St. John, most beloved of the Disciples, began his Book, the last of the four Gospels, with those six words. In them, Catholic Fundamentalism finds The Trinity.
“In The Beginning” describes The Father, Whom we see as The Loving Programmer. Thinking of Him as a spiritual, living being with The Name, “In The Beginning” lets us see what a perfect partial description of Him It is. By thinking of Him as “In The Beginning” we get a sense of He Who made time and all within it.
“Was” is the verb in the phrase. As such, it describes the Holy Ghost. To Catholic Fundamentalists He is The Holy, Wireless Connector, that Person of The Trinity Who symbolizes action of every sort. The Holy Spirit is, in fact, every tense of every uncorrupted verb.
“In The Beginning” and “Was” are preludes to more fully understanding Jesus Christ, the Second Person of The Trinity. Known to traditional Christians as “The Son”, Catholic Fundamentalists think of Him as “The Program”. As written by and within The Loving Programmer, The Program, The Fullness of All Creation, took perfect, obedient, human form and downloaded Himself miraculously among us. He still appears, in the wine and wafer of Catholic Communion.
If we were to diagram the phrase as a grammarian would, “In The Beginning” is the Subject. “Was” is the Verb. “The Word” would be the object. The three are St. John’s one phrase containing the three simultaneous elements of thought, speech, and existence. “In The Beginning”, “Was”, and “The Word” are a way to see the Holy Trinity.
We may draw closer to God by working to read the phrase as a whole, striving for an immediate perception of the underlying oneness and wholeness within it.
Today, it’s important to describe The Holy Trinity in terms of current technology. That relates the ancient seeds of our faith, rooted in the Bronze Age, to we in the Ages that follow the Ages of that and Iron. Encouraging our neighbors to think of The Trinity as “The Loving Programmer”, “The Holy Wireless Connector” and “The Program” provides greater ease of understanding to those who wonder how an a God who manifested Himself in the Iron Age can be relevant to us.
“In the beginning was The Word” can be our own beginning, as well as that of all that was, is, and will be.
