “cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh.” (Gen. 2:24) This is the primordial sacrament of marriage. It is Trinitarian by nature. Husband and wife become a communion of persons in the natural order, where the two become one, reflecting the communion of Persons in the Godhead in the heavenly order. The perfect self-knowledge of the Father eternally begets the second divine Person, the Son; and from the perfect self-offering of will and mutual love between the Father and the Son proceeds the third divine Person, the Holy Spirit. In an infinitely imperfect but analogous way, husband and wife come together in a mutual self-offering of love, consummated in the sexual union, which conceives a third independent being, a child, just as from the mutual love of the Father and Son comes the Holy Spirit. Although with obvious and profound dissimilarities, this is our closest imitation of Trinitarian relations within the natural realm. As Pope John Paul II wrote in his Theology of the Body series, “Man becomes the image of God not so much in the moment of solitude as in the moment of communion.”

The Trinitarian image is reflected in our families, and the family is the icon of Trinitarian life. As the Catechism teaches, “The Christian family is a communion of persons, a sign and image of the communion of the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit.” (CCC 2205) The family is a mythic archetype of the relationships within the Trinity. Living with a husband or wife and children necessarily draws us out from ourselves. It challenges our pride and selfishness. It forces us to minimize ourselves for the sake of others. It pushes us to focus on someone else, not just our own well-being. It challenges us as a form of preparation, within the concreteness of our flesh and blood relationships, to be holy as God is holy. The family, as the “domestic Church,” is the foundational building block of the greater Church, and of society on the whole. It was part of God’s plan for humanity from the beginning. Indeed, Jesus Himself incarnated into a family, in order to highlight its institutional importance, and to personally sanctify them. (CCC 533)

Of course, living a self-sacrificial marriage and complete self-offering to family is easier said than done. Marriage and parenthood are hard work. Our selfish pride and egocentric desires get in the way. Overcoming these requires a lifetime of tiny steps to incrementally grow in holiness and virtue. It is difficult to reflect at times that Trinitarian love and vision amidst the exhaustion of crying babies, soiled diapers, sibling squabbles, spousal arguments, stressful jobs, washing dishes and baskets of laundry. This is part of our daily Cross, to take up and follow Jesus, by denying ourselves and serving others. Yet, we should also remember that the supernatural spirit of God works in the ordinary and mundane activities of our everyday lives. The family is meant to be holy, reflecting here and now, in time and space, the eternal beauty of the Trinity’s relationships. Tragically, we need only look at the current sad state of fractured families and marriages today to see the greater challenges. Families are riddled with every type of pain and suffering, abuse and abandonment, dysfunction and dissolution. The Trinitarian image in many modern families is badly disfigured.

Fortunately, God has not left us orphans. He has left us His Church. He has left us the sacraments, which can heal and make us whole again. Even if we come from irreparable marriages and broken families, God has provided us with the communion of persons found in the Church. This is the supernatural family of God. (CCC 1655) Jesus Himself points to the Communion of saints, not biological or hereditary bonds, as His true family in faith, saying, “Here are My mother and My brothers!” (Mt. 12:49) Our families are the closest natural approximation to the spiritual communion of Persons in the Trinity. However, beyond that, we have our supernatural communion of Persons in faith and the Church, in which, we can also live a Trinitarian life. The Catechism states, “For if we continue to love one another and to join in praising the Most Holy Trinity – all of us who are sons of God and form one family in Christ – we will be faithful to the deepest vocation of the Church.” (CCC 959) Our deepest vocation is to live in communion with each other in our marriages, in our families, and in our Church, serving the universal brotherhood of man, with mutual self-sacrifice and life-giving love, in imitation of the Most Holy Trinity.

  

 

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Trinitarian Life of the Family (long version) – May 19, 2016

God is one, but He is not alone or solitary. God is a communion of Persons. He is the Most Holy Trinity, an eternal communion of three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is the central mystery of the Christian faith. (CCC 261) St. Patrick converted Ireland with the analogy of the Shamrock: three leafs, one clover. God is an eternal unity of three distinct divine Persons, each of who is wholly and substantively God. They are consubstantial to each other. (CCC 253) The three Persons of the Trinity are relational to one another in two internal divine processions: The Father eternally generates the Son, and the Holy Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father and the Son. (CCC 254) The one Godhead is an inter-relational Being of three Persons. In short, God is a family.

