The Church is: Oneness in Relationship
by Fr. David M. Knight
May 27, 2024
Monday of the Eighth Week of Ordinary Time
Saint Augustine of Canterbury, Bishop
Lectionary 347
1 Pt 1:3-9/Mk 10:17-27
God spent centuries driving it into the heart of his people that there is only one God. “Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD alone!” (Deuteronomy 6:4). Then, with Jesus, he revealed the full mystery: God’s oneness is multiple: Three Persons in one God.
The Three Persons differ by their relationship with each other. By nature they are one and the same. Since God’s nature is infinite, without any limitations, what one Person has, all have. What one can do, all can do.
Not so with creatures. Humans with the same nature can have its characteristics in different degrees. One can run faster, another think more clearly. Men and women have complementary sexual organs—equally human, because ordered to the same end, but each incomplete. In God, nothing is limited, nothing incomplete. The Three Persons do not differ by limitations; only by their relationship to each other.
Relationships are defined by interaction. The Father “generates” the Son. The Son, as “Word,” expresses—or rather, is the expression of—the self-knowledge the Father has had from all eternity. The Spirit unites—is the unity of—all three Persons in love. But all are equally—completely, infinitely—Being, Goodness, Truth, and Love. And undividedly One.
If this makes complete sense to us, we don’t understand it! A “mystery” is a truth that invites endless discovery. But it does tell us that the fullness of being is found in relationships, because with God, to be is to be in relationship. Therefore, we need to seek “holiness” through relationship with God and others, because to be “holy” is just to “be” completely. The fullness of life is the fullness of relationship.
We will apply this later to life in the Church.
ACTION: Interact with God and others.
PRAYER: “Lord, be with me.”
Reflections brought to you by the Immersed in Christ Ministry
