Episode Transcript  

One

Three Persons, Perfectly United
God is one God, but exists as three distinct Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Each Person fully shares everything with the others — nothing is held back.

There’s no division, no private reserve, no competition.

All that the Father is belongs also to the Son and the Spirit.

They eternally give, receive, and share in the joy of being God together.

This is what makes God perfectly happy: a unity of love between distinct Persons.

And this is the happiness God invites us into — not just in Heaven, but here and now.

The Trinity isn’t only our final destiny; it’s also the model for how we are called to live today.

Two

Loving the Other’s Good as Your Own
In our world, we often see others' success or blessings as a threat to our own.

If someone else gets the job or the award or the top score, we feel we lose out.

But in the Trinity, this kind of competition doesn't exist, because each Person fully shares the same divine goodness.

The Father rejoices in the Son's glory because it is also His own glory; their good is one and the same.

That’s why God is love: love means treating another’s good as your own.

For us, this isn’t automatic because we are different individuals (we are not all one human being) we sometimes see the good another person has as separate from our own. 

But we can love our neighbors like the Trinity if we make a choice to treat the other’s good as our good. 

And that is exactly what Jesus taught when He said, Love your neighbor as yourself.

Three

Loving your neighbor as yourself

When Jesus was asked for the greatest commandment, He responded that we must love God absolutely and completely – but then also that we must “love our neighbor as ourselves”

What does that mean? It means that we choose to live like the Trinity

We treat our neighbor’s good as though it were our good; we work for our neighbor’s happiness as though it were our happiness.

That means when something good happens to someone else, we rejoice as though it happened to us

When something bad happens to someone else, we are sad as though it happened to us.

That’s incredibly difficult. It means we have to overcome any temptation to envy, to resentment, to acting as though we are more important than anyone else.

That’s incredibly difficult. In fact, it’s impossible on our own.

It’s a divine way of loving – not a human way. 

 But it’s the only way we can be happy, even as human beings.

The only way we can be happy as humans is to love like God

Four

The happiest moments of your life

Probably the happiest moment of your life was when you took pleasure in someone else’s pleasure – or, put differently, when you shared with someone else in the celebration of a common good.

Do you remember when your first kid smiled for the first time? Do you remember the pure, piercing, almost painful joy that gave you?

Do you remember the last time you made a really good friend laugh, and the two of you laughed till it was hard to breathe?

Do you remember the last time your spouse said to you, “You make me so happy”?

Those are the best moments human life has to offer. Those times are as good as they get.

Because we were made to love like God. We were meant to rejoice in the other’s good – to unite their happiness with ours in a celebration of the same goodness.

Loving your neighbor as yourself isn’t a punishment, or a discipline, or a chore 

It’s the secret to happiness.

And it’s the happiness we’ll experience forever with the God who is Happiness because He is Trinity

He is love

He is delighting in the good of the Other

He is delighting of sharing the same good as the Other.

He is infinite Joy – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit

And we try to live that joy now, as best we can, so we can live it forever.

Five

Heaven as experiencing those moments for eternity

Picture the happiest you every felt with another human being – a spouse, a child, a friend

Remember the laughter, or the embrace

Remember what it felt like when your kid did well at a sports event, and you cheered

Or what it felt like when you saw your wife and thought “I don’t deserve this, I don’t deserve to be this lucky.”

Or when your friend got through a difficult time, and you felt so relieved, so grateful.

In each of those cases, the goodness of the other, the goodness that happened to the other, was celebrated as your goodness – and you were thrilled with happiness

Heaven is that forever. God is that infinitely.

Holy Trinity, come inside us and give us your joy and your love. 

Help us to love the people in our lives as we love ourselves – help us do that always, not just occasionally. 

And bring us to you, so that we can love as you love, and celebrate as you celebrate, for all eternity.

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