Word and Trinity

The texts today from the Roman CatholicLectionary have a quality of beginning about them. The liturgical cycle of the Church has moved into the green days of which today is marked by the ordinal number two as the Second Sunday in Ordinary (numbered) time. We may misunderstand this numbering system and be psychologically biased to think that the journey with Jesus in our Christian communities might become routine and ordinary. The new beginnings in the Scripture today should call us to be alert for the surprises which are presented to us daily in our spiritual development. FriarJude Winkler associates the proclamation in the Book of the prophet Isaiah of a suffering servant in whom the light of God will be brought to all the nations with the transformation of spiritual awareness among the people to universalism or the understanding that the One God is God for all nations. This beginning, from centuries BCE, may not be fully realized in the hearts of all today. The Letter of Paul (and Sosthenes ?) to the people of Corinth begins correspondence with the community who, according to Friar Jude, are having difficulty with the role of the Holy Spirit in the beliefs of the new converts, particularly those of Greek culture. The sense of the Spirit of God which is placed with us in the womb as suggested by the words of Isaiah or which gives voice to the music and song of God as in the psalm today confronts the Greek attitude that things of the spirit are superior to things of the flesh. The Gospel from the first chapter of John continues the revelation of the nature of God which in the first verses of the chapter takes us to Creation and the sense in Genesis of the Spirit which hovered over the waters launching the Love Project of God. John reveals this Love being expressed as the Word becoming flesh. This chapter contains many situations of the positioning of Jesus in relation to God as Son, to John the Baptist as the One upon whom the Father is related through the Love, symbolized by the dove, between Father and Son, the Spirit. The beginning of the mystery of the servant of God (wordplay as Aramaic for lamb), with the Spirit known in Isaiah, to live as Word incarnate and to bring the light of the nations to those who have understood as Greek and Jew is the beginning of transcendent experience. This is a beginning to consider Trinity a mystery gathered together by the Church into the Creed after hundreds of years of guidance by the Spirit.