God is Love, and God is pure Goodness, Beauty, and Truth.

Sunday, 5/16/13

Today is what the Church calls the feast of the Blessed Trinity, but that name for God does not do justice to the picture of God we are given by the Bible and the saints. That word “trinity” forces us to think of God as a three-sided divinity rather than as the Father image we have from the Scriptures or as how the saints present him. They present him as the embodiment of everything beautiful, truthful and good.

That last is Thomas Aquinas’s depiction: he sees God as intense goodness, beauty and truth.

Perhaps even better than that is the Beloved Apostle John’s depiction of God as Love.

Aquinas used St. John’s Gospel to get as close as he could to the mystery that is God. He took the first six words of John’s Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word.” The “Word” there was the Greek name for Mother Nature. So, he was saying that Mother Nature was always there. (what theologians call the Second Person of the Trinity.)

The next six words: “and the Word was with God” are saying that the Son was always with the Father.

The next five words “and the Word was God” tell us the Father and Son are one.

Aquinas then picked up on St. John saying, “God is love.” And he goes on to say that love was the Divine Substance we call the Holy Spirit. 

The next seven words at the beginning of John’s Gospel are: “All things came to be through him.” That is saying that the Father: looking at the Son, who is his mirror image, saw the forms he incorporated in nature.

Aquinas elsewhere gave us what he thought to be God’s reason for creating us. He said God had to do it because he is Love, and love must always be giving.