THE MOST HOLY TRINITY – 15 June 2014

The love relationship of a couple often begins with a chance meeting and a conversation. They find that they enjoy each other’s company, have similar interests, sense of humour. If they begin dating seriously they will talk more and as the trust they have in the other grows they will tell the other things about themselves that they may never have told anyone else, their hopes and dreams, their joys and sorrows. Security comes with the trust and in that security they will grow in ways they may have never seen before. They sense they are accepted by the beloved and they want other to know them well.

The God revealed to us in Jesus most of all but through the experience of the chosen people of old as well is a talking God, a God who speaks and listens. By the time Jesus was born the people could tell you much about the God they believed in. They knew God’s name – Yahweh. They knew the tenderness and compassion, they knew the anger and jealousy, they knew the forgiveness God offered so freely. Read the psalms and you can find a treasure trove of descriptions born of God freely revealing what lies in the divine heart and mind.

With the appearance in time and space of Jesus, God’s self-revealing activity goes to an unheard of limit. The chosen people have heard God speak through the prophets and others. Hearing a voice is one thing, seeing the speaker is another. This is what happened in Jesus. People saw a young man the only son of Mary and Joseph, so they presumed. After the resurrection and the emergence of the Church continuing his work on earth, people realised that within the divine there was more than singularity. To make sense of what Jesus said they realised that within the divine there was inter-personality. There was something like community within the unity of God. The early Church leaders like St Paul and then later the bishops in council use the words that Jesus himself used: Father to whom he was Son and the Holy Spirit whom he promised he would send so that his friends would know he had not abandoned them.

Father, Son and Spirit is the most intimate revelation of the divine identity ever received. It is an invitation to ponder over. God is saying to us as God courts us “This is who I am.” You are loved as an adopted daughter or son. The incarnate Word Jesus gave his life for you to come alive free from self-seeking. The Spirit brings you alive with a mission to continue sharing the divine revelation with all you meet.

So every time you make the sign of the cross as you start and end your prayers be happy that God loves you so much to have opened the divine heart and mind to you.