Thinkativity :

The tongue is a murderous weapon. Some words, once spoken, cannot be retracted.

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The Trinity and Community


Sherman Kuek, SFO
Published in Catholic Asian News
(February 2009 Issue)

Far from existing in an emptiness which led God to create humanity, in all eternity, before time and space existed, before all creation and matter came into being, the three members of the Trinity had existed in a kind of eternal relationship. This relationship was so all-encompassing and all-fulfilling that it needed nothing to further complete it.

On the contrary to creation being God’s avenue for the completion of that relationship, creation was actually the result of that relationship between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. That relationship was most eloquently described through the words Christ used when he spoke to His Father about those who had followed Him:

I pray not only for these but also for those who through their teaching will come to believe in me. May they all be one, just as, Father, you are in me and I am in you, so that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe it was you who sent me. I have given them the glory you gave to me, that they may be one as we are one. With me in them and you in me, may they be so perfected in unity that the world will recognise that it was you who sent me and that you have loved them as you have loved me... I have made your name known to them and will continue to make it known, so that the love with which you loved me may be in them, and so that I may be in them.

John 17:20-23, 26
New Jerusalem Bible

Surely these words sound strange, unless there was a way of understanding - although not in its fullness - what kind of relationship this was.

In the mid seventh century, John of Damascus, in his work De fide orthodoxa (“On the orthodox faith”), used the Greek word perichoresis to provide clarity to our understanding of this relationship shared among the members of the Trinity. This term was first used by Gregory of Nazianzus, but was subsequently used in greater detail by John of Damascus. It has two indications regarding the interrelation of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The first indication of perichoresis is “to contain” or “to penetrate”. This implies that the three persons of the Trinity are to be described as mutually "indwelling," "permeating," or "interpenetrating" one another. Although each member of the Trinity is a whole unique “other”, their unity is so deep that they can each be found in the other as well. There is nothing that any one member of the Trinity would do that would contradict the others. In human terms, we can say that their interpenetration means they are so intertwined that they function in a profound like-mindedness and like-heartedness and share the exact same desires.

The second indication of perichoresis is “to dance around”. Again, this is a metaphor describing the nature of the relationship shared among the Trinitarian members. This even more vividly describes the manner in which the Father, Son and Holy Spirit relate with one another. They do not just live in interpenetration, but also are so thoroughly coordinated with one another and so complementary of one another that their manner of living becomes a “dance of life”.

In the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father, the Father gives of Himself to the Son. Likewise in the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son, the Son gives of Himself to the Father. Through the Holy Spirit, the Father and the Son exist in a relationship of intimate love and the mutual giving of themselves to each other.

Their being with one another and working out a common desire together is not done clumsily, but rather, in a most gracefully artistic manner. The life of the Trinity is a masterpiece, the Art of arts. All that is beautiful flows from this perichoretic existence of the Trinitarian God.

There are three very critical points pertinent to this understanding of the Trinity:

I. The unity of the Church is based on the perichoresis of the Trinity.
The Church is not merely a human entity; it is also divine, because Christ is her Head. With Christ as the head, it means that the Trinity is the very foundational basis of the Church.

Just as perichoresis means that the Father and the Son enter into each other, infuse each other, dwell in each other, and are always one in the intimacy of their fellowship, this quality is also supposed to be typically characteristic of the community called “the Church”.

Our profound unity as members of the Church does not stem from our getting along well with one another or from the fact that we like one another enough to be seen together. Our profound unity is found in the reality that the very Spirit Who is the bond of love between the Father and the Son is also the very Spirit Who lives in us.

Because the Holy Spirit lives in us, we too now exist in this perichoresis with God and with one another. Believe it or not, it really has nothing to do with how we feel about one another!

II. The Church is not just trying to be a copy or a “reflection in the water” of the perichoresis. She is a real partner in this divine dance of life.
As is obvious by now, God did not just model the perichoretic life for us and then told us to mimic it so that our life in community looks like His. Much more than that, He has actually brought us into His own life so that we become the human partners of the divine life that is taking place in the Trinity.

The Church is more than a mere sociological construct or a community of human beings trying to project the Trinitarian characteristics of God. She is a part of the Trinitarian life.

We are given the privilege of participating in the life of the eternal Trinity. And together with this privilege also comes the responsibility to do so. It is for this very reason that the Church in Peninsular Malaysia embraces for herself the vision of being rooted in the communion of the Trinity.

III. This perichoresis in the Church is the basis of her mission in the world.
At the same time, this being rooted in the communion of the Trinity cannot remain an abstract concept. It must be embodied in a most visible way, for it is the visibility of this perichoretic life that attests to the presence of the Trinity among us. Hence, the Church in Peninsular Malaysia has deemed it fit that our witness to this reality of the Trinity should be made visible through our lives in the Basic Ecclesial Communities (BECs).

