The Dance of Life
The Trinity and Community
Sherman Kuek, SFO
Published in Catholic Asian News
(February 2009 Issue)
It has often been asked, what have God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit been doing in all eternity before there was creation? Were they yawning from boredom, since there were no human beings to entertain them with their trivial antics and juvenile naiveté?
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.
What has all this to do with us? Of what relevance is it to us that God exists in such a perichoretic relationship? Well, the passage that we have just read from Sacred Scripture shows us that God, in and through Jesus Christ, gathers His believers into a unity that reflects this Trinitarian kind of relationship. In other words, God wants our lives to be a reflection of His perichoresis.
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?
