The Trinity isn’t as big a mystery as we may think!
Lucy, an energetic ten-year-old, told her Dad: “It’s not hard to believe that God is three persons. Look at you Dad,” she remarked, “You’re a husband to mom, a daddy to me, and a son to pop-pop.”
Smiling, she concluded, “So God can easily be Father, Son and Holy Spirit – and still be one God!” Well, Lucy solved that long standing mystery fairly quickly. However, for many others, the Trinity still remains a confusing mystery!
Although it is a mystery, we enjoy a cozy familiarity with the Trinity. Look how easily we weave it into our prayer-life. When we enter a church, often without even thinking, we reach for the holy water font and dip our fingers into the holy water. Then we naturally bless ourselves, maybe even too quickly, with these words: “In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” We do this so automatically we’re not even aware of what we just did.
Later, when we kneel to pray and before starting any prayer, we again make the sign of the cross saying, “In the name of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” And it’s not just an action we do. It is a prayer we say.
Look how freely we speak to this awesome and mysterious Trinity, our triune God. It flows so easily and frequently. We show no hesitation or fear. And we name all three persons, bow and adore them in our prayer. With these signs and actions, we do what the angels in heaven do all the time, worship and revere the Lord God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
This familiarity began with God. Didn’t He choose us to be His people and He would be our God? Didn’t He choose us to love and even when God was not enough, and we went elsewhere, didn’t God call us back?
God never stops wanting us to be familiar with Him in friendship. Everything God has, He has offered to us through His Son, Jesus. Jesus, more than any prophet, has “All power in heaven and on earth given to Him.”
Through our baptism, Jesus shares this power with us and asks us to share it with everyone we meet on our journey. He sends us out saying, “Go and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Jesus asks this commission from us every day and He says, “Do it right where you live!
Lucy, the dynamic ten-year old, and we who follow Jesus are the present heirs in this generation. We hear “The Holy Spirit calling us Himself to bear witness with our spirit that we are children of God and if children, then heirs.” As heirs of this generation, the request from the triune God – to gather and attract all people to His Son Jesus – has fallen to us.
This is our purpose from dawn to dusk each day we live until we arrive where Jesus waits to welcome us home after a job well done.
