There is a certain current present within the spiritual tradition of the Church of a deeply rooted distrust in the goodness of human nature, especially in the deep and spontaneous impulses of the human heart. This is perhaps especially true of the monastic tradition, even if it does not by any means define the monastic tradition in its entirety. But it is really a serious matter, for it is at root a profound misunderstanding—albeit a very distracting one—of the true meaning of the Gospel. It casts a veil of fear or of legalistic performance over the authentic beauty of our humanity and of God’s call to us in Christ, the call to transformation in grace and to deep and abiding intimacy with the Trinity, and with human persons and the whole created cosmos in the light of the love of the Trinity. We however see this veil again and again pulled back, for example, in Saint Thomas Aquinas and his wholehearted affirmation of the goodness of our natural appetites and inclinations. We see it in great Catholic philosophers and theologians such as Dietrich von Hildebrand, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Jean Corbon. We see it beautifully in saints like Francis of Assisi, John Henry Newman, and John XXIII.

What this means, ultimately, is that we become more divine, more united to the divine, not by becoming less human, but rather by becoming more authentically human. Yes, the spiritual life is not a stripping away of the “old man” through a violent asceticism in which the very desires of my heart are cut out, in which I die in order to rise unto my true self in altruistic service of God and others, or in which I cease to be myself in all the richness of my unique being in order to lose myself in the divine abyss. We see here the danger of this tendency, for it takes the beautiful and challenging language of Scripture—the very words of Christ or of Saint Paul—and interprets them in a dualistic way that brings harm rather than transformation. For it is true that I am called to take up my cross and follow Jesus, dying to myself, to the “old man,” in order, immersed by grace in the dynamic movement of Jesus’ own dying and rising—grafted into his Paschal Mystery—to be made new, made whole, in an intimacy with the Trinity that enraptures and pervades my whole being. Yes, and this transformation is not a setting aside of nature, nor even of myself, but its harnessing and transformation in love. Yes, it is the touching and setting free of my true self as God’s beloved, in which what is inauthentic falls away and the authentic desires of my heart, both natural and supernatural, both earthly and heavenly, are set free to find their full expression and their fulfillment in the goodness that God unceasingly pours out upon me.

In a word, the spiritual life is essentially incarnational, essentially human—a life-giving union with the God-man, Jesus Christ, who restores our nature to its original dignity and indeed lifts it even higher. The trajectory of my existence, therefore, is not meant to be a flight from creation to God, but a receiving of God in the “sacramental” meaning of each moment, both in the depths of my own heart and in the concrete created reality in which he unceasingly approaches me. In this way, indeed, the creation is joined with me in a hymn of praise, in the gratitude of my heart which in its littleness depends totally on the sustaining love of God. Yes, and this is a love that touches me in the rain that falls from the sky, and in the night that allows me to rest in sleep as well as to rest in his silent love, in the food that nourishes and refreshes my body, in the human love that invigorates me and gives me a true taste of the intimacy for which my heart has been made, and in every other moment and circumstance of my life made a sacramental encounter with the God who loves me and approaches me without ceasing.

And none of this will pass away, not in this life and not in the life to come. Rather, the whole of creation already bears the presence of God, and it looks forward with ardent expectation to the full revelation of the children of God, in which the material creation itself will be perfected as it is wholly united to the Trinity and irradiated with the beauty of his light.

However, often times elements of the religious life, or Christian life in general, can be founded precisely on a fundamental distrust in the goodness of human nature, and also on a distrust in our ability to hear God speaking to us at the very heart of our human desires and capacities (which is often actually a distrust in God’s ability to speak to his children in their littleness). This is a paradoxical reason why the religious life can prove so unappealing to many except those with strong wills and energetic minds that are inclined to strive for “self-perfection.” What about the little ones, those who know their weakness? And what about those with sensitive hearts that cannot but see and desire the goodness of creation, and who indeed sense that it is not necessary or right to hold the beauty of the world at arm’s length in order to be intimately and totally united to God? Is not the religious life instead meant to be a truly human life, a fully human life, but precisely in this way a life in which humanity is irradiated with the healing and transfiguring light of Christ? Thank God that so many of these tendencies are being healed nowadays, and that the fear or legalistic performance is being corrected in many religious communities, or new communities are being born in which the union of nature and grace is more transparently reflected and incarnated.

