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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