L.J. shares a reflection on this Sunday's reading from the Gospel according to Luke.
God wants to make us mystics. The point of our faith, the point of the Gospel, is not moral living or attending services. The point is to become mystics, that is, persons caught up in the Trinity.
God wants to make us mystics. The point of our faith, the point of the Gospel, is not moral living or attending services. The point is to be a mystic, that is, to be one with God and through God be one with the whole cosmos. The Christian mystics describe this oneness, this relationship with God, in various ways. Some tell us to get drunk on love for God while others talk about being annihilated in the divine nothing. But all Christian mystics agree that becoming a mystic means plunging into the life of the Trinity as Paul testifies, “God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying out, ‘Abba, Father!’”
The doctrine of the Trinity is an attempt to say something not only about God, but also about the encounter between God and humankind and indeed with everything that exists. The Triune God: God-Father as God beyond us, God-Word as God among us, and God-Spirit as God within us. These statements say something important about God. The Trinity means God in relationship with us. Therefore, the doctrine of the Trinity is tremendously relevant to our lives. God, the infinite mystery of superabundant love, freely shares the divine life with us because God wants us.
Catherine Mowry LaCugna, in God For Us, a remarkable theological tract on the Trinity, states, “Christianity is meant to be a living experience of being in the Trinity, loved infinitely by the Father in the Son, Jesus Christ, through the Holy Spirit. The heart of the faith is mysticism: encountering the indwelling Trinity who transforms us into divinized children of God. Christian mysticism is about being caught up in the dynamic and non-objectified mystery of divine love. Christians are to live in the transforming love of the triune mystery and they will be transformed into love for the world.”
Christianity is not so much a series of catechetical propositions about the divine reality as it is Jesus sharing with us his own intimate knowledge of God through the Holy Spirit. The Christian religion is the transmission of that experience of Ultimate Reality as Trinity. This is deification, becoming divine. This is what it means to be a mystic. And it begins by waking up to God’s presence in our lives.
LaCugna also writes, “The heart of Christian life is the encounter with the loving mystery of God who makes possible both our oneness with God and with each other. The mystery of God is revealed to be a matter of invitation and incorporation into divine life through Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit; at the same time it is also invitation and incorporation into new relationship with each other, as we are gathered together by the Spirit into the body of Christ.”
The person of the Father is God totally giving Godself away. The Father is the coincidence of the opposites of emptiness and fullness. The Father is fountain-fullness of goodness and totally self-emptying. The Father communicates the whole divine self to another in the Son. The Son is the perfect expression of all the Father is, which is self-emptying love. The Son is the divine self-communication by nature. Both the Father and the Son breathe forth the Holy Spirit who is the bond of love between Father and Son. The Spirit is the freedom of divine love. The Spirit is God’s self-communication by will. It is through the Gift of the Spirit that we are caught up in the love of Father and Son, in the incomprehensible and fully personal goodness of the Trinity. It is because God is gratuitous love that God shares Godself “within” Godself and “outside” Godself. God throws Godself away in sheer delight!
Too often, we do not see how practical the dogma of the Trinity is for us. For, this central dogma, the Trinity, means God wants to make us all mystics. In this regard, Mary is an example to us. For she is a supreme mystic and she show us how to become mystics: surrender. She consents and surrenders to the Father and by the Holy Spirit she conceives Jesus, the Word of God. The Annunciation is a Trinitarian event that occurs in the life of Mary. She allows herself to be drawn into the life of the Trinity be her consent. She shows us how surrender is the beginning of being a mystic.
God wants you to be a mystic, that is, immersed in and rapturously enjoying the incomprehensible love of God revealed in and shared by Jesus through the Spirit. God wants to transform you into a mystic. The question for each of us remains, will I let God turn me into a mystic? Will I consent to find all my happiness in God and in God alone?