For our transformation in the light and life of God to occur, it is not necessary for there to be a rejection of our true human inclinations, but rather only their ordering according to the truth, their liberation, healing, and harnessing in docility to the activity of the Holy Spirit and to the true “word” of created values that speak to us from God. And it is not necessary either for there to be a rigid structure that “trains” the will and directs a person to act, not on the basis of their own educated desires and response to value, but rather out of a constant “obedience” to a given rule of life pre-ordained in advance. Is it not rather the goal of obedience to educate and liberate desire, to enable the heart to listen, for itself, in the seat of its own responsibility, to the voice and call of God? And is not the goal of desire, implanted in us by God, union with the authentic goodness both of God and of creation? Of course, authentic discipline always has an important role to play, but it exists only to help draw our true desires from the chaos of fear and compulsion and into the harmony of truth for which God created us, and, in this way, to make possible the spontaneous responsiveness of the human heart to the authentic values of created reality and to the tender touch and call of God in every moment of life.*

The true flowering of the human and Christian life, therefore, is not a matter of ever greater constraint, until all has been stripped away, but of ever greater dilation of the heart, ever greater expansiveness in love and sensitivity to all that is good, true, and beautiful. It is here that the heart becomes a pure space of tender responsiveness to the voice of God and his indescribable beauty, made present both in nature and in grace, which in truth are inseparably intertwined in the single provident work of the heavenly Father.
In a word, freedom is not found by repressing or overcoming our natural inclinations, but by ordering them and setting them free. And this itself is done not so much by a “program of asceticism” but by a deepening attitude of contemplative wonder before the awesome gift of reality. Whenever a repressive approach is taken to my life and my spontaneous human desires—as well as to the deeper spiritual desires of the heart—this creates a habitual state of constrictedness and rigidity, in which I live, not in the spontaneity of joyful receptivity to reality, but in the narrowness of a “self-watching” attitude that actually hinders the freedom of my heart. As G.K. Chesterton so beautifully wrote: “The angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.” The true path of freedom, therefore, is playfulness, it is a simple and childlike receptivity to the gift that comes to me at every moment; it is, indeed, a dance with the One who holds my hands in his and leads me in the beautiful song of love and intimacy which is my unique life.

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*I do not intend here, of course, to say that the very act of having a schedule in a religious community is somehow legalistic or constraining. After all, we all have schedules to one degree or another! (Though these should never be turned into an absolute or become the source of our security or righteousness!) Rather, the point is that there has been in the past an over-regulation in the Christian and religious life that does indeed suffocate the heart, rooted as it is in a false conception of freedom-and-obedience, and of nature-and-grace. As in all things, every human structure and action and institution exists, not to enslave the heart of man, but to facilitate its freedom and flourishing in direct communion with God, in the radiant liberty of the children of God who have direct access (parrhesia) to their Abba.

What does this mystery of the Incarnation mean for the transformation of our human existence in the image of Christ? For one, it means that God invites us to approach him, not in a conquering or surpassing of our nature, but in the simple restoration of our nature to the integrity that it had in the beginning, which, however, is only possible as grace, as movement beyond merely being itself—yet as itself—into communion with the divine. The paradoxical thing is that this integrity can be restored, not by remaining on the level of so-called “pure nature,” but by opening wide all the doors and windows of our nature to their inherent Trinitarian meaning. We are fulfilled only when nature and grace are united. What do I mean by this? I mean that all of creation, and especially the whole being of the human person, is already a capax Dei, a capacity for God. God does not need to be found, therefore, in “an empty waste” as Isaiah says: “I have not spoken in secret from some place in the land of darkness, I have not said to the descendants of Jacob, ‘Look for me in an empty waste’” (Is 45:19–NAB). Yes, God utterly transcends any glimpses of him that we could try to grasp as our own, but that does not mean that we do not touch and receive him even at the heart of created realities. He speaks within them even as he transcends them, and he transcends them in a way that utterly affirms and shelters their created being and the unique “word” that they speak from him.

In this, we can speak of a continuity within discontinuity, and a discontinuity within continuity, in that God utterly surpasses all created being while he is also the abiding Ground of created being as the infinite Being, as Being-Itself. He is not found in an empty waste because, as much as he transcends the limited conceptions of the human mind, and even the breathtaking beauty of the created order, this does not mean that he is more like nothingness than like being. Rather, he is the super-eminent fullness of all being, the Beauty of which all beauty speaks, the Goodness that makes all good things truly good, the Truth which is the foundation and origin of all truth, and which is grasped when truth itself is welcomed and received.

When man rejects creation in order to draw near to God, he is in danger of falling into an abyss—unless his journey is supported on the twofold path of the real continuity-in-discontinuity between created being and uncreated Being, and of the “bridge” of the Incarnate Son of God, Jesus Christ. And this path is indeed only one. For before original sin, there would have been no rupture, no discontinuity between God’s transcendence beyond creation and his utter closeness to it. For as much as the natural world is not God and cannot attain to God on its own power—for God infinitely transcends in his eternal mystery—it is nonetheless so totally indebted to and rooted in God, in grace, for its very being, that it is appropriate to say that it floats always cradled in the ocean of grace, in the ocean of God, just as a child in the womb is sheltered always in the body of her mother. While there is an infinite difference between “mere nature” and grace, the life of God, nonetheless the profound and anguishing division between the two, the “abyss of separation,” appeared only because of sin; and this abyss is overcome only in the reconciling humanity of Jesus Christ. And as we allow ourselves to be grasped by Christ, to gaze upon the face of God shining in his countenance and to be transformed in his likeness from glory unto glory, our humanity passes from the glory of nature to the glory of grace, the former fulfilled and consummated in the latter. And as much as a man may be absorbed in the incomprehensible mystery of God during the act of contemplation, such that he loses his conscious awareness (for a moment!) of created reality, he is really not leaving behind creation, but living creation as a fully actualized intimacy in ecstatic and contemplative love with the Trinity.

