Feast of the Most Holy Trinity
Scripture:
Exodus 34:4b-6, 8-9
2 Corinthians 13:11-13
John 3:16-18
Reflection:
"The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you." II Corinthians 13:13
This blessing, which is taken from today’s second reading, is often used to greet those who come to Mass. The Apostle Paul uses this one liner to capture the nature of the Blessed Trinity, whose feast we celebrate today. While it is difficult to understand with our minds the nature of the Blessed Trinity, it is not difficult to experience God as grace, love and fellowship. Recognizing that this was a revelation given to Paul, I wonder how many years of prayer it took for this revelation to become part of Paul’s daily prayer?
We pray that the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ may always be with us. As I look back upon my own graceless moments in my life, I am in awe of how much grace Jesus brought into this world of ours: from the very beginning of creation when all things were created through Him, to when the Word Became Flesh and dwelt among us, to the moment of His Glory as He gave up his life on the Cross, and His final gift of the Spirit to us as He ascended into Heaven to be at the right hand of His God. There has never been a single moment of time, or eternity for that matter, that Jesus has been graceless. We need Jesus’ grace to live every single day of our lives as children of God and as brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus. When we can look at each day of our life and see more grace-filled than graceless times, then we know that Jesus is at our side.
We pray for the Love of God to be always in our hearts. For God did not come "to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved" through God’s Incarnate Love! For God is Love, and the one who abides in Love abides in God! As we live our lives, we begin to clearly see that Love is a gift freely given and a gift that truly sets us free. There is no guessing whether God Loves us or not. We don’t need to tear flower peddles to find out if God truly Loves us. God is always faithful to God’s Love from the very first moment of our conception and God’s Love will never stop being offered to us, day and night, from now until Eternity. We are the ones who are unfaithful by failing to respond to God’s Love. We are the ones who turn our backs to God, and walk away. Our tiny minds and our tiny hearts think and believe that we are greater than God, and have more capacity to love. Oh, how foolish we are, and how unloving we can be! But God Forgives because God is Love.
We pray for fellowship with the Holy Spirit. When there is no fellowship, there is loneliness, there is alienation, there is isolation. We begin to think that we are the center of our fellowship, that we are the ones who make fellowship possible. We think we know who should belong to our circle and who is to be excluded, who is worthy and who is not, who has the right to be in fellowship with us and who does not. The fellowship that the Spirit gives us is real fellowship. It is authentic acceptance and welcome, because we all begin at the same starting point, in need of God’s grace, in need of God’s Love, and in need of God’s fellowship. We are in need of God, Father and Mother, God, Jesus Son of God and God, Holy Spirit. One God, three Persons, the Blessed Trinity!
This feast is not about understanding God. It’s about experiencing God. "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you."
Fr. Clemente Barron, C.P. is a member of the General Council of the Passionist Congregation and is stationed in Rome.