“Behold, a door was opened in heaven”
It was behind
closed doors, literally and figuratively, that Jesus made known to us his
resurrection. But it is not only behind closed doors that the things of God are
made known to us. Through the incarnation and manifestation of Jesus
Christ, through his passion and death, through his resurrection and ascension,
through the sending of the Holy Spirit, “a door was opened in heaven” and
we behold the glory of God in the fullness of his revelation. God makes
himself known to us.
Trinity Sunday
sets before us the vision of God which is the end of man. “The end of
man is endless Godhead endlessly possessed” (Austin Farrer). Trinity
Sunday, we might say, is the great Te Deum Laudamus of the Church.
We proclaim God as the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. W e proclaim what we
have been given to behold through the fullness of the scriptural witness to
God’s revelation. It is what we have been given to proclaim. It is
also that in which we are privileged to participate.
We meet together
in the glory of the revealed God, the glory of the Trinity. All our
beginnings and all our endings have their place of meeting in the Trinity.
It is, we may say, the one thing essential. No Trinity, no Christianity. “No
one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’, except by the Holy Ghost” (1 Cor.12.3).
To say ‘Jesus is Lord’ is to make a Trinitarian statement. It is
the burden of the Church’s proclamation.
Trinity Sunday
signals an ending and marks a beginning. There is an ending of all that we
have gone through from Advent to this day, an ending that is a kind of
gathering, a threefold gathering:
1. a gathering of
all the history of salvation into this fullness of revelation;
2. a gathering of
all religion into this fullness of meaning.
3. a gathering of
all the substantial moments in the life of Christ into this fullness of
understanding.
There is a
beginning as well. There is our entry by grace, year by year, into the
fullness of revelation, the fullness of meaning and the fullness of
understanding which has been opened to view. “Behold a door was opened
in heaven”(Rev.4.1). We are given to behold and enter
into what we behold. What we behold are the highest things of the Spirit;
in short, the spiritual reality of the living God. This is what we
participate in.
To behold the
highest things of heaven is to make a new beginning: “ye must be born again”,
born anew, born from above. There must be in us a renewal of our
understanding of what it means to be born again. We enter by grace into
what Jesus wants us to know so that the divine life opened to view might take
shape in us for our good and to his glory.
It means a new
perspective, a deeper understanding and a beholding of things from above. There
is a constant need for the resurrection of our understanding in the
things which Jesus wants us to know. There are essentially two things
which Jesus wants us to know. They are the things into which everything he
says and does are gathered and find their place.
He has come to us
with a twofold purpose: to reveal and to redeem; to reveal God to us and
to redeem us to God. What he wants us essentially to know is his divine
identity and his identity with us. There is in fact an exegesis of God - a
making known of God. Jesus himself is the exegesis, the interpretive
exposition. “He who has seen me has seen the Father”.
The point is made
most directly in the Prologue to St. John’s Gospel. “No
one has ever seen God; the only-begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father,
he has made him known” (John 1.18). It is the only place
in the Scriptures where exegesis - a making known - is used, not about a text or
about an event, but about God himself. Jesus is the exegete of God.
He makes God known to us even as he is the mediator between God and Man who
brings us into fellowship with God. That fellowship is the fellowship of
the Trinity - the fellowship of God with God in God. “Behold, a door
was opened in heaven”. We behold what we enjoy - the fellowship of the
Trinity.
Just as in Holy
Baptism we are born anew into the fellowship of God with God in God, so in the
Holy Eucharist, we participate in what we proclaim. We participate in the
Son’s thanksgiving to the Father in the Holy Spirit. We are made
“partakers of the divine nature” and do not lose our humanity but find its
truth, redeemed and sanctified. We participate in what we behold.
You see, not only
has “a door been opened in heaven” but we have been invited into the
fellowship of God through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. “No one has
ever seen God; the only-begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he has
made him known”. And we have fellowship with him whom we behold.
Trinity signifies communion, the communion of God Himself and our communion with
God, in God and through God.
Perhaps what it
signifies is best captured in George Herbert’s little poem about what has been
opened to view.
Thou hast but
two rare cabinets full of treasure,
The Trinitie, and Incarnation:
Thou hast unlockt them both,
And made them jewels to betroth
The work of thy creation
Unto thy self
in everlasting pleasure.
(Ungratefulness)
What we proclaim
with clarity is what we are given to participate in with charity. And such
is the grace of God.
“Behold, a door
was opened in heaven”.
