During the joyful celebration of
Easter, we saw how God worked out our salvation: the Father sent his only
begotten Son to save the world through the sending of the Holy Spirit. Today’s
gospel reading is a fitting description of the entire Paschal Mystery: God so
loved the world that he gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in him
might not perish but might have eternal life. When we look back at the wondrous
things God has done for us through Christ and in the Holy Spirit, we ask: Why
did God do all these for us? And the only answer is: It is because he loved us.
He loves us because that is who
he is – “God is love: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” (CCC, 257) The 3 divine
Persons, each of them is God whole and entire, are distinct from one another on
account of the relationships which relate them to one another: “In the
relational names of the persons, the Father is related to the Son, the Son to
the Father, and the Holy Spirit to both.” (CCC, 255) Their relationship with
each other is marked by communion in love: The Father loves the Son, the Son
loves the Father, and the Holy Spirit is that love they have for each other.
“Because of that unity, the Father is wholly in the Son and wholly in the Holy
Spirit; the Son is wholly in the Father and wholly in the Holy Spirit; the Holy
Spirit is wholly in the Father and wholly in the Son.” (CCC, 255)
Because he is love, “God freely
wills to communicate the glory of his blessed life. Such is the ‘plan of his
loving kindness,’ conceived by the Father before the foundation of the world,
in his beloved Son: ‘He destined us in love to be his sons’ and ‘to be
conformed to the image of his Son,’ through ‘the spirit of sonship.’ This plan
is a ‘grace (which) was given to us in Christ Jesus before all the ages began,’
stemming immediately from Trinitarian love. It unfolds in the work of creation,
the whole history of salvation after the fall, and the missions of the Son and
the Spirit, which are continued in the mission of the Church.” (CCC, 257)
In communicating to us the glory
of his blessed life, the Blessed Trinity draws us towards himself. He wants us
to have access to his Divine Life. “The ultimate end of the whole divine
economy is the entry of God’s creatures into the perfect unity of the Blessed
Trinity. But even now we are called to be a dwelling for the Most Holy Trinity:
‘If a man loves me,’ says the Lord, ‘he will keep my word, and my Father will
love him, and we will come to him, and make our home in him.’(Jn 14:23)” (CCC,
260) What a loving God we have! He comes to us and makes his home in us because
he loves us. Patiently, he leads us to himself so that we might find our home
in him. “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that
the world through him might be saved.” Indeed, he is the Lord, “a merciful and
gracious God, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity.” He does not
desire our condemnation but our salvation. Truly God is love: Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit!
Glory to the Father, and to the
Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall
be world without end. Amen.
Jesus, I trust in you! O Mary conceived without
sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee!
Sorry, the Trinity I worship is the One revealed by the Lord Jesus Christ.
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