Even, therefore, in the “discontinuity” by which our created being reaches out to the ever-greater God, there is a deeper continuity, since our being and the whole being of creation is, in the last analysis, a created outflow of the Love of God, inherently oriented to return back into the fullness of this Love once again. And thus in doing so, it does not become less of what it is and what it has always been, but rather it becomes more fully and freely itself by resting again in the shelter of the Being that it, itself, manifests and on which it depends at every instant for its existence.
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Gerard Manley Hopkins spoke beautifully of this with the term “inscape,” a kind of “bounded infinity” at the heart of each and every created reality. This inscape is, as it were, the opposite of both landscape and escape, or rather their true inner fulfillment. It refers to the wide expanse, the profound depth, that we discover opening out before us, not through the rolling hills or plains that stretch before our eyes (or even the stars dotting the heavens), but through the interior fullness of each reality that unveils its authentic depth through the intensity of our receptive and contemplative contact with it. At the core of each being, in other words, we discover that it is rooted in God and is sustained unceasingly by him; we discover that its own beauty, goodness, and truth is a reflection of the uncreated Beauty, Goodness, and Truth of God. And precisely because our contact with a created thing, when it reaches this level of intimacy, brings us into contact with God, it is also escape from the narrowness of our own fears and compulsions, and even from the mere “everyday” world of mundane tasks and occupations. It is our liberation into the attitude of childlike wonder and playfulness, which lifts us up into the joy and restfulness of being sheltered in the love of God, which, in turn, does not divorce us from reality (as an “escape”) but allows us to understand its true meaning and beauty more deeply, in other words, its true inscape. ​

 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.” (Jn 1:1-3)

In the light of the previous reflections on the person, we can glance back at the very beginning of the Prologue—indeed, at the text in its entirety—and draw things together by coming full circle. I prefaced the words of the Prologue with an in depth meditation on how the foundation of our existence is the encounter between “I” and “You.” In other words, I tried to show how all of human existence is inherently dialogical and relational. In loving relationship with a “You” alone do I find my own “I,” my own personhood, flowering freely in its authentic truth. Yet if I, instead, choose to turn away from the “You” and to sever myself from the relationship in which I am constituted, I fracture not only the relationship but the very structure of my own “I.” For as Ferdinand Ebner wrote: “The I and the Thou [You] are the spiritual realities of life. … The I exists only in relation to the Thou and not outside of it.”

But what does this have to do with the Prologue of John’s Gospel? How does this connect with the statements on the Word who is always with the Father and who comes among us to reveal to us the radiant face of God—the Son who is eternally in the bosom of the Father and becomes one of us to allow us to share in the same intimacy that is his with the Father? It really brings us right to the heart of it. For who is this beloved Son but the One who eternally allows himself to be “spoken” lovingly by the Father, and who is a total response of reciprocal love? In other words, who is God but the eternal Dialogue of Love between the Father and the Son in the single Breath of their Holy Spirit?

Let me quote Alan Vincelette in his explanation on the thought of Ferdinand Ebner concerning the term “Word” in John’s Gospel:

Moreover, as dialogue between spiritual realities [I and Thou] presupposes language (the Word or the Logos), we can at another level say that the Word (especially as speech) is constitutive of our existence (i.e. what makes us human and separates us from animals is [in part] the fact that we can speak). The Word is what gives life to humans in the first place as language allows for a life of dialogue. For the human person is fundamentally the capacity for speaking and being spoken to and one cannot really be an 'I' without a ‘Thou.’ Language (the Word; Logos) additionally permits thought and reason to take root in our being. And this thought and reason in turn permits us to grasp and express our own existence as an ‘I am’ or person (our objective relation), and permits us as well to be a hearer and grasp the nature of the world (our objective relation again), and then a doer and actor in the world (our subjective relation). The Word by giving humans language and thought thus lets them enter into relations of dialogue and love (‘I-Thou’ relations) and realize themselves.*

To express this more simply: I can speak only because I am first spoken to. Indeed, I can enter into dialogue only because I am already, in some way, within dialogue. I can allow myself to be drawn into relationships of speaking and listening, of receiving and giving love, only because I have always already been loved, listened to, and received.

Indeed, it is accurate to say, not only that I am already spoken to, but that I am spoken into—as my very capacity to think, to desire, to love, is but the impress or the echo of God’s own creative Word within my heart. Yes, we can go so far as to say that I am spoken into existence: that my very personal existence is a word from God, spoken forth within the uncreated Word. Thus our human relationships are truly a matter of “word speaking to word within the Word.” My created “I” and your created “You” encounter and are united in the absolute “Thou” who has created each of us, and who has already addressed us in love from the first moment of our existence.

