Posted May 7, 2009

Our spiritual journey
Sister Ruth Bolarte

The central mystery of our faith and life is the Holy Trinity. Who is the triune God in our lives? As a child, I was taught that the Trinity was a mystery to believe even if we did not understand it. Today, I let myself be captivated by the dynamism of this mystery and look forward to the day in which I will be joining fully their dance of love.

Our God is love. In other words, the nature of the spanine Persons is sheer relationship. We are persons who have relationships: friends, spouses, brothers, sisters. These relationships come and go and do not constitute the whole identity of who we are. On the other hand, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are relationships of love to one another – the Holy Trinity is a communion among three persons in love. St. Gregory of Nazianzus refers to this awesome dynamism of love with the Greek word perichoresis. The term can be literally translated as “moving around or dancing around.” Thus, the spanine Persons not only live in one another but also “dance” in one another.

This is the love who has given us birth. And as the created offspring of this spanine love, we long for this kind of love – a love characterized by freedom, mutuality and total self-giving. Our triune God becomes one of us in the second person of Jesus so we can join the spanine dance of love – God’s inner life. Through the paschal mystery of Jesus, the Trinity poured themselves out upon us without reserve. This is the Good News proclaimed by Jesus to all; we have been invited to share totally in the dance of the Trinity – to become a member of the spanine family!

Living a Trinitarian spirituality seriously impels us to relate to every human person according to the love of our triune God. Our Church and world will be transformed as we become transformed by our Trinitarian faith. Very often our self-centered lives and indifference toward others come from the pain of our own unmet need for love and personal worth and for a place to belong. Recognizing the awesome love of our triune God will lead us to love the other.

As children of God and members of the Church we do not dance alone. We must dance with one another – even if imperfectly. In our dancing efforts we may step on one another’s feet, dance at different tunes and may prefer to be the leader rather than to be the follower – not an easy art. We are called to dance in communion with the entire creation, especially the poorest and weakest of the world. Every time we try to transform through love, we live our Trinitarian faith!

Sister Ruth Bolarte, I.H.M., is the director of the Catholic Institute for Evangelization in Philadelphia.