This prospect of embodying perichoresis in our BECs may not seem very appetising for some of us, surely. Admittedly, living the perichoretic life as God’s people is no easy feat. There are always people in the Church, especially those in our own parishes and our own BECs whom we find intolerable, unbecoming, and unworthy to be in intimate communion with us.

But this is precisely where the challenge lies for us who are called into the perichoretic life. We need to deliberately learn to live lives that are vulnerable, which permit for us to be deeply formed and affected by the lives of others around us in the Church. It is in such perichoretic communion that our identities as people of God become visible and the mission of the Church comes alive.

The call to live in perichoresis is the call to do the dance of life with the Trinity and with our fellow brothers and sisters in the faith. It is the call to embody a life of communion in a most beautifully artistic way. Difficult though it may be, it is a most sacred call into a sacred communion of the sacred Church.

Shall we dance?

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When I was a little boy, my father used to sit by my bedside and serenade me to sleep. And this was one of the songs in his repertoire which has never left my memory.

I've fallen in love with this song all over again.

O Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling
From glen to glen, and down the mountain side.
The summer's gone and all the flowers are dying;
'Tis you, 'tis you must go and I must bide.

But come ye back when summer's in the meadow,
Or when the valley's hushed and white with snow.
And I'll be here in sunshine or in shadow;
Oh Danny Boy, oh Danny Boy, I love you so.

And if you come when all the flowers are dying,
If I am dead, as dead I well may be.
I pray you'll find the place where I am lying,
And kneel and say an Ave there for me.

And I shall hear, though soft you tread above me;
And all my grace shall warmer, sweeter be,
There you will kneel and whisper that you love me;
And I shall sleep in peace until you come to me.

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Attempting to Understand the Holy Trinity


Sherman Kuek, SFO
Published in Catholic Asian News
(February 2009 Issue)

The word “Trinity”, like a number of other words commonly employed by the Christian community, cannot be found in Sacred Scripture. However, the dogma itself was formulated as intellectual but devout minds studied and discovered it in Scripture. All throughout the centuries, the followers of Jesus Christ have never flinched from the use of this term even when it caused them to become objects of ridicule and scathing criticism by wider society.

To this day, the dogma on the Trinity remains a distinctively Christian doctrine. And still, it often seems like a self-contradicting doctrine to many. How do we intellectually justify that “God is one, and yet there are three who are God”? The seeming “mathematical dilemma” posed by this dogma of the Church may never have a terminal solution to it, especially if it continues being examined from a numerical perspective. But as we explore Sacred Scripture, it is evident how God reveals Himself to be one God and yet three persons.

Lest anyone should think that Christians worship three gods, we find that Scripture defends the oneness of God. The adamant proclamation in Deuteronomy 6:4-6 of the Old Testament (also known to the Jews as the Shema) reads as follows: “Listen, Israel: Yahweh our God is the one, the only Yahweh. You must love Yahweh your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength. Let the words I enjoin on you today stay in your heart”.

This resolute proclamation from Deuteronomy finds agreement in the New Testament as well. James 2:19 says to his readers, “You believe in the one God - that is creditable enough...” St Paul similarly instructs in 1 Corinthians 8:4-6, “...there is no God other than the One... for us there is only one God, the Father from whom all things come and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things come and through whom we exist”. Likewise, in 1 Timothy 2:5-6, we are told, “For there is only one God...”

Evidently, monotheism (i.e., the belief in the oneness of God) is deeply implanted in the Christian faith, although we are frequently being misunderstood by some people of other religions.

But perhaps this misconception on the part of our other neighbours stems from the fact that Scripture somehow refers to more than just God the Father, and describes two other persons through implicit or explicit reference, implying that they are somehow part of the “Godhead”.

For instance, in the gospels of Matthew (26:63-65) John (19:7), Jesus came as close as He ever did to affirming His own deity. If He truly did not regard himself as God, this would have been a splendid opportunity to correct a mistaken impression, but He did not do so. Furthermore, in 1 Corinthians 3:16-17 and 6:19-20, St Paul, in asserting that our bodies are the temple of God, seems to use the terms “Holy Spirit” and “God” interchangeably.

As if the above descriptions are not already baffling enough, the Trinitarian formulation does not end here! Scripture also describes a kind of a relationship between the three persons, as if they exist in some inexplicable state of profound unity.

This can be seen in the baptismal formula given by Jesus to the Apostles in Matthew 28:19: “Go, therefore, make disciples of all nations; baptise them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit...” This threefold formula is also used by St Paul in 2 Corinthians 13:14: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all”.

