The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today invite us to meditate on the nature of the Trinity and our participation in Divine Love as children of God.
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The reading from the Book of Deuteronomy implores us to “acknowledge today and take to heart that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath”.
This is why you must now acknowledge, and fix in your heart, that the LORD is God in the heavens above and on earth below, and that there is no other.1
Psalm 33 praises the Greatness and Goodness of God.
* [Psalm 33] A hymn in which the just are invited (Ps 33:1–3) to praise God, who by a mere word (Ps 33:4–5) created the three-tiered universe of the heavens, the cosmic waters, and the earth (Ps 33:6–9). Human words, in contrast, effect nothing (Ps 33:10–11). The greatness of human beings consists in God’s choosing them as a special people and their faithful response (Ps 33:12–22).2
The reading from the Letter of Paul to the Romans declares ” that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God”.
* [8:14–17] Christians, by reason of the Spirit’s presence within them, enjoy not only new life but also a new relationship to God, that of adopted children and heirs through Christ, whose sufferings and glory they share.3
In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus proclaims the Commissioning of the Disciples.
* [28:16–20] This climactic scene has been called a “proleptic parousia,” for it gives a foretaste of the final glorious coming of the Son of Man (Mt 26:64). Then his triumph will be manifest to all; now it is revealed only to the disciples, who are commissioned to announce it to all nations and bring them to belief in Jesus and obedience to his commandments.4
Tamora Whitney comments that we are all part of the family. God is our Father. He chose us and adopted us. Jesus is our brother.
Family is forever. I knew and remember my grandparents, and great-grandparents, and my great-great-grandmother, but there are also graves in the cemetery of my family members who died before I was even born, but they are still family. My grandparents are dead now, but they are still my family. Jesus lived, and died, and is in heaven now, but he is still our brother, still our God. In the Gospel he tells the disciples to go spread the news about Jesus, about the trinity, about the family of God. That’s still the story. This weekend we remember our family.5
Don Schwager quotes “The pledge of the Holy Spirit,” by Ambrose of Milan, 339-397 A.D.
"Recall then that you have received the spiritual seal, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of right judgment and courage, the spirit of knowledge and reverence, the spirit of holy fear in God's presence. Guard what you have received. God the Father has marked you with His sign; Christ the Lord has confirmed you and has placed His pledge, the Spirit, in your hearts" (excerpt from De Mysteriis 7, 42).6
The Word Among Us Meditation on Matthew 28:16-20 notes that when we were baptized, we were plunged into the life of the Trinity. Each of us became “an adoptive son of the Father, a member of Christ and a temple of the Holy Spirit” (Catechism, 1279). We can remember our baptism each time we make the Sign of the Cross.
What a powerful and profound little prayer! Today, on Trinity Sunday, let the Sign of the Cross remind you of everything you received at your baptism. You are an adopted child of God. You are a member of the body of Christ. You are a temple of the Holy Spirit. “Most Holy Trinity, I love you and want to share in your life both now and forever!”7
Friar Jude Winkler shares the unique relationship without terror that God established with the people of Israel. The Spirit of adoption in Paul's Letter to the Romans has us relate to God as “Abba”. Friar Jude shares a fable about Augustine and the struggle to comprehend the Trinity.
John Moffatt SJ, Scripture teacher at the Jesuit Institute, South Africa and is the author of the blog, Letting the Porcupine out of the Bottle, shares insight into the relationship that is Trinity.
One set of reasons is abstract, but important for those to whom ideas matter in their life of faith. We find in Aristotle the philosophical insight that all things arise from a single origin. Yet Aristotle’s changeless, solitary prime mover and sustainer of being seems to have little directly to do with our human experience. However, if the single origin of all things is in essence relationship, we can begin to see why the deepest truth in the universe around us is not the laws of physics, but the law of love. Human beings are not atoms in the void, but beings made for love and community. If the God and origin of all things is in essence unity and self-gift, then this affects how we think about the meaning of our own struggle to survive together on this planet. The writers of the fourth century constantly draw on images from the New Testament to paint a picture of a God whose dynamic creativity is still at work. The Spirit transforms the hearts of believers, enabling them to follow the pathway of the Word and find their way home to the presence of the Father. The divine three, who share all they have in common, call, guide and raise up humankind to participate in the oneness of their glory and delight.8
Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, comments that it has always seemed completely strange to him that there should be any resistance whatsoever to evolution or evolutionary thinking in Christian theology or practice. Instead, Christians should have been the first in line to recognize and cooperate with such a dynamic notion of God.
Perhaps it is this newness and non-familiarity of which we are afraid? For some reason, we think that admitting such love dynamism and cooperating with it (see Romans 8:28) is going to compromise our eternal, unchanging notion of God. Yet the Bible is not afraid of a dynamic and unfolding understanding of God. The notion of “The Lord” clearly evolves with many other iterations in the Hebrew Scriptures. For the New Testament writers, these images inspire the Christian notion of Jesus and lead to the utterly relational and totally interactive doctrine of the Trinity. A dynamic understanding of God is not only rather obvious in the Bible, but also necessary—and surely exciting. Remember, the only language available to religion is metaphor. God is always like something else we have experienced visibly and directly.9
The mystery of Father, Son and Spirit inspires our journey to build relationships with others and Creation that have eternal presence.
References
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