And now let’s move on to the second name of God: God is Love. Let’s use, somewhat expanding it, the teaching of St. Gregory the Theologian about love and about God-Love One in the Holy Trinity.
St. Gregory proceeds from the fact that God is Love and God – Trinity because only a trinitarian relationship can be an adequate and perfect expression of love. First, he briefly shows that the monad, the arithmetic unit, cannot be a perfect expression of love. This is self-love reflected in the ancient myth about Narcissus, who gazed at the reflection of his own face in a pond and was so struck by his own beauty that he froze, unable to tear himself away from this vision.
Next, Gregory talks about the love of two and emphasizes that if two remain in their mutual love just between themselves, then this closure cannot be an adequate expression of love. In literature, we are often shown with great force how great the love of two people is. But we also often see – and this is a constant motif in literature, – how tragic the intervention, the intrusion of a third into these relationships, which seemed so strong, perfect, self-sufficient, is. Depending on the literary genre, we have either a tragedy or a comedy, but the third participant in this triangle always breaks the original unity of the two.
In such closed relationships, there is one weak spot. Within their framework, one can only give and receive, although, as we will now see, very much so. In a perfect form, this action – to give and receive – would mean giving first and foremost everything that the other needs and is capable of receiving. This would mean giving away everything you have. This would also mean giving away all of yourself, as if pouring your essence into another person. And this expression is taken from Scripture. When we are told that Christ humbled (in Greek: ‘kenose’, from the word ‘kenosis’ – self-humbling, self-emptying, giving space to another by self-limiting; in the translation into the Slavic language: ‘istoshil’ – emptied, squeezed, narrowed – V.A.) the glory of His Divinity in order to become a man (Phil. 2:6-8), it is precisely about something similar. But so often giving is not about pouring yourself out, giving away everything you possess and are. More often in human relationships, giving is a means of self-assertion. And therefore receiving can be so hard, painful, and humiliating. It is no accident that the Apostle Paul, repeating the unwritten words of Christ, says that it is more blessed to give than to receive (Acts 20:35). To receive with all your heart, with full openness, like fertile soil able to receive everything that God and man send into it, is possible only when you are sure that you are loved, and you yourself undoubtedly love reciprocally. To accept a gift from someone who does not love is offensive, humiliating. A gift from one who does not love brings pain and suffering.
What about the third? The third, as already mentioned, always bursts into the situation when two through contemplating each other are heading towards perfection in reciprocity. With the appearance of the third, the precious link between two people is broken. It often turns into two blades directed against each other. A new, deceptively joyful, adulterous connection is established between the one who intervened and one member of the couple, and a blood-red link of hatred between the second member of the couple and the uninvited guest. A triangle arises, but this triangle in no way resembles the image of the Holy Trinity, it is a field of tension, in which three points of destruction and aggression.
The decisive role in the destruction of relationships and the revelation of their instability belongs to the third. Is there a possibility, a way for these relationships from the triangle to become, or simply from the beginning to be according to the image of the Trinitarian relationship, inseparable, harmonious, and perfect relationships of three? St. Gregory says that for this a third condition is needed: it is not enough just to give and receive, even in a perfect, full way, – sacrificial love is also needed. Until the moment of sacrifice is present in the mystery of love, something is missing in it, and love is doomed to perish.
This moment of sacrifice can be felt a bit on one example from Scripture, on the image of John the Baptist. He himself called himself the friend of the bridegroom (John 3:29). He was that friend who loved the young man and the young woman (the bridegroom and the bride – V.A.) so much that he led them to the meeting, took them to the wedding banquet and then to the bridal chamber (the bedroom where the newlyweds will spend their first wedding night – V.A.) and remained outside the door to protect their contemplative meeting, the meeting of two people who will face each other in all the richness of their human personality – spirit, soul, and body.
In an unbreakable and balanced relationship of three, each must simultaneously give, receive, and be ready to mysteriously destroy themselves, ready ‘not to be’ for the sake of the other two, to allow them to be together completely and perfectly, under the protection and support of the sacrificial love of the third. In this simultaneous love, in these relationships beyond time, each face (hypostasis –V.A.) pours into another, so that they no longer exist for themselves and by themselves. They no longer affirm themselves, but give themselves away, forget about themselves and give themselves away: I am in the Father and the Father in Me (John 10:38).