Recovering from illness, Stan was not well enough to return to work, but sufficiently well to take interest in life—and feel guilty through doing less than usual.  One day, he sat awhile watching sunshine through a clear window pour itself onto the rich green leaves of a basking tropical houseplant. Stan felt a stab of joy. That evening, observing the shared glance between his two small children, he saw how they helped each other get from fear to calm after a sharp cry from their mother who’d hurt her hand. Stan’s pride and awe for his children welled up. He joined them as they returned to their game.

In his frailty, Stan became intensely aware of his inner world.  We all have one but can go long stretches without attending to it.  Something inside him opened to the outside: creation, his children, his wife. Turning towards them, he felt more transparent, bigger, lighter, in soul and body.

What does Stan’s story have to do with commemorating the 1700th anniversary of the first Ecumenical Council? Professing the Nicene faith means clearly witnessing that God reveals and makes possible a personal relationship with us. As we discover that God has created us all in his image, we need to be attentive wherever there’s a vestige, or even just a spark, of the communion he created us for.  

Someone might, like Stan, become aware by attending to inner life and family.  Another might become aware through nature, or social involvement. Wherever something of God’s personal relationship with us is glimpsed, the Church’s role is to work with that and guide it towards “the Father of lights from whom all good comes.”

Nicea affirms that, because of who Christ is, we can no longer speak of God without speaking of humanity, nor of humanity without God. This shows that to be image of God is to be called to exist in personal relationship with God and each other.  For the one God is the communion of three persons, known to us through the person of Christ, the God-man.

In human relationships, there’s a restlessness which can move us outward, towards another. When that other moves towards us, an encounter can happen, urging us to grow.  And so we can experience communion—a transparency which doesn’t make either disappear, but rather helps them to be more real.

All this reflects what our relationship with God is like. We have a built-in capacity for God; it’s natural to seek God, unnatural not to. Our inner longing leads us out from ourselves to touch God.  But unlike human relationships, before we do anything, God is already within us, seeking and loving us, intimately present.  So we can move from being seekers of God to lovers of God. 

When God met Moses at the burning bush, God began a new kind of relationship with humanity.  God initiated and made the meeting possible. Moses wants to show himself to God because God shows himself to Moses first. When Moses sees the bush, he wants to touch the fire, not because it’s safe but because he’s made for it. He too becomes fire.  Discovering that God already knows his name, Moses boldly asks for God’s name. And God gives the man the Tetragrammaton, the name that is nothing but ‘being,’ yet ‘being’ that gives relationship. In accepting the divine mission to help rescue his suffering people by confronting the earth’s mightiest power, Moses too is revealed. He becomes a person through this new relationship with God.

When Peter, James and John—three disciples who’ve walked far with Jesus—encounter the God-man radiantly revealed on the mountain, Moses’ presence helps them see. The Church invites us to see, too, as Lent begins. The first Sunday of Lent takes us into the desert with Christ.  The second Sunday leads us up the mountain to meet Christ transfigured. 

When Stan goes out again to the world, how does he bring his new experience of relationship?  When Moses goes to Egypt, how does he bring his encounter with God who is being-in-relationship?  When Christ meets us, how do we bring the trinitarian God to the world without distorting him?

We can’t ‘remember’ ourselves if we forget God.  When we move out of that awareness, we move society away from God and towards chaos.  For there is one God, in three persons, who desires to personally embrace all his beloved—including you.