Our speaking to one another, therefore, is but a re-speaking of the Word that has already spoken us into being and who ceaselessly speaks into us the breath of life, knowledge, and love. In the same way, our thinking, when it corresponds with authentic reality, is but a recognition (literally, a re-thinking) of the eternal Thought of God, within which the world is always held. Our living encounter with Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, therefore, is a sharing in the very Reality that is the certain knowledge and love of the Trinity. It is the insertion of our own being into the Being of the Trinity, who, as the eternal “I-Thou relation,” is the Ground and Sustainer of all being.

Yes, God is the “Thou” before whom the whole created world is an “I” addressed in ceaseless dialogue. Or indeed, he is himself the “I” before whom the created “You” is constituted in a relationship of love and filial dependence—as one who is addressed, and who finds his or her fulfillment precisely in welcoming this Word of Love and remaining in a ceaseless dialogue of love, in intimate relationship, with it. Simply put, this means that prayer is the true foundation of human existence and is our highest vocation. In prayer alone, in this intimate dialogue of love with God, do I find my authentic truth as an “I” set free, because here I return into that sacred space at the core of my being where I am, indeed, pure relationship with the eternal “Thou” who ceaselessly loves me, and in loving me, speaks me into being.

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*I feel the need to make a clarification here, for the sake of correct understanding: it seems in the text that our ability to think and know comes forth from language, but in truth the reality is the opposite. Our language is in fact nothing but a formulated expression of the “wordless” language that lies at the origin of our being, the knowledge of direct contact with the real, which linguistic thought and spoken or written language only incarnate and express.

​I spoke about the two words parrhesia and prosopon—confidence and person—in the last reflection. Now I want to conclude this look at the Second Letter to the Corinthians by speaking about the other word I mentioned: metamorphóo, which in this verse appears in the form metamorphoumetha (first person plural, present indicative middle or passive). If you look closely at this word, I’m sure you already notice how it is the foundation of the English word metamorphosis. I have translated it as “transformed,” and this seems to be the usual rendition (as trans-form is the Latin equivalent of the Greek meta-morphe). The word in Greek is the combination of two things, a preposition and a noun: meta and morphe. The first, meta, means “with” or “in company with,” or, on the other hand, “after” or “beyond” (hence the philosophical term metaphysics, in other words, beyond-physics). Morphe is a noun that refers to the form, shape, or inner reality of a thing. In their conjunction, they signify the reality of being-changed in one’s morphe by being with, by being in contact with, another, going beyond what is was before to something new. Thus, in the context of these verses in Second Corinthians, the word metamorphoumetha refers to our being changed “from glory unto glory” into the likeness of the very image of God that we reflect. And this change occurs precisely through our loving proximity to that Image, through our contemplation of the radiant face of Christ that bathes us in its light.

What is the conclusion to draw from all of this? Well, there are many, but let me emphasize one in particular: our true and ultimate transformation comes about, not through our own efforts at self-discipline or growth in virtue, but through the inherent power of the light that pours forth upon us from the face of Christ. As essential as my own effort and good will are, ultimately it is not up to me to change myself, to metamorphize myself. It is truly impossible to “self-perfect,” as much as our culture (often even within the Church!) may tell us that is exactly what we need to do. Our true perfection, the true flowering of our personality, comes about not through our own self-directed efforts, but through the ecstasy of loving contemplation in which we allow ourselves to be irradiated and transfigured by the very light pouring forth from the love of God who ceaselessly looks upon us.

Yes, it is in the light of his loving gaze alone that the inner potentialities of my heart created in God’s image and likeness are set free. It is in my willingness to return into the orbit of this love, to enter into this face-to-face contemplation of God’s love revealed in Jesus, that I am truly lifted up out of my isolation and sin and into the living relationship that transfigures my whole being in the very likeness of the Trinity. In other words, it is only through parrhesia in the presence of God—made possible by his own sheltering and inviting love—that I can experience my authentic reality as a person (prosopon), my own unique personal beauty set free and made radiant in the image of God, in the sheltering embrace of the Heart of Christ.

​At the end of the last reflection I gestured towards the beautiful words of the Second Letter to the Corinthians. I would like to quote them now. First, Saint Paul contrasts the law written on “tablets of stone” with the law—indeed, as he says, with the “letter of recommendation”—written on “tablets of human hearts” by the very “Spirit of the living God” (2 Cor 3:3). And he mentions that, as a result of this great gift, he has great “confidence” (παρρησίᾳ, parrhesia) towards God “through Christ” (2 Cor 3:4). Then he proceeds to contrast the experience of the Israelites in the wilderness, to whom God would speak through the mediation of Moses, with the new dispensation of grace in Christ. The first Covenant is veiled, as Moses was forced to cover over his face, which was radiant with the light of God whom he encountered, because of the fear and incapacity of the people. Saint Paul affirms that there was great glory in this Covenant, indeed more than the people could handle, but then he says that in the New Covenant the glory revealed far surpasses anything that was present in the Old. He writes:

