Saint of the Week: Basil the Great

Luke 10:21-24

It was June 14, 370 AD, that Basil was consecrated Bishop of Caesarea, in the central part of present-day Turkey. In the Eastern half of the Roman Empire, it was Basil who first formed communities of monks, and got them out of their desert solitude. His "Rules" remain the basis for all monastic orders in the Orthodox Christian churches of the East.

It was that desire for community that led him to an understanding of the Trinity that we still use today. It was Basil who first used the statement, "One Being, three Persons" to describe how you could have three persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – who also constituted one "Being," that is, one God. Most of the analogies we use in describing the Trinity are practical variations of that theological proposition. Perhaps you remember a children's sermon in which I showed how water might have distinct forms such as steam, ice and liquid, but they're all still water.

In truth, of course, none of our analogies are fully adequate to explain how three people can be one thing. That might make the Gospel reading appointed for Basil's feast really strange. "I praise you, Father, LORD of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children" (Luke 10:21). Really Jesus, what's child-like and simple about the Christian doctrine of the Trinity? But you don't need a philosophy degree to know how much richer your life is when you have friends. The Trinitarian God is a friendship so close that the three friends always act as One.

Each one of us is, at the end of the day, alone. Our heart is ours alone. Our mind is ours alone. Our decisions are ours alone. And yet, we know deep in our hearts, that we were not made to be alone. Why else do we get up on Sunday morning and come to church, but that God made us not to be alone but to be in community. God made us for friendship because God made us in his image. And from Andrei Rublev's 14th-century icon of the Trinity that image is one of friendship.

Community and friendship aren't easy for us. The very command to love our neighbors as ourselves, likewise commands us to love ourselves as we love our neighbors. Sometimes in this world of sin, we may have to choose between ourselves and an unloving neighbor. But if we must occasionally raise our self-defenses, we must also be prepared to lower them, as Father Son and Holy Spirit have no defenses against the other. For sharing the life of the Trinity is what we were created for, and it is our destiny.

Almighty God, you have revealed to your Church your eternal Being of glorious majesty and perfect love as one God in Trinity of Persons: Give us grace that, like your bishop Basil of Caesarea, we may continue steadfast in the confession of this faith, and constant in our worship of you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; for you live and reign for ever and ever. Amen.