44. "May they be one as we are one" Otherness and unity? The couple and the Trinity

Love is diffusive of itself and communicates its energy. It endows the timid with a surprising boldness. It opens eyes to see into secret places, and to perceive what is possible and within reach. Above all, it allows one to see what lies hidden under deceptive appearances: beauty disfigured by tears; the event which is about to happen, stored in the hidden recesses of memory through sorrow or repressed by tyranny. Love transfigures those who are under its thrall as well as the world in which they live. It lays bare the future and provides the strength to risk its challenges.

We ought not to wonder then, if a man and a woman appropriate to themselves ( but are they alone if love includes everybody?) those most intimate words of Jesus which sum up his strongest wish: "Father, that they may be one as we are one, I in them, and thou in me." These lovers feel themselves inhabited by the same Breath which unites the Father and the Son, which reassembles and personifies the breath of life. Ambition and self-importance? Not at all! The intuition is sound and well justified, for since its very origins, the human couple is created in the image and likeness of God. For if "Adam", that is the unspecified "human", is the icon of God in the first account of creation, he is not man and woman taken separately, but precisely as a couple. The second account in Genesis puts it very clearly:

"Man and woman he created them, in his own image and likeness he created them." Man and woman, even in their difference, and in the relationship they have with each other, are in the image of God.

Image and resemblance, why? Not only because their fecundity prolongs creation: children, loved as different, and work which in this chaotic world, makes for a place where one can breathe and feel welcome. Not only because they were once two and are now one, without ever ceasing to be different; unity in diversity in the likeness of the Trinity, three Persons, but one God. But more especially by the desire which unites them.

Certainly, desire usually means that something is lacking, and in philosophical systems, we have difficulty in imagining that God could experience a lack of anything. But God is love, and as the human couple is the icon of God, the "sacrament" of God, as the Orthodox like to put it, it is precisely in the happily married couple, that we can contemplate the truth of God's desire. But where do we find the happy couple?

In the Judeo-Christian tradition, day starts with nightfall. The Sabbath does not begin with the first rays of the sun, but when the first two stars appear. This symbolises a whole concept of life: the going away from slavery to liberty, from death to resurrection, from repudiation to a new seduction; from the "old man" to the spirit of childhood, and from conflict to reconciliation. Belief that Christ has risen, helps us to understand that everything is possible. There is no longer anything to be feared from opening our eyes clearly, for love can triumph over everything. As for the concerns about human love, it is simply a question of moving from war between the sexes, to contemplating the Canticle of Canticles.

Let's talk first of all about the wanderings and the denial of a human desire, which does not manage to find fulfilment. There is a certain desire-passion which has destructive aspects. As is the case with a sudden burn, it cannot support the passage of time. It finds its appeasement in the momentary ecstasy of sensuality, but soon yields place to something which is rarely peace and more often deception. Obsessional desire, lacking as it does an object, is followed by a state of emptiness which the use of drugs exacerbates unto absurdity. There is then born the urgent need for something which cannot be identified. Desire wishes to go beyond pleasure, beyond need, in both of which it is trapped.

Fire of straw or burning bush? To extinguish the flames of desire, it is not sufficient to deceive one's hunger: satisfaction turns to deception, pleasure to bitterness. It is not sufficient either to nip it in the bud. To stifle desire in order to retain mastery of oneself, is to choose death in preference to frustration...It is a question of accepting desire as an essential movement of life, allowing it to express itself in surprise: "Here is bone of my bones!" and naming the other: "She will be called `Isha' for it is from `Ish' that she has come forth"

The very first human word in the Bible designates the "other", the same yet different, the absolute so near and yet inapprehensible. The very first word expresses wonder. A message prior to the Fall: true satisfaction is not derived from possessing the other but from a personal communion.

To love is to accept being consumed, the saying "yes" to a desire which can never be completely satisfied, a desire which accepts to endure and which recognises itself to be open to infinity: a need which never ceases to be need, and which ultimately becomes prayer. Desire becomes love when it engenders thanksgiving, and so a word. The word is the beginning of communication; it begins a story, several stories, a covenant, a common adventure. The reduction of the "other" to the self does not give birth to joy. Joy comes from facing together in common and in dialogue, the world, space and time, the unknown, without ever again having to be alone. The "we" rises up before "another", different from the other: new as a baby, distant as a stranger, mysterious as the living God.

"They were two, now they are only one". The wit will retort: "The problem now is to know which one!" But in the case in question, unity is not uniformity with clone-like identity. The Persons of the Trinity are not interchangeable. Representing them in the form of a triangle is not an acceptable symbol no more than is that of three juxtaposed identical persons, which we find sometimes in Latin America and which was forbidden by the council of Lima.

Union differentiates. Each one loves the other for himself or herself, so that they may realise their full potential and so that each may become more and more what in the depth of their being they really are.

"God is love", but what kind of love is he? As long as God is perceived as an oriental monarch, it will be impossible to understand fully the mystery of the couple. And as long as the couple themselves are unable to display the truth of the mystery, its subtle balance and all its fruitfulness, the mystery of God will remain hidden. From polygamy to a total and unique commitment,, from inconstancy to fidelity, little by little truth found its way into the chapters of history, by the reciprocal enlightenment of God and of the human couple, in the all-revealing experience of love.

For love gives vision, so that a lover could exclaim: "What exists between you and me will have to be experienced by the whole world!" That young man in his ecstasy, perceived already, what is to happen the new reconciled humanity, when God who is Love will be all in all. "I love you, and the old world is about to be consumed!" Love, lived to the end, turns upside down what seemed evident and opens up a wonderful hope. Love confirms the peaceful prophecy of Isaiah and rejoins the vision of St. John: "I saw a new heaven and a new earth. There will be no more death or mourning or sadness or pain, for the old world has passed away. Then I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem come down from heaven from God: beautiful as a bride dressed for her husband."