Scripture seems to be revealing that all three - Father, Son and HS are equally and fully divine, that none of them is “more God” than the other two. They have always been three persons and there has never been any alteration in the nature of the triune God.

Thus, in our own feeble and utterly limited way, we can conclude that the being of God is so complex that any attempt to describe him must defy grammatical conventions - One are three, and three is God. Beyond that, no other attempts to explicate this dogma can ever adequately reflect who the Trinitarian God is.

Admittedly, the Trinity is a doctrine that is hard to defend. It is a doctrine that has at times made the Church a laughing stock of the religious world because it defies a very fundamental law of the human intellect, i.e. the law of logic.

Without the doctrine of the Trinity, it would have been much easier for many intellects to have embraced the Christians faith. And yet, despite many accusations and sustained mockery, the Church refuses to budge from this doctrine. Rather, we even persist in our efforts to defend this dogma. Early Church Fathers like Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, and Augustine sought to defend the Trinitarian teaching with all their might.

Irenaeus, in defending the dogma, states:

For the Church, although dispersed throughout the whole world even to the ends of the earth, has received from the Apostles and from their disciples the faith in one God, the Father Almighty ...and in one Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who became flesh for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit. (Against Heresies, 1:10:1)

His defence finds concurrence in Tertullian’s statement on the faith of the Church:

We do indeed believe that there is only one God, but we believe that under this dispensation, or, as we say, oikonomia, there is also a Son of this one only God, His Word, who proceeded from Him and through whom all things were made and without whom nothing was made. . . . We believe He was sent down by the Father, in accord with His own promise, the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, the sanctifier of the faith of those who believe in the Father and the Son, and in the Holy Spirit... This rule of faith has been present since the beginning of the gospel, before even the earlier heretics. (Against Praxeas, 2)

Why such adamant defence? It is because Holy Mother Church recognises that the doctrine of the Trinity is not humanly constructed or ingeniously crafted by the human intellect. It is a doctrine that is uniquely and divinely revealed by God, through Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, and particularly through the sending of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit who works among us and lives in us today.

A Christian believer once replied the following to an atheist who challenged him regarding the necessity of such a dogma: “Try to explain it, and you may lose your mind; but try to deny it, and you will lose your soul”.

In the final analysis, the most realistic reason for our not being able to fully explain the Trinity is that He is nothing less than God. But He has revealed Himself enough for us to know that the God we worship is a Trinity. This is a precious truth that we should jealously guard until we meet the Trinity face to face.

And so, with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven, and with the Church on earth, we can pray as St Augustine has prayed:

O Lord our God, we believe in You, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. For the Truth would not say, “Go, baptise all nations in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”, unless You were a Trinity. Nor would You, O Lord God, bid us to be baptised in the name of Him who is not the Lord God. Nor would the divine voice have said, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one God”, unless You were so a Trinity as to be one Lord God. (De Trinitate, 15:28)

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit; as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

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Watch these two videos and that would explain why I've always thought Malaysian politicians (both government and opposition!) were a big joke:

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Here is a homily given by a Jesuit priest from the Klang Valley on 18 January for the 2nd Sunday of Ordinary Time Year B:

The first reading gives details of Samuel’s calling. He played a big part in the building up of Israel. Through him, Israel entered a new era because it was through him that Israel got her first kings. The Gospel describes the call of Andrew, John and Peter. In this vocation story, Peter’s call is highlighted to reflect his importance in early Christian history and is the basis for the Catholic teaching of what we know to be an important ministry for the Church: The Petrine Ministry concretely expressed through the Ministry of Pope Benedict XVI.

Today the theme centres on God’s call and our response. However, vocation, that is, God’s call and our response, is often understood in terms of calling to be a priest or a religious brother or sister. As a result of a restricted definition of vocation, Catholics tend to exalt the vocation to the priesthood and religious life and to downplay the importance of the non-priestly or religious vocations. The truth is: baptism is a response to God’s call and so it involves every Christian.

Our first call is to life. Baptism calls us to a life in Christ Jesus our Lord. This life in Christ Jesus is spelt out by St Paul in the 2nd Reading in terms of purity of the body, that is, through abstention from fornication. Through Baptism, the body becomes the temple of the Holy Spirit and as a result, there is need to give due reverence to the body—living or dead. This explains why we incense the congregation during Mass at the moment we enter into the Liturgy of the Eucharist. Also at the end of a funeral Mass, the body in the coffin is incensed. And, because the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, the Church prohibits the scattering of the ashes of a faithful departed who has been cremated.

Baptism is so serious a matter that in the early Church it takes place only after a prolonged period of initiation into the life of the Christian community. The Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus describes this period in terms of 3 years in what is known as the catechumenate. This long period of waiting for baptism shows how seriously the Church takes the call of Baptism to be.

