Now
that the entire Easter Season has concluded (last Sunday with the Feast of
Pentecost), the Church today looks back on the past seven
months. From the first Sunday of Advent until last Sunday in our liturgies we
have seen dramatized and played out for us once again for our consideration the
work of the Most Blessed Trinity: the
love of God the Father, who sent the Son into the world to be born among us,
and to live and die and rise for our salvation: for the forgiveness of our
sins!
And then, in order to preserve
the life of the Son on earth for all ages: the
Father and the Son send the Holy Spirit: to “blow where he wills,” to inform
and guide and direct the community of believers in the Divine Son and his
eternal Father, in their personal lives of conversion from the world, and
indeed the transformation of the whole world into the glorious kingdom of God,
as it is meant to be transfigured and transformed.
And so this is what we
celebrate today the activity of the
Trinity on our behalf!
But we also need to back up
even further and look at this Triune God
as He is in Himself: for if this Trinity of Persons comes to dwell within
us by our initiation into the Church by Baptism, Confirmation and Eucharist:
who is this Trinity? who is God in Himself?
Though it can easily be
stated: it cannot ever in this life or even in the next be fully understood:
the mystery of God in his Threefold Oneness (that will always remain a mystery)
may inadequately be described as this: “the uncreated God, who simply is, loves
himself, sees himself, and gives himself infinitely to an image of himself who
is the Word, a second Person; in effect God utters one Word and that word is
WORD, it is Son, it is everything that the Father is; and then in an ongoing
process the Son and his Father look at one another and they sigh: they breath out a breath
of love for one another: and that breath of love is the Holy Spirit: the created manifestation of the love of the
Father and the Son!
This is God’s own life that He
lives all in Himself!” And it is this God, Three
Persons bound together with a chain of love into One Being, who entirely at
their own discretion chose to invite other persons to enter into their life.
God did not have to create anything because he needs nothing! But since he is
not only an infinite dynamic of loving, he is also goodness itself, and beauty
and truth; and so he would just naturally want to go outside himself and share
himself with others who are in some sense like
him: that is why he created the entire universe as a backdrop and then
mankind to be the highest form of his earthly creatures – creating them persons (in his image); giving them intellect and free will so that they could freely choose to fall in love with him!
The rest is up to us: for
those who have already or who want to fall in love with God – he has provided
the fullness of truth, beauty, goodness and love in the Catholic Church –
though lesser degrees exist outside of it – with its Word, with its Sacraments,
with its Works of Charity done out of love for him; the Church invites
everyone, everywhere to accept God’s call to a very intimate life of love with
him and everyone else who likewise believes.
In
summary: together we are all – all on the face of the earth – meant to cry out:
Abba, Father; Jesus, Lord; Spirit,
Comforter!
May it be so today and every
day for more and more people until the Kingdom
of God emerges fully in all its majesty, beauty and peacefulness here and
hereafter!
Amen!