The Blessed Trinity is a Relationship of Love.

Having completed the Season of Easter with the great Solemnity of Pentecost, we now celebrate the unity and oneness of our might great God. God who is co-equal in essence a unity of three distinct persons, but One God, Not three! Listen to the Book of Deuteronomy 6:4 “Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD alone!” From the Book of Deuteronomy it is clear that God is One, there are not three separate God’s only One!

As we reflect on this great Truth and Mystery I am reminded of my experience working at Saint Leo University. We welcomed students from around the world, and I made a point to make all students welcome no matter their background, nationality, color or creed. As our students came from Saudi Arabia I made a special effort to make them all feel welcome and loved. I became their Abouna or in English Father. One afternoon a group of Saudi students came to me and asked me, “can you tell us more about the One God? ” The acknowledged Christianity as a Monotheistic religion but didn’t understand how. So I began to share with them that God that we worship is One God, God is not three, but God is one. However, the One God manifest Himself to us through three distinct persons, as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But this Trinity of persons does not negate nor dismiss God as One!

These young Saudi men had never heard of this and remained open to learning more. I share this because it is through openness and loving that God makes Himself available to us and reveals Himself more deeply through the power of the love that is shared between the Father and the Son and that power is the very Spirit of God. For our reflection this week we turn to the letter of Saint Paul to the Romans chapter 8:14-17.

“For those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.
For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear,
but you received a Spirit of adoption,
through whom we cry, “Abba, Father!”

In Paul’s teaching to the Romans we can see that it is the love force of God that is the Spirit that leads into our relationship and understanding of God. The impulse of the Spirit can lead us into to a union with God that we become in turn, “children of God.” This relationship through the Spirit allows us to approach God and see, know and experience God as our Father. “you received a Spirit of adoption through whom we cry, Abba, Father!” This relationship with God is one that is intimate and brings us into a sharing in the divine life of our creator.

I also had a very sad conversation with a student from Somalia, he is Muslim. My sharing about a personal relationship with God was foreign to him. His understanding is that you are to worship God because he says that we should, obey Him and follow His laws. But an actual experience of unity and oneness with God is completely foreign. And according to Him God is to great and far for us to be close to Him, we just obey and worship. I was moved to tears that he had not experienced a personal relationship with God and his worship and fear left him void of personal and intimate relationship with the Almighty.

As Christians, it is Christ who opens for us a new way an understanding, seeing and experiencing the Divine Life, through this great love and power of the Most Blessed and Holy Trinity. For we can see in relationship of the Father and Son in unity of the Spirit as a source of life and love for us who seek to know and experience God’s great and awesome power in our lives. The loving unity through the power of the Spirit brings forth our Lord Jesus through the union of the Spirit with Mary His mother. Through the Word becoming flesh and dwelling amongst us God enters into our experience so that we might be united more closely to Him. This unity with God comes to us from the Spirit. The love force that brought the Word to us from the Father, this same Love force that is seen at Christ’s Baptism and ultimately in His resurrection becomes now for us a great source of strength, power, hope and love for us to live lives sharing in the Divine Life, and witnessing the Divine Love with all those that we encounter.

To celebrate the Most Blessed Trinity, is to celebrate God’s ability to enter more deeply into our lives, our struggles, our pains, as well as our joys, our hopes and our dreams through His Son and the gift of the Holy Spirit to lead us more deeply into the Divine Life lived through their witness of Love.