For if what faded came with glory, what is permanent must have much more glory. Therefore having such hope, we act with much boldness (parrhesia – παρρησίᾳ), not like Moses, who put a veil over his face so that the children of Israel might not see the end of the fading glory. But their minds were hardened; for to this day, when they read the Old Covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only in Christ is it being entirely removed. Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their heart. But whenever one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. (2 Cor 3: 11-16)

And then Paul proceeds to explain what happens when someone turns to the Lord, to Christ, and experiences the removal of this veil. He uses very strong words:

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. Now we all, with a face having been unveiled (ἀνακεκαλυμμένῳ προσώπῳ), see reflected as in a mirror (κατοπτριζόμενοι) the glory of the Lord, and thus are being transformed (μεταμορφούμεθα) from glory unto glory, even as from the Lord, the Spirit. (2 Cor 3:17-18)

There are a number of words here which become very important for the development of theology later on in the Church’s history, and which indeed express in a profound way the dynamics of our transformation in Christ. They are: parrhesia, prosopon, and metamorphóo. The first word, parrhesia, refers to confidence or “boldness of access” in the presence of another person. Indeed, it points to that radical freedom of expression that children feel in the presence of their parents when they know that they are totally and unconditionally loved. They share themselves with their mother and father—not with fears and inhibitions, with a calculating mind that hesitates about how they will be received—but in confident trust that feels no need for a “filter” because they know that they will always be sheltered in the receptive love of the other.

Of course, as we know, this state becomes deeply fractured over time, both because of personal wounds received through the inadequate love of others, or even through their outright neglect or abuse, as well as through the disordered tendencies of original sin that we each carry within us. The human heart begins to close off from such parrhesia, from such childlike openness and vulnerability before others—and, of course, most fundamentally before the heavenly Father himself.

This is why Christ came: to re-open, in himself, confident access into the sheltering heart of God once again. The veil of our fear, hesitation, shame, performance-ism, and every other inauthenticity is removed by the gentle hand of Christ. In him we are invited and enabled to approach God as our loving Abba, our Daddy, and to speak before him with confident boldness and carefree playfulness, not trying to prove ourselves or to earn his love, not trying to safeguard ourselves before him or to accomplish our own righteousness, but rather letting our whole life flow forth from his abundant and overflowing generosity just as the life of the eternal Son pours forth ever from the bosom of the Father, and there ever remains, sheltered in his intimate embrace. Such is our origin and such is our destiny! Such is our life already now as creatures of God, brought to fulfillment in our adoption in Christ, who draws us into his own filial relationship with his Father in the boldness of the Spirit whom they share—a boldness that gives us such certainty in God’s love and desire for us that we can desire him without fear or hesitation, crying out: “Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth!” or again: “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven!” or again: “Draw me after you; let us make haste!” or again: “Lord, if it is you, bid me come to you on the water!” or again: “Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm!”
In turning to Christ, we find the veil, not only removed from our face, but from the face of God himself, made incarnate in Jesus. God has revealed to us, in the Incarnate Son seen by the illumination of the Holy Spirit who shines within our heart and impresses this very face upon our interior vision, the very innermost mystery of God. Yes, God’s own inner life and love as an eternal communion of persons, as the everlasting intimacy of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is laid open before us, and it beckons us gently and ardently: “Come to the water! Come and drink deeply and drink full!” (cf. Is 55:1). God’s face and our face meet; God’s heart and our heart echo into one another, and in responding to one another bring joy—two echoes reciprocally resounding so deeply that they create a harmony, a song of intimacy and love.

Two unveiled faces, two surrendered hearts encounter and behold one another in a deep mutual recognition, in a profound and loving contemplation. This, truly, is the vulnerability for which we thirst, the intimacy for which we were made, the confidence of self-surrender into the welcoming gaze of another, and the reception of them in turn, for which our hearts so deeply long! And, as I expressed in that little exuberant outpouring above, this surrender, this loving encounter, is more than a matter merely of the “face” (prosopon); for, as we all know, the face can both reveal and conceal what is occurring within the heart. Thus the revelation of the face, to be a revelation at all, transforms face into heart, the face into the unveiling of the whole person in their deepest mystery. This is how the Church Father Macarius was able to write that, in our eternal intimacy with God, we shall be “All light, all face, all eye.”

Yes, there are certain spontaneous expressions—a smile, a grimace, tears, eyes looking intently or eyes diverted—which speak of the inner dispositions of the heart of the person, even if they try to hide it. But a part of the veiling of which Saint Paul speaks is precisely that the face itself is no longer totally transparent, no longer totally honest and vulnerable—allowing the heart to give itself through the eyes in order to give oneself through one’s gaze to another, and to welcome the other in turn. A great unveiling must first occur for this depth of encounter to again reach full maturity, for this true communication of the person to flower through the mediation of their face and their eyes, and to bring about intimacy in mutual belonging.

