"I didn't pick you because you didn't make mistakes, I picked you because you never give up."

"Dad, look at the fire it's the three-in-one!" exclaimed Leo. Me: "What do you mean?" Leo: "Look, Noah, mine and Raphael's fire starter ("blitz" for us locals) that we put into the fire is now one big fire". Me: "Speechless"! There you go, blog complete; Leo explained the Holy Trinity in 3 seconds. 

Paw Patrol: The Dino Movie (2026) - Marshall Pup

This happened more than two months ago, and from my Leo to Pope Leo's second chapter in the encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, we get a master class on the Trinity. 

Pope Leo brings to our attention how the Social Doctrine of the Church, which guides all the faithful, is set on solid rock. It is no manuscript that seeks to control us like the powers of an imperial state disordered by short-sightedness and a lust for power. The Church guides us from century to century by putting you and me, the human person, the very image of the Trinitarian God, at the heart of the Social Doctrine. The Church is not there to make choices for us but instead to gently guide and help us make informed moral decisions by empowering us with the wisdom to know the difference, but the power to decide for ourselves. 

A God that does not decide for us is a God that loves us and trusts what is best for us. We live in a society where making choices for others is second nature. We deem it freedom (a false freedom it is) that directing the path and outcomes for others through the thoughtless actions we make has no material impact on their lives because we think ourselves gods. Our God does not betray our trust. He values us so much that he lays the truth out before us and gives us the choice to choose freely, even when that means we may choose the wayward path that will inevitably meet a dead end. He knows all things, and He knows one choice may go nowhere, but yet he allows us to choose because even through our mistakes he can bring about goodness. 

The new Paw Patrol movie hit me deep with the line that Ryder (the Mighty Pups' leader) said to Marshall, the fireman pup: "I didn't pick you because you didn't make mistakes, I picked you because you never give up." I am a child of God. You are a child of God. By baptism, you, I and the entire Christian family are children of God. We were chosen not by virtue of never making a mistake or never sinning, but simply because by baptism we are given the fortitude to begin again and the grace to never give up. 

If I, a human person, am a child of God, and the human person is created in the image of the Triune God, then the Social Doctrine of the Church cannot simply be reduced to the opinions of men. The Church teaches through the living body of Christ — through the Pope and bishops in communion with him, and lived out by priests and lay faithful — under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The Pope is not simply writing his own ideas into history, nor is every word he writes dictated directly by God. Rather, the Pope and bishops, assisted by the Holy Spirit and entrusted by Christ with the Church’s teaching office, serve as instruments to help faithfully hand on and apply the truth already revealed by God to the circumstances of our time.

Maybe this stuff all sounds made up, like some Catholic mantra we are made to believe and repeat. Where is it in the Bible?! It's all there; every answer we need starts there, but it's not written plainly for us like an encyclopedia. That's how man thinks and writes, but for God, he writes poetry, waiting for us to discover what the eye is not trained to see; he requires us to use our hearts to interpret what he truly means and fill in the blanks. So where is the biblical proof that we are created as an image of the Triune God? Beyond Genesis, it's fulfilled in "the Word made flesh" when Jesus enters the womb of Mary. God created the flesh, and then the second Person of the Trinity enters the flesh of the Blessed Virgin, to redeem our flesh from sin.

"... the very heart of our faith: the mystery of the living God, revealed in Jesus Christ, who, as a communion of Persons — Father, Son and Holy Spirit — is love itself in relationship, expressed in the mutual gift of self and in sharing with the world....  Indeed, their deepest vocation is to enter into the Trinitarian dynamic of love received and shared.... By becoming man, the Son of God enters our history and takes on human flesh, bringing with him the love that unites him to the Father and the Holy Spirit." (Magnifica Humanitas, Ch. 2). 

Back to the fire analogy. We can think of the fire representing God. However, the one fire that grew was started by the three individual pieces of fire blitz that were lit. So there is one person of the Father, one person of the Son, and one person of the Holy Spirit, but the Father is God, the Son is God and the Holy Spirit is God. The fire blitz were individually lit with a match, which produces fire (analogous to God). We can explain the conditions that produce a flame, but the fire itself remains a powerful image of something that can be shared without being divided. Similarly, the Father is uncreated, the Son is uncreated, and the Holy Spirit is uncreated. Together, the one fire engulfs the branches of the fire, which is us, the people of God. Once I have been filled with the baptism of fire, my identity is forged in the Trinity; I am an image created by the  Triune God. I choose to starve my embers of God when I distance myself from the fire, but it only takes the fire master to breathe a deep breath of fresh air into the coal to ignite it once more. We can run from God as far as we want, but he has a way of bringing you back home. 

What is very fitting is that when I wrote this part of the blog, I had started with the Novena of the day during the St. Michael's Lent Challenge. The story attached to the Novena makes it clear that no one will ever explain the mystery behind the Trinity, but nonetheless the analogy helps us simplify things and realise that we have been created by God himself. Also, maybe at this point we should question whether throwing away tradition passed down by the generations is a wise thing to do or base everything we do as Christians on a written account in the Bible?! Read the story; I think it explains why handing down tradition is valuable.

The story goes that Saint Augustine was walking by the seashore one day contemplating and trying to understand the mystery of the Holy Trinity when he saw a small boy, a little child running back and forth from the water to a spot on the seashore. The boy was using a seashell to carry the water from the ocean and place it into a small hole in the sand. Augustine approached him and asked, 

"My boy, what are you doing?"

"I am trying to bring all the sea into this hole," the boy replied with a sweet smile.

"But that is impossible, my dear child. The hole cannot contain all that water," said Augustine.

The boy paused in his work, stood up, looked into the eyes of the saint and replied, 

"It is no more impossible than what you are trying to do - comprehend the immensity of the mystery of the Holy Trinity with your small intelligence."

Saint Augustine was absorbed by such a keen response from that child and turned his eyes from him for a short while. When he glanced down to ask him something else, the boy had vanished. Some say that it was an angel sent by God to teach Augustine a lesson on pride and learning. Others affirm it was the Christ Child Himself who appeared to the saint to remind him of the limits of human understanding before the great mysteries of our faith. 

(Excerpt from Fr Ambrose's commentary on Day 6 of the Novena to the Archangels and feast of Michaelmas excerpt taken from Hallow App).

If we were to draw one central message from the Pope's encyclical, it would be to refocus our efforts back to the human person. Technology, money, politics, artificial intelligence, and knowledge are at our fingertips in this age and can be used for the greater good, but these means are also an end in themselves when misused. 

Pope Leo explains that we are: "Created for relationship, every human person is planned and willed by God to enter into communion with him, with others and with creation. Human dignity does not depend on a person’s abilities, wealth or position in life, nor on the right or wrong choices made; instead, it is a gift that precedes and transcends each person, endowed by God as an expression of his unfailing love. For this reason, the human person always remains the “way for the Church” and the heart of every authentic path of integral human development." (Humanitas Magnifica, Ch. 2). 

The moment we break with the teaching of the Social Doctrine in favour of the trends of popular society, the echo of original sin resounds in our ears. We start to move in the opposite direction and break communion with God. We all need to hear these words very often and at times stop and reflect on them and bring them to our prayer: "...every human person is planned and willed by God to enter into communion with him, with others and with creation". No matter our story, no matter our background or through what circumstances we entered this world, we were willed by God, and our hearts will be restless until they rest in Him. 

Do you know of a friend who could be interested in reading this blog? Please feel free to share the link with them.