A Pattern of Relationship
Sunday, June 7, 2026
Father Richard Rohr reflects on how understanding the Trinity as relationship encourages us to live in greater communion with God and life:
The genius of the Trinitarian doctrine has the power to rearrange our universe. We know nothing about this being called God, except that this God is perfect giving and perfect receiving. The very nature of God is communion, receptivity, and generosity, one hundred percent unhindered dialogue between three. It all begins with three! This isn’t just an abstraction; it’s the foundational template of reality. Reality is total, continual givenness and perfect, humble receptivity; that is the very form and shape of being as we know it. It is the very source, pattern, and goal of reality.
The wonderful thing about living in our time is how many scientists, such as physicists and astronomers, are confirming that this interconnected nature of reality is true. Looking through microscopes or telescopes, they see this same pattern of utter relationship. They are discovering that if reality is anything, it’s absolutely relational. It’s something we used to know, something our ancestors knew on an intuitive, spiritual level. But since the Enlightenment, at least in the West, many people basically dismissed the possibility of interconnection or interbeing. We’ve primarily produced individualists who try to save themselves by believing things intellectually. This view of religion is not a mystery of participation. It’s not a mystery of surrendering; no surrender is even necessary. Instead, it’s a quest to get the right information, which only makes us more proud and self-centered. It makes community less possible, which is clearly evident from our politics and our international relations. Everyone is put back upon themselves, where the only question Christians seem to ask is “How can I get to heaven?” That’s not even a gospel question! It’s a question of the ego. It’s not the question of the Trinity within us.
A conversion to this foundational definition of God as relationship is needed right now. Only people who undergo that conversion can possibly be converted to Jesus and not have their faith distorted. When there isn’t a primary understanding of who Jesus is as part of the Trinity, Jesus will be used for our own nationalistic and egocentric purposes, as a means of power and a ticket to heaven. Can we all be converted, not to Jesus (as strange as that must sound) but to the Trinity, where Jesus Christ actually exists? Only inside the mystery of the Trinity can we begin to understand what Jesus is saying, the mystery he is inviting us into, and the meaning of salvation.
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A Positive Relationship
Monday, June 8, 2026
Father Richard describes relationship as the nature of God and reality:
The Christian belief in the Trinity says that God is absolute relatedness. God is our word for the ultimate ecosystem that holds all things in positive relationship (see Colossians 1:17). As long as we’re in honest and loving relationship with what is right in front of us, the Spirit can keep working in us, through us, and for us.
Jesus comes as a naked, vulnerable baby, totally dependent upon relationship with others. Naked vulnerability means that we allow otherness to influence and change us. When we think that otherness can’t change us or teach us anything, we don’t give other people any power over our lives. When we block them by thinking we can stand alone, we are spiritually dead. It’s true that nothing stands alone! We are intrinsically like the Trinity, living in an absolute relatedness. We call this love.
We really were made for love, and outside of love we die very quickly. If we are going to start with Trinity, then loving relationship is the universal pattern, the nature of our being. When we start with a philosophical concept of being and then try to convince everyone that this being is, in fact, love, we don’t have a lot of success. I’ve been a priest for over fifty years and can say that more Christians seem to be afraid of God than in love with God. Sadly, Christians aren’t more loving than anyone else; sometimes, we’re even less loving than other people! In some ways, that’s inevitable if we’re basically relating to God out of fear, if we haven’t been drawn into the love between the Father and the Son by the Spirit.
In some ways the Spirit is the hardest to describe. Jesus says, “The Spirit blows where it will” (John 3:8). Jesus’s message to us is clear: Don’t try to control the Spirit; don’t try to say where it comes from, where it goes, or who has it. It’s group narcissism to believe that only our group has the Spirit or the truth. At less mature levels, every group will try to put God in their own pocket and say God only loves their group, but such a belief has nothing to do with the love of God. It isn’t a search for Truth or Holy Mystery, but a search for control. It’s the search of the small self, the search to make myself feel superior and to stand alone.
I’m not in control or in charge of this Holy Mystery. I don’t presume to understand it; all I know is that I’m forever being drawn through everything. Each manifestation or epiphany of God calls for surrender, communion, and intimacy.
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