The word for “face” which Saint Paul uses already points in this direction, along the trajectory from face to person. This word, prosopon, indeed, will later be harnessed by the Church’s developing understanding to express precisely the reality of the person. And in this way it is immeasurably deepened. Rather than referring merely to an external appearance, a kind of “mask,” (as in the prosopon of the Greek theater), it comes to express a deep and substantial reality of the heart, of the inner self. For it is the relationality of love that constitutes personhood, the substantial-relation that is a person, an essence-in-communion just as for the three divine Persons there is but one divine essence or being shared equally and totally by three distinct Persons, because they are forever united in perfect love, not in an amorphous identity that would dissolve the uniqueness of each person but in a cherishing intimacy that fulfills each of them in the joy that they together share in the life that is theirs, the eternal life of God who is Love.

This growth and maturation in the understanding of the person occurred precisely as the Church struggled to come to some formulation of the mystery of the Trinity, which would safeguard both the unity and the trinity of God—in other words, his Tri-unity. When trying to come to terms with the distinction between the Persons of the Trinity—between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit who are three Persons and yet only one God—the Church said that in the Trinity there are three prosopa but only one ousia (in Greek), three personae but only one substantia (in Latin).What this distinction does, however, is not to reduce each Person of the Trinity down to a mere “appearance,” in other words, to a “face.” It rather does the opposite. This new understanding of the person deeply enriched the understanding of personhood, both in relation to God and in relation to humanity. A person was not a mere social role, a mere situation in the community, but a deep and substantial “self” whose identity was constituted by their very ontological relationship with the divine Persons (that is, by God’s creative love). In this way, not only is the concept of “substance” of ontological significance (as it always had been), but the very concept of person and relation also enters into the realm of the ultimate, as an essential property of Being. Indeed, personal relation attains to a status founded in the very mystery of Being itself, proper to God as an eternal Community of Persons in ceaseless relationship.

No longer is “substance” simply understood as a “thing,” an impersonal existence that “just is.” No longer is being understood as the static (or even dynamic) reality of things that inheres in their own essence, but rather as a ceaseless communication of their very reality as a gift from the Relational One who is also the fullness of Being, in whom they inhere and are in a constitutive relationship of created dependency. In other words, the whole of reality becomes a dynamic flowing of love and relationship out from the creative intimacy of the Trinity and its flowing back again into his welcoming embrace, indeed, a participation in the very surging currents of love and delight that are the eternal life of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

To conclude this reflection, let me quote Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict XVI) in his words on the development of the concept of person in theology. He writes:

Christ’s doctrine is he himself, and he himself is not his own, because his “I” exists entirely from the “you.” [Augustine] goes on to say, “Quid tam tuum quam tu, quid tam non tuum quam tu”—what belongs to you as much as your “I,” and what belongs to you as little as your “I?” Your “I” is on the one hand what is most your own and at the same time what you have least of yourself; it is most of all not your own, because it is only from the “you” that it can exist as an “I” in the first place. Let us summarize: in God there are three persons, which implies, according to the interpretation offered by theology, that persons are relations, pure relatedness. Although, this is in the first place only a statement about the Trinity, it is at the same time the fundamental statement about what is at stake in the concept of person. It opens the concept of person into the human spirit and provides its foundation and origin.i

Yes, if in God the unique personhood of each divine Person is not absorbed in the anonymity of “the One,” but rather sheltered, safeguarded, and affirmed precisely in the one-and-threefold embrace of the Trinitarian life, then the same must be true of the human person and communion. The ultimate goal of human existence, and what it truly means to be a person, is precisely to be created, called, and destined to share in the very life of love and intimacy lived eternally by the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

i. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, “On the Notion of Person in Theology,” (Communio International Catholic Review 17: Fall 1990), 447.

Is there anywhere else in Scripture where this identification of the Word and the Son is present? Two passages immediately come to mind, one from the Letter to the Hebrews, and one from the book of Proverbs. Hebrews begins in this way:

In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us in his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, and through whom also he created the ages. He is the very radiance (ἀπαύγασμα) of the glory of God and the exact expression (χαρακτὴρ) of his substance (ὑποστάσεως), upholding the universe by his word of power. (Heb 1:3)

These powerful verses, with which the book begins with a flash of light (we could say “with a bang”!), reveal, nonetheless, how weak words can become when translated into another language. I have altered this text in a number of significant ways based on the Greek—compared to the RSV-2CE which is the basic English text I use in these reflections. For one, the RSV changes the second sentence from a statement of being to a statement of doing or even of mere appearance. It says: “He reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of his nature, upholding the universe by his word of power.” But in the original Greek, there is in these verses an emphatic statement about the very being and nature of the Son. He doesn’t only reflect the glory of God; rather, he is the very Radiance of the glory of God, inseparable from the Father as light and heat are inseparable from the sun! And he doesn’t only bear a “stamp” of God; no, he is the very “character” (χαρακτὴρ) of God, the “perfect imprint” and “undimmed image” of the very substance (ὑποστάσεως) of the Father.*

And we see that in these verses the meaning of “Word” and the meaning of “Son” are inseparable. It is in his beloved Son that the Father has fully “spoken,” has communicated and given himself without reserve. These titles thus refer to the same Person: to the Only-Begotten of the Father, who is his full Expression, the perfect Reflection of his own paternal Being, and also his dearly Beloved who rests eternally in his bosom. We receive a glimpse, through these words, into the innermost life of the Trinity, where the Father and the Son exist in a ceaseless contemplation of one another’s Beauty, bound together in the embrace of their single Spirit. We glimpse how the Son, totally open to receive the tender and loving gaze of his Father, reflects back, without any distortion or reduction, this fullness of Beauty back to the Father himself. We can in some way touch the life of the Trinity, therefore, as an eternal moment in which the Father and the Son behold one another and see, reflected in the loving gaze of the other, both the fullness of who they are and the fullness of the One whom they love—two Persons bound together in a single Beauty, in a single divine Substance—with a third Person, the Spirit, who is the very Radiation of their mutual encounter and the very Delight of their eternal Union!

