The Lover, the Beloved, and the Love Between

            Augustine writes that the Father is the Lover and the Son is the Beloved. Scripture gives evidence for this. At the Baptism of Jesus and at the Transfiguration the voice of God refers to Jesus as “Son”. Jesus refers to the Father multiple times, perhaps most especially in the Lord’s Prayer, when He prays for unity of the Apostles and at His Crucifixion. The Father Loves the Son perfectly and eternally, and the Son, because He is God too, does the same in return. The Love between them is so perfect, according to Augustine, that the Love between them is a unique and perfect person in itself. The Father is the Lover, the Son is the Loved, and the Spirit is the Love between the two. This is one of the few dynamics that I do not explore in depth with my high school students; it require a great deal of higher-level philosophy to event begin to explain. But what I do address the greater question: “How can this God be one if God is three persons? How can this not be polytheism?”

The Cathedral of Our Lady Assumed into Heaven and St. Nicholas. The Love Mary has for her Son is so profound that it draws her ever closer to the Cross and the suffering of Jesus. The Image and Likeness of God and the Universal Call to Holiness, perhaps, tells us that we should be the same (photo P. Smith).

            I start by reminding them that there is no perfect model to demonstrate the Trinity. The Trinity is not a Shamrock; sorry St. Patrick. The Trinity is not a triangle; sorry fifth grade religion teachers. The Trinity is not water (liquid, gas, solid)…sorry, but not sorry, anyone who has ever taught this. Heresies aside, I try to get students to consider what it means to be “One.” To be one is to be unified in thought and in will. Even the self can be divided if you are not focused on a single will. If I tell myself I want to be in better shape, and I should go for a run, I might also be telling myself that I want to sit and watch TV and eat nachos. I am, by definition, divided, not physically, but intellectually. I have two wills, and, usually, the nacho-will wins out. But if I can unite my body, spirit, and mind in a single will, then I am one. What is keeping us from doing the same with “the Other”? For God, He is His own “Other”, except the Wills of God’s self and God’s Other are so perfectly attuned, they unite in a single Will, though they are three distinct persons. Further, since the Son is the only one with a Body, God does not have to deal with the division or union of the material form to be “One” for there is only one body, that of Jesus Christ. The mind and the spirit of the three persons of God, as they are not material Truths, are perhaps more easily attuned and unified to each other. So think of this: if the three persons of God are so perfectly in tune with each other in body, mind, and spirit, then aren’t they, ontologically, one? Aren’t they so united in Will that they exist as a single God? This only leaves the question: if we are made in the image and likeness of God and if God is so perfectly attuned to God’s self, then shouldn’t our Vocation be to attune ourselves to “the Other” in the same way? If we want to live out the image and likeness in which we are made, shouldn’t we seek unified relationships with everyone in the world? The answer is “Yes”… the Universal Vocation to Holiness is to Love “the Other” and to be Loved by “the Other” the same way God does. But we must come to understand why this is beneficial to us, who exactly is “the Other”, and how can we actually come to do so. This is the focus of the next section of my class, and here is where the class begins to take root in the hearts of my students.