The triune family of the one God is apparent from the very beginning. In Genesis, at the foundation of the world, the Creator says, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” (Gen. 1:26) Here, in the preternatural prologue to human history, before Adam and Eve, God the Creator refers to Himself as “us” and “our,” both plural pronouns. The most common name for God in the Hebrew Bible is “Elohim,” which is a plural, masculine noun. Later in Genesis, in the time of Abraham, scripture says “the Lord appeared to him”(Gen. 18:1), and in the very next verse, “..behold, three men stood in front of him.” (Gen. 18:2) The prophet Isaiah refers to God as one who is holy – thrice times. He says, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts” (Is. 6:3), emphasizing the triune nature of the Godhead. Even in the Shema, the prayer the Jews consider the most important, Judaism’s central monotheistic creed, the name of God appears three times. It says, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord.” (Deut. 6:4) (שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל: יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ יְהוָה אֶחָד) In effect, Moses is saying the name of God three times (Yahweh, Elohenu, Yahweh) is a united one. There are other inferences too, such as Isaiah’s Immanuel, “God with us” (Is. 7:14); Daniel’s “Son of Man” references (Dan. 7:13-14); and David’s psalm on “The Lord said to my Lord.” (Ps. 110:1)

This was part of the on-going self-revelation of God to Israel and humanity over the course of salvation history. Just as St. Augustine taught, what lies hidden in the old is revealed in the new. That is, what God hinted at in the Old Testament is made explicit in the New Testament. (CCC 129) This, of course, refers to the revelation of the Son of God in Jesus Christ and the revelation of the Holy Spirit. At the Baptism of Jesus, we see the Trinitarian formula. The Son is baptized in water, the Holy Spirit descends upon Him like a dove, and the Father’s voice comes from Heaven. (Lk. 3:21-22) In the Last Supper Discourse, Jesus tells His Apostles that the Father will send the Counselor in His name, again linking the Trinitarian formula of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. (Jn. 14) In Jesus’ Great Commission, before His final ascension into Heaven, He tells His disciples, “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..” (Mt. 28:19) Jesus’ final message is to baptize the whole world in the “name” (singular) of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. (CCC 233)

Man is ontologically created in the image of the Trinitarian God. As God is a family, so is man created in His image as a relational being made for families. This is why in Genesis, after God creates Adam, He says, “It is not good that man is alone.” (Gen. 2:18) Man by himself did not yet fully image the relational nature of God. With that, God creates Eve, the first woman, so that man “cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh.” (Gen. 2:24) This is the primordial sacrament of marriage. It is Trinitarian by nature. Husband and wife become a communion of persons in the natural order, where the two become one, reflecting the communion of Persons in the Godhead in the heavenly order. The perfect self-knowledge of the Father eternally begets the second divine Person, the Son; and the perfect self-offering of will and mutual love between the Father and the Son eternally spirates the third divine Person, the Holy Spirit. Husband and wife come together in a mutual self-offering of love, consummated in the sexual union, which conceives a third independent being, a child, just as from the Father and Son comes the Holy Spirit. Although an infinitely imperfect analogy with obvious dissimilarities, this is our closest reproduction of Trinitarian relations in the natural order. This is partially why the Church rejects contraception, because it obscures the openness to life in our Trinitarian image. Adam and Eve, in their marriage and procreation, make visible the Trinitarian image in their lives, and so, God blesses them, “Be fruitful and multiply.” (Gen. 1:28) In effect, He is saying show forth the image of the Trinity, as reflected in the communion of persons in marriage and family, across the natural and humanly world. This is partially why the Church rejects contraception, as it obscures the openness to life in our Trinitarian image. For this reason, Pope John Paul II wrote in his Theology of the Body series, “Man becomes the image of God not so much in the moment of solitude as in the moment of communion.”

The Trinitarian image is reflected in our families, and the family is the icon of Trinitarian life. This is why the Catechism teaches, “The Christian family is a communion of persons, a sign and image of the communion of the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit.” (CCC 2205) A family coming together with in self-sacrificial offering and mutual life-giving love is the fullest expression and the closest analogy, despite obvious dissimilarities (ie, God is spirit who infinitely transcends human realities), that we have of the Trinitarian life. Our deepest bonds are our familial relationships; these offer faint glimpses of the eternal communion of love that exists within the heart of the Trinity. As the great theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar said, family is “..the most eloquent imago Trinitatis that we find woven into the fabric of the creature.” Living with a husband or wife and having children necessarily draws us out from ourselves. It challenges our pride and selfishness. It forces us to minimize ourselves for the sake of others. It pushes us to focus on someone else, not just our own well-being. It challenges us to be holy as God is holy. The family is the foundational building block of the Church, and of society. It was part of God’s plan for humanity from the beginning. Indeed, Jesus Himself incarnated into a family, in order to highlight its institutional importance, and to personally sanctify them. The family is the “domestic Church.” (CCC 1666) The Apostolic Exhortation Christifidelis Laici says families are “a ‘sign’ of that interpersonal communion of love which constitutes the mystical, intimate life of God, One in Three.” (CF, 52) The family is a prefigured sign and a primeval archetype of the relationships within the Trinity. It is a foretaste and preparation in the divine economy, within the concreteness of our flesh and blood, for our ultimate destiny of incorporating us into the eternal life of the Blessed Trinity. (CCC 260)