Baptism takes us into the life of Christ. It is in the context of our life with Christ that we may speak of the call to become a priest or religious. But, priesthood or religious is a particular call which does not diminish the importance of any other vocation or state of life.

Baptism is both a call and a response.

Granted that not everyone here is inclined to run to the seminary or the convent, how are we to step up to the mark?

The Catechism speaks of the relationship between the priesthood of the ordained, that is, the ministerial priesthood and the priesthood of the laity.

The common priesthood of the faithful is exercised by the unfolding of baptismal grace - a life of faith, hope and charity, a life according to the Spirit. The ministerial priesthood is at the service of the common priesthood. It is directed at the unfolding of the baptismal grace of all Christians.

[The Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1547]

If the priest is ordained to help a lay person to live out his or her baptism, this means that every vocation is important.

It means that we first take what we do with great humility. In the context of the Gospel, take a look at John the Baptist. If we think that vocation is to become an ordained priest then we will think of anything else as less. But John the Baptist did not feel his vocation any less. He simply stated: “Look, there is the lamb of God” and pointed Andrew and the other disciple to Jesus. The ordinariness of John’s vocation tells us that life is often lived in someone else’s shadow. Not everyone will be a CEO or will have his or her picture in the papers.

Once, I received an email, which was sent to quite a number of people by a self-serving community leader. Unfortunately, for that leader, I was accidentally included in the mailing list. The content of the email is not important but it was revealingly indicative of the way we perceive vocation. We seemed to have attached glamour to the vocations which are more prominent or visible... like becoming a priest or becoming a leader who must be seen to be taking charge of things. It is only worthwhile to serve if we stand in the lime-light.

But life is not described as mundane for nothing because there are vocations that are by and large hidden and unglamorous, just like John the Baptist whose life’s motto was “He must increase, I must decrease”. For John, life has always been in the shadow of Jesus. Even then, there was no less dignity in being the herald of Christ.

For a Jesuit too, after a long life of service (actually after a life of long service) and after all the publicity of the vocation is gone, he will enter a period of inaction characterised by nonentity. He becomes nobody. In our Jesuit catalogue, what appears next to the name of this Jesuit will not be, “Parish Priest”, “Director of Retreat House”, “Treasurer” but simply “Praying for the Society of Jesus and the Church”. These Jesuits are also those who are aged, sick or dying. But, what they do is no less important that the Jesuit who is quote left and right and courted by the intelligentsia.

To those whose lives are neither exciting nor dramatic, this Sunday marks ordinary time. The call and response of Peter, Andrew and John is a reminder that ordinary time is not less than extraordinary. Ordinary is by and large characteristic of our vocation or state of life. It means that where we are, no matter how hidden, we may be able to give praise and glory to God. But that can happen only if we believe that our vocation is the living out of our grace of baptism, the grace of a life with Christ Jesus our Lord.

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Thinkativity :

Death is such a sacred thing. Attempting to say some parting words for a friend who has passed on so suddenly almost feels like trying to touch the divine.

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Mary, the Mother of the Church, is not God. But our admiration abounds for the tenderness with which she approached God, the willingness with which she cooperated with God for the sake of mankind's salvation, and the sacrifice with which she gave of herself and continuously gives of herself in intercession for her children.

The two modern Marian dogmas of the Catholic Church are of course fodder for ecumenical disputes. But what most Reformation-based Christians have forgotten is that the two ancient Marian dogmas - the dogma of the theotokos, the Mother of God, and the Perpetual Virginity of Mary - were promulgated as early as the Third and Fifth Ecumenical Councils respectively. These were supposedly Church Councils whose decisions we all share in common, save for the Oriental Orthodox Churches who recognise only the first three Councils as being of ecumenical nature (even so, they hold on to the validity of these dogmas).

Looking beyond these dogmas, there is something of the spirit of Mary that the follower of Christ needs to capture. From Mary, the model of discipleship par excellence, we learn this: there is a certain tenderness of heart that is called for in discipleship.

It was she who, in all humility, said "Be it unto me according to your word" when the impending conception of the Lord Jesus Christ was announced to her. Truly, she was the favoured one of God, chosen to bring the Saviour into the world. Not because she was worthy, but rather, that she was made worthy of the promises of God.

Contrary to much of that for which feminists battle today (the right to behave like men, etc), Mary was and is the model of a woman that most deeply pleases the heart of God. She was and is blessed among women, and is a tender woman honoured by all men.

Hail Mary, full of grace,
The Lord is with you.
Blessed are you among women,
And blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, mother of God,
Pray for us sinners
now and at the hour of our death.

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