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Behold, I Make All Things New.
We may find ourselves saying, “Same old, same old!” Muddled in the rut of daily routine, we may be stuck in old habits and mannerisms, even resorting to fatalism and pessimism. This tendency may be more pronounced as we get older. Yet, we are given a totally new horizon: “Behold, I make all things new” (Book of Revelation 21:5). How do we understand that?
Perhaps a good starting point is the fascinating words of St. Augustine: “Oh Beauty, ever ancient,
ever new!” Of course, he was referring to God as Beauty who is old and new all at the same time. God’s Word is ever present. With Jesus’ coming to us, God shows us a new way of understanding God and a new way of relating to one other.
Our God intimately and lovingly relates to us while drying our tears: “Behold, God’s dwelling is with the human race. He will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will always be with them as their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there shall be no more death or mourning, wailing or pain, for the old order has passed away” (Revelation 21:3-4).
People often refer to God as ‘somebody upstairs’, which makes me cringe. That is foreign to our Christian understanding of God who comes to us and dwells among us, not aloof up there somewhere.
The way God manifests Himself and the way He interacts with us is not something we dictate. Rather, God in His absolute freedom chooses the way. That point is critical in understanding the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. The ‘three in one’ is certainly not a matter of some numerical acrobatics. Regrettably, many fall into the common mistake of modalism which assumes that the Trinity is about three manifestations or modes of God as creator, redeemer, and sanctifier.
The mutual indwelling of the Father and the Son through the Spirit, the bond of love, is the wondrous mystery of God manifested to us in the history of salvation. Through the same Spirit, we have been incorporated into the communion of the Divine Persons. This is the mystery and vocation of the human person as the dialogue partner of God.
John 17: 21-23 shows us our lofty call and dimension: “I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me. And I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them even as you loved me.”
Reflect and chew on these words over and over. In a dynamic and loving mutual indwelling of the Divine Persons, into which we are inserted and incorporated. We are invited and included in the Divine dance, perichoresis. Yes, our Christian life is about ‘our dancing with God’, infinitely more captivating and enchanting than ‘dancing with the stars’! The Risen Christ continues to surprise us when we open our minds and hearts to him.
Know your dignity and joy as God’s dialogue and dance partners. Our being is not about an isolated atomic existence, but about a web of loving and liberating relationships. The doctrine of the Trinity provides a paradigm or a grammar to Christian life because it reveals who God is and how God works, which throws light on who we are and how we are to act and relate to one another. “Behold, I make all things new!”
Fr. Paul D. Lee