Of course, living a self-sacrificial marriage and complete self-offering to family is easier said than done. Marriage and children can be, and are, hard work. Understatement of the year! Our selfish pride and egocentric desires get in the way. Overcoming these often take a lifetime of tiny steps to incrementally grow over time in holiness and virtue. It is difficult to reflect at times that Trinitarian love and vision amidst the exhaustion of crying babies, soiled diapers, sibling squabbles, spousal arguments, stressful jobs, washing dishes and baskets of laundry. This is part of our daily Cross, to take up and follow Jesus, by denying ourselves and serving others. Yet, we should also remember that the supernatural spirit of God works in the ordinary and mundane activities of our everyday lives. The family is meant to be beautiful, reflecting here and now, in time and space, the eternal beauty of the Trinity’s relationships. Tragically, we need only look at the current sad state of fractured families and marriages today to see the greater challenges. Families are riddled with every type of pain and suffering, abuse and abandonment, dysfunction and dissolution. The Trinitarian image in many modern families is badly disfigured.

Fortunately, God has not left us orphans. He has left us His Church. He has left us the sacraments, which can heal and make us whole again. Even if we come from irreparable marriages and broken families, God has provided us with the communion of persons found in the Church. This is the supernatural family of God. (CCC 1655) Jesus Himself points to the Communion of saints, not biological or hereditary bonds, as His true family in faith, saying, “Here are My mother and My brothers!” (Mt. 12:49) The relations of our families are the closest natural approximation to the spiritual communion of Persons in the Trinity. However, beyond that, we have our supernatural communion of Persons in faith and the Church, in which, we can also live a Trinitarian life. The Catechism states, “For if we continue to love one another and to join in praising the Most Holy Trinity – all of us who are sons of God and form one family in Christ – we will be faithful to the deepest vocation of the Church.” (CCC 959) Our deepest vocation is to live in communion with each other in our marriages, in our families, and in our Church, with mutual self-sacrifice and life-giving love, in imitation of the Most Holy Trinity.

 

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Baptism, Initiation into the Common Priesthood – October 15, 2015

“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.” (Mt.28:19-20)

“Baptism imprints on the soul an indelible spiritual sign, the character, which consecrates the baptized person for Christian worship.” (CCC 1280)

The sacrament of Baptism initiates us into the mystery of Christ. It is the essential rite to eternal life, and the beginning point of the whole Christian experience. (CCC 1213) In Baptism, God first demonstrates His self-communication to us. It imprints His indelible mark upon our souls configuring us to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The character of Christ is irrevocably sealed upon our minds and souls, configuring us to a new and eternal spiritual reality. (CCC 1272) It transforms who we are. A permanent ontological change takes place to our very being. Just as a material object or person is visibly sealed with a mark, defining who or what it is, or whose property it might be, so too, in Baptism, God marks our immaterial souls invisibly and permanently, claiming us as His own. It sets us apart. It can only be done once, and nothing can undo it. It is a necessary transformation. Jesus attests to it, saying, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.” (Jn.3:5) Baptismal water is a graced sign, a real symbol, which efficaciously applies the invisible grace it signifies. It does in reality, the sign it points to. We are washed of Original Sin, purified of all of our sins, and regenerated to eternal life. It consecrates us into the sacramental character of Christ’s paschal mystery, impressing upon us His saving grace of the Cross. (SC, 6) We are sealed with Christ’s imprimatur, conforming us to the God-man. (2 Cor. 1:21-22) He alone conquered sin, and death itself, so that by faith and grace, we too, who are flesh and blood mortals, may partake in His supernatural life. Baptism is necessary because Christ alone overcame death. We need His divine life in us, so we too will rise to eternal life. Baptism anticipates our own resurrection. Through it, we are grafted into communion with the Easter mysteries. The mystery of Christ becomes alive to us, and in us. Christ in His life, and in His Passion and suffering, and all that He was in His eternal and divine humanity, begins to unfold and live out in our individual lives. When we are immersed into the water, we are brought into His death, and rising from the water, we are brought into His life and resurrection. (Rom. 6:3-4) As the Catechism says, “It signifies and actually brings about death to sin and entry into the life of the Most Holy Trinity through configuration to the Paschal mystery of Christ.” (CCC 1239) We are made into a new living, Trinitarian reality; spiritually reordered towards the Father, configured to the Son, and filled with the Holy Spirit. We become adopted children of God, by faith and grace; baptized into the Son of God, we are made partakers in the divine nature by proxy, as He is in reality.