I said that there is also another passage that illustrates and mirrors these verses we have already explored on the Word who is the Son. Yes, in the book of Proverbs we find another conjoining of the reality of the “Word” with the mystery of the “Son.” It is indeed one of my favorite passages of Scripture. It is a prolonged personification of Wisdom, especially during the act of the creation of the world but also in its providential guiding. Of course, in the Old Testament a personification can only remain that, a symbol of a reality which is assumed to be itself impersonal (in this case a “trait” of God, or some uncreated “energy” of his own divine wisdom and activity in fashioning and ordering the world). Only with the dawn of the full light of redemption in Jesus Christ do we realize that this Wisdom is not merely a personification, but a Person who is just as real as the Father, who is eternally one with his Father as a single God: “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father,” as we profess in the Nicene Creed.

Now let us turn to this passage from the book of Proverbs. Speaking in the first person, Wisdom says:

The Lord begot me before any of his works;
from everlasting I have been established,
at the first, before the beginning of the earth. …
When he marked out the foundations of the earth,
I was beside him, like a little child;
and I was daily his delight,
playing before him always,
playing in his inhabited world
and delighting in the children of men. (Pr 8:22-23, 29b-31)

What do we see here? We see that the Wisdom of God is claiming to have been “begotten” by God himself before any of his works of creation. Indeed, he claims to have been “established” from everlasting, before the beginning of the earth. After this he goes on to speak about how he is intimately present throughout the fashioning of the world, cooperating with the Father in his creative activity. And then, at the end of the passage, we encounter something unspeakably beautiful! This Wisdom of the Father speaks of the particular way in which he lives in the Father’s presence. He reveals the true nature of his creative activity, and indeed of his own divine activity in the bosom of the Trinity for all eternity. And what is the nature of this activity? It is play! The beloved Son plays eternally, like a little child, in the shelter of his Father’s love!

And, when he turns out to embrace and to act within the creation, what does he do? He continues to play! He delights in all that has been created by God, all that has been made, indeed, “in him, through him, and for him,” the eternal Son (cf. Col 1:16). Just as the Father delights eternally in his Son—“I was daily his delight”—so the Son delights in all of creation. And most particularly, he delights in the children of men. Yes, he delights in us, precious children of the Father, just as the Father eternally delights in him as his beloved Son. Do we not already glimpse here, as a seed yet to fully sprout, that beautiful reality which Jesus will finally express with complete clarity at the Last Supper: “With the love with which the Father has loved me, so have I loved you”? (Jn 15:9). Yes, he comes down to us, the eternal Child of the Father, in order to play with us as his playmates!

Is this the image of God that most people carry in their mind and heart? Do not so many rather see him as a distant clockmaker who winds up the world and then lets it go on its own course without caring any further? Or do they not see him as an exalted taskmaster who, from his high throne, issues commands in order to keep his creatures in subjection to himself? But he is not any of these things! He is an eternally playful God! And this is true not only of the Son, but of the Father too! For how could the Son, who is the perfect Image of the Father, ever play unless his Father himself were eternally playful? Yes, for all eternity the Father and the Son are delighting together in ceaseless play, in the happiness of mutual enjoyment and exultation as they rejoice to be together with one another.

In all of their activity within creation, from the first moment “in the beginning” and until the very consummation at the end of time—and therefore at this moment, here and now, as I read these words—the Father and the Son are playing throughout creation with great joy and delight. And they seek to take me up into their play, into the endless delight of their own life of love and intimacy. For what is it that ultimately causes one to play except the pure joy of being for its own sake, of intimacy for its own sake, the radiant happiness of belonging to another person in love, and knowing that they belong entirely to me in return?

Yes, play is not a means to an end, something I do in order to “recharge” myself for other activities and responsibilities. Rather, play is the very purpose of my existence, the precise reason that God created me. As G.K. Chesterton affirmed: “The true object of human life is play.” I was not created to do, to attain, to prove myself, but—before all, in all, and above all—to play with a carefree and childlike heart in the sheltering embrace of my most loving God!

