You might think that it’s strange that the most fundamental part of our faith, the belief that God is a Trinity–one God, three Divine Persons–can’t really be explained. Our modern mind tends to think that if something is fundamental, then it should be the easiest to explain. The more advanced, less necessary things are usually harder to explain. That's certainly true for math. Addition, like 1+1=2, is much more fundamental and much easier to understand than calculus. And yet, think about something that is most fundamental in life also can’t really be explained: love. We can talk about what love is like; we can recognize love when we see it; but it’s often hard to explain precisely what love is. Even Bishop Barron’s excellent definition, that love is willing the good of the other, itself calls for further understanding. What does it mean to will the good of the other? What is the good that we should be willing for the other?
And yet, while God in Himself is beyond our finite minds, He does not leave us without images and some understanding of who He is. In fact, just as the Trinity is the fundamental teaching of our Catholic faith, so one image of the Trinity is the fundamental building block of society: marriage and family life.
People often chide the Church for being backwards about marriage and the family. Or they may say that the Church has too many rules for couples and families or couples who want to increase the size of their family. But if marriage and the family is meant to be an icon of the Trinity, an icon of the most important, most fundamental teaching of our faith, doesn’t it make sense that the Church would go to extreme lengths to help her children be the best icons and examples of the Trinity that they can be?
How is marriage and the family an icon of the Trinity? Well, to begin with, the Trinity is a communion of Persons. God revealed His oneness through the Old Testament, and that oneness was guarded carefully by the Chosen People, especially living in the midst of pagan cultures that often had many gods or goddesses. But even in the beginning, God gave hints about the fact that His oneness was not a solitary existence, but an existence of communion, an existence of union with others. In the first chapter of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, we hear, “‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.’ […] God created man in his image; in the divine image he created him; male and female he created them (emphasis added).” If we go ahead to the next chapter, we see that Adam is not meant to be alone, and that animals, pets, are no substitute for human love. God gives Adam an equal partner, Eve, to be his wife, and to live as a communion of persons.
We read in St. John’s first epistle in the New Testament that God is love. Love, of its very nature, is not inward facing, but outward facing. To love is an action that requires another. And so, if God is love, then God, who is one, still mysteriously has an outpouring of that love. And, of course, that love is eternally poured out to His Son, Jesus. From all eternity, God the Father pours out everything that He is, except His identity, which cannot be given away, to God the Son. And God the Son receives all of that love, and also, eternally, pours out all He is, except His own identity, back to the Father. Isn’t that what love is supposed to be like between a husband and a wife? Aren’t they supposed to give all of who they are, except their identities, to the other, and receive that full gift of love from the other? Don’t we see problems with married couples precisely when someone holds something back: a secret one keeps; a lie someone tells; a grudge someone holds onto? I often tell people: love isn’t 50/50. Love is 100/100. Divorce is 50/50. The image is not the reality; the Trinity is not a sexual communion. But the image still holds that a man and a woman in marriage are called to give entirely of themselves to the other, as a living icon of the Trinity.
But, even love does not stop between the two. The eternal love of the Father and the Son is so strong that it eternally breathes forth a Divine Person, the Holy Spirit. The communion between the Father and Son is not closed in on itself, but, as a true relation of love, is open to the other. Again, this is where words fail us, because the Holy Spirit is not “other,” but the same one God. Still, we talk about the Holy Spirit as an eternal reality of the love between the Father and the Son.
So with marriage: to truly be an icon of the Trinity, the couple must be open to that love creating a new person. That doesn’t mean that Catholics have to have as many kids as possible. But it does mean that, if couples are truly loving, they responsibly cooperate with the procreation of new life in accord with how God has made the male and female body and do not turn to artificial means either to achieve or to restrict procreation. Openness to life is part and parcel of Catholic marriage because we do not believe in a “binity,” only Father and Son, but a Trinity, a communion of Three Divine Persons. As with marriage as an icon, the family of the icon is not a one-to-one correlation. You can’t stop being open to life after you’ve had one kid because there’s only Three Divine Persons. And even senior couples who marry, or couples who find that they cannot conceive, can still be open to life (even though their bodies cannot express that openness), by not keeping their love to themselves, but allowing it to overflow either by adopting or fostering children, or by acts of charity in the parish or community.
When one considers that marriage and family are icons of the Trinity, living reminders of who God is in Himself, it is not a surprise that the Church works so hard to encourage couples and families to live that vocation out in particular ways, to better communicate what they are imaging. We do not understand the Trinity in itself, and we never will. But thanks be to God for families who remind us of who God is, a communion of love!
