God as Trinity Broadcasts God’s Abundant Love

Genny, an energetic ten-year-old, told her Dad, “It’s not hard to believe that God can be three persons.  Look at you Daddy.  You are 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.”  I think I get it now, she exclaimed!  Well Genny solved that long-standing mystery quickly.  However, for many Christians, the concept of the Trinity remains confusing.

Although the Trinity is baffling, we Catholics have enjoyed a familiarity with it by making the Trinity a major part of our daily prayer life.  For example, when we enter a Catholic church anywhere in the world we automatically reach for the holy water and bless ourselves saying, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”  We do it effortlessly and spontaneously.

Then, when we kneel in our pew to pray, we again begin by making the sign of the cross.  There is no hesitation or fear in naming all three persons, bowing before them, and adoring them before praying.  Catholics easily speak to the mysterious Trinity, as the Triune God, with this gesture and action. We are doing on earth what the angels are doing in heaven: adoring and bowing before the Lord God.

Why are we so comfortable with the Trinity?  It’s because it begins with God.  God, called Yahweh, chose the Israelites to be his people.  The Israelites did not choose God.  God showed them his affection because his intention was to draw them closer to himself.  God thought that once they delighted in his affections they would willingly gather other nations to worship him.

Then, God sent someone to be a perfect reflection of the Father, someone to speak the truth.  This someone is Jesus, the son of God made flesh, whose mission of preaching salvation and whose act of dying and rising regains creation’s freedom for all and draws  everyone to the Father.

When we are baptized, Jesus shares his glory with us and asks us, as adopted children by the Holy Spirit, to “go and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

The feast of the Holy Trinity for ten-year-old Genny and for all Jesus’ followers, shows every believer that the spirit bears witness that we are children of God and if children, then heirs.  As heirs, the obligation from the Triune God is to gather and draw all people to his son, Jesus.

The Trinity does not want to be feared, but rather loved, and included in our lives.  Love binds the three persons as one.  God’s love brought about the mission of Christ, and this love is the source of every spiritual gift including the gift of the Spirit, whose flames of love unite the entire believing community.

The perfect prayer to the Triune God  is:

God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit:  Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!

God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit: Help Me! Help Me! Help Me!

And with the prayer you’ve said it all!