Trinity Sunday EX 34:4-6 & 8-9; 2 COR 13:11-13; JN 3:6-18 (Year A)
There is, within us all, a lingering fear that God is unapproachable. The prophet Isaiah described this seemingly unbridgeable gulf separating sinful humanity from a transcendent God perfectly: “Yes, as the heavens are high above the earth, so are my ways above your ways, my thoughts above your thoughts.”
The prophet had emphasised this gulf only to stress the graciousness of a hidden God who longed to draw near to his people, who had revealed himself to Moses as “a God of tenderness and compassion, slow to anger, rich in kindness and faithfulness”.
Moses had responded to such tenderness with a simple prayer embracing every longing: “Let my Lord come with us, I beg. True, we are a headstrong people, but forgive us our faults and our sins, and adopt us as your heritage.”
In its simplicity, this prayer describes what we are. We dread the abandonment of isolation. We crave the presence of those who will come with us, with whom we shall uncover the meaning of our lives.
We find our heritage, the meaning of our lives, in the God revealed to us as the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
We who have failed so often the love that we crave are created anew in the grace of a loving Father. “The Father so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not be lost, but may have eternal life.”
Our lingering fear of an unapproachable God is rooted in a natural fear of judgment. When we ask “Who can stand guiltless before the Lord?”, we are reassured by the Son. “The Father sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world, but so that through him the world might be saved.”
It is only in the Father and the Son that we find our true belonging, that our fears are calmed, that we are adopted as the Father’s heritage.
Words alone can never satisfy our longing. Therefore Jesus promised that we should be born again from above, through water and the Holy Spirit.
We struggle to describe the action of the Holy Spirit, but instinctively long for the presence of that Spirit. We long to be loved by Father as the Son is loved. We long to love the Father as the Son loves the Father. This is ours in the gift of the Spirit. Let us praise Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
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