I considered getting a festive table-top tree this last Christmas. No Christmas trees for the previous sixteen Christmases due to a four-legged monster-in-residence who could be reasonably relied upon to destroy a Christmas tree. I loved Snoopy Grumpy Monkey Monster (Snoopy has since passed on at the age of eighteen-and-a-half); most years I accepted not having a Christmas tree. This last Christmas, I thought maybe I could set a small tree on a table – beyond the reach of the then-elderly cat AKA “Grumpy Monkey Monster.” When I looked at table-top trees, however, I realized that they were too small to adorn with my long-ignored Christmas ornaments that are stored in a closet. So, I settled for a Christmas Cactus.
Fast-forward to Lent. During Lent, I observed that my Christmas Cactus was “more vibrant” than when I’d brought it home from a nearby grocery store…..but that it would perhaps be more vibrant still if I transplanted it into a bigger pot. As I began the transplanting process, I discovered that my “one” plant was actually three. Thus, I now have three cactuses.
Out of one, three.
Similarly, there is “more than a lifetime” of discoveries that make themselves apparent to us as we grow and mature in our faith. These discoveries – as one priest observed to me – only hint-around-the-edges of God’s supreme reality. We can’t ever quite get at the full brilliance of God’s omnipotence.
Growing up in church, I was always puzzled by Jesus’ aspect of the Trinity. “Why,” I thought, “did God send his son to earth? I don’t need to see God incarnate to believe in God. I don’t need a tangible human aspect of God to belief in the intangible.” I completely missed the part about “God so loved the world that he sent his only son….”
Growing up, I absolutely “heard” the words communicated in church about “Jesus loves me, this I know” and “For God so loved the world….,” but I “heard” this something like the children in the Charlie Brown movies hearing their teacher’s words as “wah…wah…wah…” I completely missed the love part!
I grew up believing in God and wanted a personal relationship with God. Yet, there was a complete void in my perception (fyi, a very lonely void!) !!!!
It wasn’t until my mid-forties that I experienced that God loves me. There was a whole story around how that came to pass – a priest’s homily at a mass (and a broken ankle after mass….I tell that story elsewhere), along with a subsequent and unexpected gift of a sustained period of contemplative prayer……
I was then reading the Catholic Catechism later (yes, a few of us read it from cover to cover) and discovered WHY the Trinity exists as a three-in-one. It had nothing to do with my misconception of humans needing to see God incarnate in order to believe (how did I ever make that up?)…… RATHER, GOD IS LOVE. Love functions in such a way that love must inherently be shared. Before God had people to love, it was inherently necessary that LOVE ITSELF, meaning the Trinity – the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost – share love amongst itself (paragraph 221 of the Catechism: “God himself is an eternal exchange of love, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and he has destined us to share in that exchange.”).
Yes, God loves us.
Kim Burkhardt blogs about faith at A Parish Catechist.
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