SOLEMNITY OF THE MOST BLESSED TRINITY C
LOVE LIKE GOD LOVES…
JN 16: 12-15
MESSAGE
The Lord Jesus taught the world a profound lesson about faith in God – that God is a God of love – thus, overturning the long-held idea that God must be an angry, judgmental, vengeful and punitive cold master. For Jesus, to know God, we have to traverse the road of love. The God Jesus preached and exemplified reaches men and women through a personal encounter, not through books, commands, or rules to keep, but by the way he deals with the world and with each of us in love.
And so, God is a Father of love. Creating the world out of nothing, and creating human beings to inhabit that world was not a product of caprice or whim. He created so that he could share his goodness, his joy, his life. He created us so that he could have children to whom he could bequeath the riches of his heart.
And yes, God is a self-sacrificing Son. Jesus, who comes from God and belongs to God, is the Son of God who did not cling to the majesty of his divine nature but obeyed the Father’s invitation to reach out to his brothers and sisters, to bring them back to the fold of his mercy. Jesus lived this love in the highest form when he offered his very life for the people he and his Father immensely cared for.
And love continues in the Spirit, as the Holy Spirit is not an abstract force, an invisible wind that is carefee and indifferent. He is the bond of love of the Father and the Son and he is the link, the chain, the connection of love we share with God and with one another.
The Father, Son and Holy Spirit is the fountain of love in the world. And as love is powerful but defenseless, so too God’s love does not always triumph in our lives. We have this human capacity and freedom to ignore, refuse, and abuse love. But this love cannot be destroyed as St Paul argues: there are three things that last – faith, hope and love. And the greatest of these is love.
REFLECT
I read somewhere that when we pray “thy will be done,” there must be something in our will that needs to be undone. So when we pray to love as God loves, there must be in something in our heart that needs to go away – selfish love. Let us turn to the Father, Son and Spirit and ask for the gift of his love to purify the way we love. Amen.
