Thriving in the Trinity

Have you ever woken up in the morning with a stiff neck? You know how miserable it is. Maybe you just "slept wrong," and now you can't turn your head. You have to walk like a robot, but you can't reach out because your shoulders and arms don't work right, either.

Well, Moses must have known that same experience, because today he calls the Lord's followers, "a stiff-necked people" in need of forgiveness for their wickedness. "Stiff-necked" partly refers to pride and arrogance-the rigid way we picture a butler standing, or someone who thinks she is above everyone else.

But when you have a stiff neck, you can't look to right or left. You just stare straight ahead. When people aren't able to take in the larger view, they can't see the needs around them and they have a kind of tunnel vision. Today we see Moses is upset because he is trying to lead God's chosen people to the Promised Land. But they keep worshipping idols and doing only what pleases THEM. They don't "look to right or left," just inside to their own desires.

Take in the Whole View

Why is it so important to be able to look and reach out freely in all directions? Because that greater perspective is at the very heart of our calling. Today is the Feast of the Holy Trinity. The word "Trinity" might seem rather cold or too theological as a description for the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But it means that, when we were just conceived, we were born into a community of holiness-the Trinity. We were "stamped" with that identity. Our God is one God, but that one God is the fullness of three persons: the One who created us, the One who redeems us, and the One who comforts and inspires us.

So today we actually celebrate our life purpose and our deepest calling: to be united into each other and into God, as the Persons of the Trinity are one. That is really who men and women are meant to be-like the oneness of God. We are made in the image of the Holy Trinity, not just in the image of one of the persons of the Trinity.

How do we know this is true? We experience that truth in those "peak moments" in life-one of those deep moments of harmony, feeling at one with everything-maybe similar to that moment when God looked at the creation and felt its goodness.

Often children experience these moments, when they stand in the rain or play in the leaves. Thomas Merton was a man who had lived as a monk for many years feeling "separate" from other people. One day, standing in a busy shopping district at the corner of Fourth and Walnut in Louisville, Kentucky, he felt a shocking change:

"I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I was theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of...separateness...(and) isolation..." (Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander)

Merton said later that he saw "the secret beauty of their hearts...the person that each one is in God's eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all of the time." Think of some rare, secret moment when you have felt such deep happiness, such oneness, that you knew in a flash that all was right with not just the world, but with the whole universe. This is probably as close as we can experience in this life to who we really are in the fullness of the Divine Community.

We Need Church

But this is precisely why we have a church. We don't just have a loose gathering of a bunch of individuals one day a week; we have something called a "church," the ecclesia in Greek, meaning an assembly which has been "called" or "called out" (from ekkletos, ekkalein). We are all "called" by God's voice, yes. But even more, we are "called out" from isolation, from nothingness, into a completely new body of life and love and deep sharing, in a way that only the Trinity can model for us.

Imagine if Jesus never established a church. What if after he left earth, no one gathered together, no one worshipped together, no one worked together to feed and heal and preach and build community. We all just drifted around, doing our own thing. Clearly, we would not have the experience God wants us to have. We ARE a church that is our Christian reality.

But the daily problem is that we feel so separate from other people, at times distant and isolated and lonely. How do we change this? True, St. Paul says, "Encourage one another, agree with one another, live in peace." But anyone who's breathing knows we can only do that in practical, simple ways.

Simply keeping a smile on your face can make an inner change in your sister or brother who is walking toward you. Keep alive inside. Think of your complete acceptance by the love of the Trinity. Think of ways to offer that acceptance to the person you're with. When you leave here today, be ready to show kind encouragement to the next person who annoys you with some mistake.

After his transformation, Thomas Merton said, "The whole illusion of a separate holy existence is a dream..." Holiness for us starts right here.