IN HIM ALONE – GOD, ONE IN THREE
MOST BLESSED TRINITY
June 3, 2012
Mental gymnastics will most likely be the run of the day, as
we celebrate the Solemnity of the Blessed Trinity. Many preachers like me will
try, once again in vain, to explain away neatly what is essentially a mystery
to be accepted, and not a problem to be dissected.
It might interest everyone to note that not even Scriptures
attempted to explain it away, and remove all veils that cover the essentially
unfathomable truth about God. One thing clear in Scriptures is this. God,
simply chose to reveal Himself gradually in history, in vivo, I might add, in the events that transpired
right from the day Abraham was called to leave Ur and go to the promised land.
One more thing is clear from Scripture. There is no other
God besides Him. He alone is God. He
alone is Creator. He alone is Savior. He
alone is Redeemer, and He alone is life-giver and sustainer of the very same life
that He gave.
Moses would have his people remember this with finality: “This
is why you must now know, and fix in your heart, that the Lord is God in the
heavens above and on earth below, and that there is no other.” (1st
reading).
But Scriptures refer to Him as creator of all things. This
much is clear from Genesis. Much later, Jesus, sent from God and Son of God,
would talk about Him as Father, His Father and ours. From a liberator and
Patron, deliverer and savior, His image became that of Father and Lover, who
loved the world so much as to send someone for the world’s salvation.
Scriptures thus talk not only about this tremendous Lover.
It speaks about the Beloved, whom He sent that the world might have life in its
fullness. “God so loved the world that He sent his only begotten Son ...”
But the ongoing saga does not stop there. This same God is
referred to repeatedly in Scriptures as both Lover and Beloved, distinct, but
not disjointed. Father and Son are declared One by no less than the Beloved One
whom the Father owned up to when Jesus was baptized: “This is my only begotten
Son. Listen to him.” The Lover and the Beloved, in their effusive and diffusive
mutual love, produced its most natural and logical fruit – Love that we all now
come to share and take part in.
This Love is the Spirit that issues forth from the love
between Father and Son. This same Love is He who resides in our bodies as His
temples. This same Love lives and reigns with the Father and the Son, and who
is behind our right to be called Sons and daughters of God ... for “those who
are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.” (2nd reading)
But Scriptures also do not just offer us truths to masticate
forever in our grey matters. Scriptures do not offer us abstractions to digest
eternally. Scriptures simply offer us a way of life, a codification of the
basic tenets of faith that have to do with concrete life, and not empty
abstractions that have nothing to do with life.
Let me put it as simply as possible. An old, old line
clinches it for me. A poem is a poem even if it is not recited. A song is still
a song even if it is not sung. But love is not love until it is given away and
shared.
This, in simple words, is what Trinity is all about. The
Trinity is about a God in action. The Trinity is about a God who loves, whose
first object of His love is His Beloved – Christ Jesus His Son, Savior,
Redeemer. But that love that is shared is none other than the Spirit poured
out, shared and given, for the life of the world!
And this being given, being shared, and being poured out is
what Christian life is all about. This is the call and the command for you and
me, who now bask under the warmth of this Trinitarian life and love: “Go into
the whole world and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name
of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
It is all about Him. In Him alone is our joy, strength, and
hope, for grace and peace comes from God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
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