Daily Reflections ...

We tend to see the authority of others as inevitably in competition with our autonomy, interfering with our plans and desires.  This is largely because we think that individual identity has priority over everything else: I’m me, you’re you, and it’s only once that is firmly established that we might at some point decide, in our own autonomous wills, to reach out to each other and establish a relationship.  In this view, the self always comes first, and any relational connection is secondary, contingent.

But the mystery of the Trinity tells us that the deepest wellspring of reality is not individuality but relationship, which is why it’s through baptism that Jesus reveals God as Trinity.  Just as the name of God, the identity of God, is relationship, so we receive our true identity in the relational: we are daughters and sons of God through baptism into the mystery of God, three in one.

Three wonderful things follow from this: first, since relationship is fundamental, God will not ever withdraw from relationship with us—’I am with you always’.  Second, our true nature calls us to draw others into that loving network of relationships — we must ‘make disciples of all nations’.

And thirdly, we find that the mystery of the Trinity resolves the paradox of authority.  ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me,’ says Jesus.  True authority resides not in the domination of higher over lower, but in their consummation.  Our desires are fulfilled, not frustrated, when we discover our true selves through relationship with God as Trinity: a mystical union, a marriage of heaven and earth.

By Chad Hargrave