Let me begin, not with the Holy Spirit, but rather, with the Father and the Son. Jesus once told His disciples "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father... Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me...” (John 14:9,11). Thus, to see either the Father or the Son is to see the other as well, and to model one is to model the other as well. So, when we say that Joe models well the Father,1 we can say that he models well Jesus, too. This explains why there are so many parallel images between Jesus and Joe: righteousness, called out of Egypt, etc. Yet, the Trinity consists in three Persons, not too.
Jesus also said of the Holy Spirit, "He will not speak on his own, but he will speak what he hears, and will declare to you the things that are coming. He will glorify me, because he will take from what is mine and declare it to you. Everything that the Father has is mine; for this reason I told you that he will take from what is mine and declare it to you.” (John 16:13-15). So, to model the Son is also to model the Holy Spirit.
The Greeks have a good word for this mystery of the Trinity: perichoresis. It refers to the Divine “dance” of the Trinity as if They are always twirling about making it impossible to fully distinguish one from the other. This idea is captured well in Andrei Rublev’s Icon of the Trinity (or The Hospitality of Abraham). Each of the angels depicted has the same face as the other two. To see the face of one is to see the face of the other two. So, too with Joe (indeed anyone who faithfully remains in God). To be like one is to be like all Three. In the weeks ahead, I’ll be sharing some reflections on the perichoris of the earthly trinity as the mirror of the Heavenly Trinity.
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