John 3:16 is undoubtedly one of the most popular and memorable verses in scripture. It is so popular that even we Catholics, who are notorious for our short-term memory when it comes to memorising bible verses, are able to recognise this verse, with some even able to spew verse and chapter at will. “God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not be lost but may have eternal life.”
The verse has sometimes been described by evangelical Christians as “the Gospel in a nutshell” because it provides a stunningly succinct summary of the Christian faith. We Catholics and they can agree that there is perhaps no other single verse that so powerfully captures God’s heart for His creation and love for us in sending Jesus. He could have sent His Son to judge us, to punish us for our waywardness, to condemn us for our sins, but this would not be the motivation for the Son’s mission. Instead, Jesus revealed this Truth, a truth which only He alone knew to be true before this, “For God sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world, but so that through him the world might be saved.”
It is clear that this verse is an unending, unyielding, unchanging proclamation of the utmost form of love—a message of hope from God to us. It concretely sets apart our God from the many other gods worshipped in this world, if such gods were to even exist. Other gods demand fear from their devotees but ours invite us into a relationship unlike any other we could ever experience. It is at its core the very essence of our faith. But how could this revelation be connected to the solemnity we celebrate today? Yes, the passage speaks of the Father and the Son, but no where is the Holy Spirit mentioned in here, unlike St Paul who concludes his Second letter to the Corinthians with this Trinitarian blessing: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”
So what does it mean for God to be love? It doesn’t necessarily mean God is simply loving. Judaism and Islam and Mormonism proclaim a God who loves. But when Christians teach that God is Himself love, they’re saying that real love itself has its origin and essence in God. And this cannot be true unless God is a Trinity. At the heart of this equation that God is Love is a summary of what the Most Holy Trinity means. God cannot be love unless there is something for Him to love. Think about it: A solitary god cannot be love. A God with no one to love means either God who is desperate or loveless. Neither qualifies as a true God of love. He would be a pitiable god but not worthy of our worship and devotion. God who is love can neither be loveless nor needy. Real love requires relationship.
In the doctrine of the Trinity we finally see how love is part of the fabric of creation. Creation was not the condition of God’s love but the consequence of it. God did not need His creation in order to have something to love, because if that were true, He could not be complete without it. If that something whom He loves were not part of Himself, He would not be perfect. In other words, St Augustine reasoned that God must be love inside Himself. Before creation came to be, God was already in a relationship from all eternity. The Father is the One who loves, the Son is the One who is loved and who loves the Father in return, and the Holy Spirit is the love that flows between them and binds them together.
So, the Trinity isn’t some weird religious invention Christians have stupidly clung to. It’s the answer to the deepest longing of the human heart. Now, we understand the perennial riddle of why we choose to love and seek to be loved. The Trinity answers the question. It makes us go deeper than sentimental notions and ethereal feelings and elusive emotions. It puts us on solid ground with all this love stuff we’ve been chasing forever. The convoluted, complicated, and incomprehensible doctrine of the Most Holy Trinity is swallowed up into the simplest concept of all – Love. In fact, the doctrine of the Trinity comes to life by swallowing us up into the love God has enjoyed since before time began. The Trinity is real because love is real and it is only so because the Trinity is the source and foundation of all reality.
Therefore, to speak of love and the Most Holy Trinity would not be speaking of two different and unrelated concepts. Just as the Trinity is the most profound mystery of God, love is the most profound mystery of man, made in the image and likeness of God. The Trinity is the revelation that God is Love. The Trinity is Love Loving – dynamic, unfathomable, inexhaustible, eternally complete and creative. Yet, here is the great wonder. We only know this because the Father gives Himself to be known in His Son and the Son gathers us into this eternal self-giving through and in the Spirit. In other words, the fact that we can speak at all about God as Trinity is already a sign that we are beginning to participate in God’s Triune life: we know and experience that the Trinity is Love Loving us.
The Trinitarian Life of God is our school of Love and we can never fully grasp and practice true love unless we are absorbed into the mystery of the Three Persons in One God. And this is what we mean when the priest chants the doxology at the end of the Eucharistic Prayer and we respond with the great Amen: “Through Him, with Him, In Him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, All Glory and honour is yours Almighty Father. Forever and ever, Amen."
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