We are indeed remade into this new holy status as children of God, and temples of the Holy Spirit, and co-heirs with Christ. It makes us, first and foremost, Christian, and members of the Church, the Body of Christ, and gains us access to divine grace in the rest of the sacraments. It is our foundation for the supernatural life. But, it is also the first moment of a lifelong phenomenon of conversion. Baptism is more than just a single event, or a static state; it transforms us in such a way that we are perpetually drawn deeper into the living reality of Christ. It allows us to engage in the sacramental life and realize the mysteries of Christ in our being. It establishes a new dynamic in our consciousness, where our everyday circumstances are reinterpreted and contextualized within the divine humanity of Christ. Our humanity is elevated and divinized. We are afforded special offices. One of these is our incorporation into the common priesthood of the faithful, the baptized, and the ordinary. With a sacred chrism, the oil consecrated by the bishop, the newly baptized is anointed into Christ as “priest, prophet, and king.” (CCC 1241) We become sharers in Christ’s one eternal priesthood. As Lumen Gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution of the Church, says, “The baptized, by regeneration and the anointing of the Holy Spirit, are consecrated as a spiritual house and a holy priesthood.” (LG, 10) Even as Christ is the one true and eternal Mediator between God and man, He still graciously saw fit that we should also participate, to varying degrees, in His priestly office. As part of our baptismal right and dignity, we can exercise that priestly office by virtue of our association in Christ’s life, passion, and redemptive sacrifice.

But, what are our priestly functions? Scripture and the Church say we are to make spiritual sacrifices. We are to offer up interiorly all of our actions, words, deeds, suffering, successes, and all that we do, for the glory of God and for the intercession of souls. The magisterium teaches that the baptized should “present themselves as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God.” (LG, 10 ) Every common thing in our ordinary existence can be extended towards God as a sacrifice in our common priesthood. We can offer up everything, including our prayers, sacrifices, fasting, bodily weaknesses, illness, even patiently enduring the things that annoy us, or nearly anything that may otherwise seem useless and worthless in the eyes of the world. God’s eternal priesthood is mediated in the implements of our material world. Our physical operations can have spiritual significance. We can exercise our priesthood, in such a way, that we can, in effect, “sacramentalize” all that we do. That is, we spiritualize our activity through faith and with the intention of offering reparation to God. This is how we become living sacrifices. As the magisterium explains, we can “exercise that priesthood in receiving the sacraments, in prayer and thanksgiving, in the witness of a holy life, and by self-denial and active charity.” (LG, 10) By ourselves, a branch separated from the vine, our actions have no spiritual power. But, united with Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit, our actions can be spiritually efficacious for reparation of our sins and the sins of others. This is our role in the communion of saints. We are mediators. Through initiation in Baptism and the imprinting of Christ’s priestly seal upon us, we become priests. We can use our willful intention to please God, in a particular activity, invoke the anointing of the Holy Spirit, and raise that up as a form of worship. So, we can, for illustration, use our being hungry on any given afternoon, or say, being stuck behind a slow driver in our morning commute, to invoke the Holy Spirit, and offer these annoyances up to God for the sanctification of souls. These are just two minor examples, but the possibilities are nearly endless. St.Paul explains these spiritual sacrifices. He says, “I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.” (Col.1:24) Christ deemed us worthy to take part in His priestly ministry, and left for us a portion of the redemption to offer up to the Father. He made us a living Church, actively carrying on His mission. Christ’s presence and power remain hidden now sacramentally, just as it did in His life then when He walked the earth.  Some people today see just bread and wine, and not the body and blood of Christ, as before they saw just the carpenter’s son, and not the Son of God.  Christ continues His priestly mediation for the world today through us. In this vein, St.Paul is dutifully acting out his priestly character. He offers intercession and mediation for the Church, through his own sufferings, in unity with the sufferings of Christ. We are called to do the same. Christ has deputized us. He appointed us His priests. It is our role to live as mediators and intercessors here on earth in imitation of Him. We are to stand in the breach for those entrusted to us.  Baptism is everything, but it’s also just the beginning.

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