THE INTIMACY OF GOD
If there came the impossible day that the Church would say that God isn’t Trinity, would that change anything in many believers’ existence? Probably not. That’s why one may be surprised by the confession of Father Varillon: «I think that, if God weren’t Trinity, I would probably be an atheist… In any case, if God isn’t Trinity, then I don’t understand anything at all».
The great majority of Christians don’t know that to adore God as Trinity means confessing that God, in God’s most profound intimacy, is only love, welcome, kindness. That is perhaps the most needed conversion most Christians need: the step forward from considering God as Power, to a God joyfully adored as Love.
God isn’t just any «almighty and eternal» being. A powerful being could be a despot, a destructive tyrant, an arbitrary dictator: a threat for our small and weak liberty. Could we trust in a God whom we know only as almighty? It’s very difficult to abandon ourselves to someone infinitely powerful. It would seem easier to mistrust, be cautious, be defensive of our independence.
But God is Trinity, a mystery of Love. And God’s omnipotence is the omnipotence of someone who is only love, unfathomable and infinite kindness. It is the love of God that is all powerful. God can’t do everything. God can but love infinitely. And each time we forget it and wander from the sphere of love, we fabricate a false God, a kind of strange idol that doesn’t exist.
When we haven’t yet discovered that God is only love, we facilely relate to God out of interest or fear. An interest that moves us to take advantage of God’s omnipotence for our own gain. Or a fear that leaves us seeking all kinds of means to defend ourselves from God’s threatening power. But such a religion made of interest and of fears is closer to magic than to true Christian faith.
Only when we start with the faith that God is only Love, and discover with fascination that God can’t be anything but Love that is present and beating in the deepest part of our lives, only then does trust in a Trinity God begin to grow in our heart, a God -whom Jesus reveals- can’t do anything but love us.
José Antonio Pagola
Translator: Fr. Jay VonHandorf
