The feast we celebrate this Sunday is all about relationships. The Trinity offers us a model for living in right relationship. The Trinity is at the center of what being a Christian is all about: being in right relationship with our God, our brothers and sisters, and our world.
How can we begin to understand the relationships within the Trinity—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit? The Father cannot do anything but love, and that love is poured out in creation and in the sending of Jesus Christ, God’s Son. God’s love is so immense that one can make sense of God as Father only as He is in relationship with the Son and the Spirit. We can’t understand Christ as God’s son without thinking of the Father as sending forth Christ. The Son makes sense only in returning to the Father. God calls the Son back, and the Son chooses to return to him The Spirit has moved throughout history, inspiring the prophets so that in the fullness of time Christ came to earth and redeemed us. That presence of Christ continues today through the Spirit, as we are continually called back to Christ through the way we live and love.
We are made to be in relationships, because we are human beings who are created in the image and likeness of God. And through our baptism we are adopted as God’s children, as we are plunged into the relationship of the Trinity—we are literally baptized “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
Only in relationships are we fully human, fully alive, as God has created us to be. The Trinity is a model of this sense of radical interconnectedness to which we are called—and it is through the Trinity that all our right relationships flourish.
Relationships are inherently dynamic—they change and grow, as do the people within them. They are meant to be life-enhancing, and at their best, allow each of us to become more fully who we’re meant to be.
The Trinity offers us great encouragement but also great challenge. For in and through others we are led to God; however, we are also called to help lead others to God. The Trinity is a model that can serve as a great witness to how we are to live, love, and grow throughout our lives.
- How are you imitating the model of God’s love in your relationships?
Adapted from Word on the Go, a downloadable resource from RENEW International