The Holy Trinity Deut 4:32-34 & 39-40; Rom 8:14-17; Mt 28:16-20 (Year B)
The Holy Trinity is, at one and the same time, both a mystery beyond our understanding and the answer to our deepest longings. Within our human experience a person is distinguished by an identity that is uniquely their own and cannot be shared. We therefore struggle to understand the three Persons in one God. Rather than provoking intellectual frustration, this mystery should occasion the most profound humility.
Who, then, is this God, the mystery of whose being lies so far beyond us? He is, above all, the God who lovingly revealed himself to Moses and his people. “Did ever a people hear the voice of the living God and remain alive? Has any god ventured to take to himself one nation with hand outstretched?” (Deuteronomy 4:33-34).
We come to a knowledge of God through relationship rather than a purely rational analysis. The children of Israel came to know their God in the joys and sorrows of their journeying, and especially in their deliverance from the slavery of Egypt. Their God was revealed to them as a Father calling them home to a land that he would show them.
Humanity longs to reach out and find its home in another. This longing, itself a gift from God, draws us into the presence of the God who reveals himself as Father. In him alone is our belonging brought to fulfilment.
The Father’s will to enter into relationship with his people finds its ultimate expression in Jesus Christ. The Father so loved the world that he gave his only Son. In Jesus Christ the hidden God is revealed as that which “we have seen with our own eyes, that we have touched with our hands, the Word who is life”.
It is beyond the frailty of our sinful humanity to respond to so great a gift. We remain trapped within the limits of selfish hearts and stubborn wills. Here the Holy Spirit becomes all that we cannot find within ourselves. “Everyone moved by the Spirit is a son of God. The Spirit you have received is not the spirit of slaves bringing fear into your lives again; it is the spirit of sons, and it makes us cry out ‘Abba, Father!’ ”
We were baptised in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Human minds cannot penetrate the depths of this mystery. The heart, however, rejoices to rest in the love of the Father, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.
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