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NOTE
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*These Greek terms become important in the later development of theology whenever the truth of Jesus’ divinity and humanity must be protected against the heresies that would distort or deny it, and also simply on the basis of the mind’s wonder-filled exploration of this awesome truth. In order to express the unity-in-distinction and distinction-in-unity of the Father and the Son (and the Spirit as well) in a single Godhead, human language was lifted up, purified, and transformed to become a fitting vessel of eternal truth. And as John Paul II and Benedict XVI have both enthusiastically said, we cannot disregard this providential development and replace it with something else; it has been God’s intention that Greek and Latin philosophy and thought (which in fact encapsulates many other traditions as well, East and West) has been inseparably taken up into the language of faith, so as to become its own language. Thus we have the beautiful theological development of the terms person and substance, of relation and being.

​In the previous reflections I have already begun to try to peel back the layers of rich meaning present in the first verses of John’s Gospel. I spoke of the profound beauty and meaning of verse 18: “No one has ever seen God; the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known.” I also spoke of the difference between the “light” and the “darkness,” which are a theme throughout the Prologue (and indeed throughout the whole Gospel), especially as these are manifested in two fundamentally opposed attitudes: that of childlike openness in trust and love, and that of grasping closedness of heart in fear and sin.

But now let us take a step back in order to try to go deeper into the Prologue and to discern the Evangelist’s intentions. The first thing we notice is that John begins his Gospel with the words: “In the beginning.” This immediately hearkens back to the beginning of the entire Bible, the book of Genesis. This books starts:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters. And God said, “Let there be light;” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. (Gen 1:1-3)

In these verses there are many parallels with the Prologue of the Gospel. Indeed, John is deliberately modeling his Gospel on the book of Genesis, not only in these verses of the Prologue, but throughout the entire text. It is perhaps most clear, however, in the very beginning, as John ushers us into the vast panorama of God’s marvelous act of creation at the beginning of time. What are the main themes, and the main parallels between John and Genesis, which we encounter right now at the start of the Gospel? First, we see the separation of light and darkness, which in Genesis is expressed as: “God separated the light from the darkness” (Gen 1:3) and in John as: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (Jn 1:5).

Here John is offering a commentary on Genesis, explaining how the light at God’s creation is actually the light of his eternal Word, through whom he creates all things. This creation through the Word is expressed, in Genesis, as “and then God said...” The power of his Word is what brings the whole of creation into being. And John tells us that this Word is not merely a passing reality, a transient voice, but the very beloved Son of the Father, the Father’s complete Self-expression, the Word in whom he speaks his love so deeply that it is another Person!

Son...Word...Self-expression...Outpouring of the Father’s Love. All of these are one single reality, or rather one single Person: the only-begotten Son of the heavenly Father. We see this conclusion clearly stated in verse 18, when John explicitly defines the nature and personality of this Word: he is “the only-begotten Son, God, who is in the bosom of the Father.” But what is the original meaning of this term which is translated as Word? Does it mean merely what we mean in common day speech—that is, the sound that comes out of one’s mouth to express something, or the particular idea or concept that is expressed with a title that can be taught and categorized in a dictionary? In other words, is it voice and name? Or is it more as well? Actually, the original Greek term is much more rich, while nonetheless including these fundamental meanings as well. The Word is indeed the Voice of God; he is indeed the Concept of God, if we may speak this way, as imperfect as our language is. The word is Logos (Λόγος), which can refer to word or speech, but also to meaning, reason, intelligibility, thought. Indeed, in Greek philosophical thought in particular, the Logos was seen as the intelligible principle at the foundation of the universe. Clearly, recognizing this beautiful intuition into the nature of God and the universe even on the part of the pagan mind, John the Evangelist is not afraid to take up this term Logos and to unveil its true and full content in the light of Christ, indeed as Christ. The “Word” of God is thus not merely his voiced speech within creation (e.g. the “word” of Scripture written down), nor indeed is he but a “concept” that God has in speaking the world or speaking himself. He is the fullness of God’s intelligibility, the fullness of his eternal Truth spoken forth by the Father before time even began, and precisely in this way also being the “model” on which the whole of creation is fashioned and which orders it in beauty and goodness. Yes, the eternal Word of the Father is the very Self-donation in which he gives himself for all eternity as substantial Meaning. And this Self-outpouring of the Father is the Son. Thus we see the direct connection between the title “Word” and the title “only-begotten Son.” They refer to the same Person: the “speaking” of the eternal Word from the mind and mouth of the Father is synonymous with the “begetting” of the Son from the bosom of the Father for all eternity.
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Is there a particular term that we could use to translate this rich word, Logos? Really, nothing can adequately capture its depth. The fullness of the Father’s thought is his Son; the Son is eternally his delight and his ecstatic contemplation. He is the full “Concept” of the Father's understanding, which is not an abstract idea, but rather the very fullness of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty born from the Father’s paternal heart. To be born from the Truth of the Father as the perfect realization of his own Truth; to be begotten of the Father’s Goodness as the perfect Expression of the fullness of his Goodness, to shine radiantly from the Father’s Beauty as perfect Beauty. This is the Son. He is in himself Truth, Goodness, and Beauty in their fullness, in his inseparable union in perfect intimacy with the Father and the Holy Spirit. In other words, to use John’s expression, he is “God eternally with God.”