Blog Post – 23 – Three Buckets and St. Bonaventure

Western Civilization has brought much that is helpful to the world on many fronts.  One detrimental consequence has been the development of the view of God as solitary and distant.  This transcendent God has been painted too much like Zeus or an aloof judge.  To man, God has become so distant and disengaged that He is irrelevant to everyday life.  Sitting at His comfortably unreachable distance, He seems remote and withdrawn.  The more the vision of an anti-social God infects the Western mind, the more people underestimate Jesus, viewing Him as less than “God”. The Holy Spirit has it even worse, He’s ignored and/or gets made an impersonal force.  The early church was firmly grounded on a Trinitarian view of God.   God is not an unsympathetic taker obsessed with control.  He is perpetual giving personified.  In the 8^th century, St. Bonaventure compared the Trinity to a three-bucket water wheel.  He likened God to a continuously moving water wheel of overflowing love.  The movement is only ever in one direction—always beneficial, unceasingly giving and perpetually receiving.  Imagine three buckets on a constantly turning wheel, each one emptying and refilling endlessly. This symbolizes how the three Persons of the Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—pouring themselves out into one another in a continuous flow of love.  Fearlessly, they freely give, knowing as they each give, they are replenished. There is absolute trust in one another, and total interdependence on each other.  There is a never-ending divine flow of love coursing within and issuing from the Triune God.  We are designed to enter that inexhaustible current of goodness.  We are fashioned to freely receive and freely give, as well.  Created in His image, we are relational beings made to receive and release God’s love.