GOD IN A COMMUNITY LOVE AND FELLOWSHIP
The unfathomable mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the celebration of God in a community of love and fellowship. It is also a feast of the individuality of distinct Persons in the community of the Divine Godhead: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The implication of this mystery is fundamental for all
In other words, we celebrate the communitarian God. That is three distinct Persons in One Divine Godhead of perfect harmony and working for the creation, salvation, and sanctification of the world. Hence, the feast of Godhead: the Most Holy Trinity is not only one of the profound mysteries but also one of the great challenges to us all as Christians to live in harmony and community among ourselves.
WE ARE COMMUNITY PEOPLE
It was Socrates who said that man is a social animal and he who cannot live in a community of men is either a beast or a god. This implies by nature we are community-oriented and not self-oriented.
This nature of man is the very nature of his creator: God. God exists in a community of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Christians: the task is to live, work, and grow together in harmony in the Christian communities.
HISTORY OF THE MOST HOLY TRINITY IN THE CHURCH
Today, the universal Church celebrates the Feast of the Holy Trinity. The doctrine of the Trinity was first developed out of the Scriptures and the communal prayer of the early church. The doctrine was officially developed at the Councils of Nicea (325) and Constantinople (381).
The Trinity is the affirmation of God’s intimate communion with us through Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit. Christians believe that God intervenes in our lives and is involved in human history. From the beginning of creation, God tried to communicate and relate to all creatures.
In the Old Testament God did so through events and the prophets. Additionally, in the fullness of time, God became one with humanity in
Jesus Christ. By the power of the Holy Spirit, God continues to be altogether present to us, seeking everlasting communion with all creatures.
OUR THEME
The readings of the Sunday of the Most Holy Trinity explicitly or implicitly reveal to us the nature and character of God. They also invite us to embrace this mystery of the Most Holy Trinity with a sense of awe and adoration.
Equally, in this great mystery where the Church celebrates our belief that God is One and yet Three distinct Persons. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one in divine nature and equal in majesty and glory, but different as distinct Persons. The mystery of One in Three and Three in One.
Hence, in this mystery of the Divine Godhead, we also identify ourselves in our adoptive sonship in Christ Jesus as children of God the Father through the action of the Holy Spirit. That is, our Christian identity is through or in the Trinitarian God and the work of salvation.
The reading also presents that the Christian and the Church´s mission are commissioned in the name of the Trinitarian God.
In all, the readings of this solemnity invite us to be conscious of the creating, saving, and sanctifying presence and power of God in our lives. They create in us the awareness that the Trinitarian God is a close Presence to us.
THE FIRST READING: DEUTERONOMY 4:32-34, 39–40
Moses, the servant and prophet of God presented the awesomeness of God´s salvific work among his people. Implicitly, he articulated the mystery of the Godhead and its characteristic nature of closeness or nearness of God to us. This attributive nature of the God of Israel and the Israelites debunked the notion of a remote and distant God.
The Trinitarian Closeness is what marks the Jewish and Christian God as different from other gods. The Trinitarian God is not only a God in the community but also a relational God who comes to encounter us in worship and our personal or communal experience.
The psalmist in Psalm 33 invites us to celebrate our Blessedness as the people the Lord has chosen to be his own. Demonstrating to us vividly the communitarian and relational God who reaches out to us.
THE SECOND READING: ROMANS 8:14-17
St. Paul presents us with the Trinitarian theology of our adoption as children of God. That is, the Spirit of God makes us adoptive sons of God as such the Spirit of adoption makes us cry Abba: Father: Papa and heirs and co-heirs with Christ Jesus. Here, we see the Trinitarian formula at work in salvation history.
OUR ADOPTION OF CHRIST JESUS THROUGH BAPTISM
Invariably, in Paul´s mind, the same time happened when a person became a Christian. He or she is adopted into the great family of God: the Trinitarian God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is why we are baptized into this adoption in the name of the Most Holy Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
a. By our adoption through baptism we lost our sinful human nature, especially the Original sin we inherited from our first parents Adam and Eve. While we gained new grace to the divine nature and life of God. That is, in Christ Jesus, we become children of God through the action of the Holy Spirit. God becomes our Father.
b. We become heirs to the divine rights, privileges, and inheritances of God as his adopted children automatically. Additionally, even co-heirs with Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God. It implies Christ’s entire portion is also ours: that is his suffering, death and resurrection to glory.
c. Under the divine adoption we have a clean slate as our old life is completely wiped out and we are a new creature in Christ Jesus. Our past had nothing to do with our new life of adoptive children of God.
d. Fundamentally, we have a new Father in Christ Jesus through the Spirit of God that habits in us. Hence, we can call God: Abba, Papa, and Father as Jesus did. The adoption is not only through the Holy Spirit, but also He is the key Witness.
The Trinitarian sharing is all about a God who shares with us his divine nature through our adoption in Christ Jesus. The adoption process is profound proof of a Trinitarian God who is more than willing to share himself with us.
THE GOSPEL: MATTHEW 28:16-20
This reading is the end of the Gospel of Matthew, the Resurrected Christ was met and worshipped by the disciple in Galilee for the last time before ascending to heaven. The brief passage we read today is known as the “Great Commission,” it tells of the risen Christ who sent the disciples forth to all the nations.
TODAY’S GOSPEL READING OFFERS FOUR SIGNIFICANT MESSAGES:
First, the Risen Christ assures us of his power and authority, when he declares to his disciples, “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” Surely, nothing was outside the power of him, who had died and conquered death.
Second, the power and authority of his disciples involve a mission. Hence, they were commissioned to continue Jesus’s mission by proclaiming to all men and women the love of God and inviting them to become one in the “family of God: Trinitarian God” through baptism.
Third, Christ made an everlasting promise to remain or abide with his disciples forever. This is the promise of the Holy Spirit of God who proceeds from God the Father the Son. He promised them a presence, “And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.”
Finally, in the great commission of disciples with the Trinitarian formulae to baptize “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” The doctrine of the Most Holy Trinity is fundamentally established. It is the doctrine of “par excellence” in the theology of relationships: God is with us, we are with God, and in God, and we are all one.
One basic fact here is that the Christian community or church is one in and with the communitarian God. In this way, in Christ Jesus, we are commissioned to act in the Trinitarian power and authority to do everything at all times in the name of God. The Trinitarian permanence and closeness to us.
CELEBRATING THE MYSTERY OF THE TRINITY IN CHRISTIAN FAITH AND LIFE
It is an unfathomable mystery we could understand its manifestation in the history of our faith and salvation and accordance with revealing the truth and adore its profundity in liturgical celebrations.
It is interesting to know that this mystery permeates every facet of our Christian pieties, devotions, and liturgical celebrations. We begin and end our prayers personal or communal, a celebration of the sacraments as well as our meetings or gatherings as a people of faith with the Trinitarian sign or greeting or blessing.
GOD OF COMMUNITY AND INDIVIDUALITY OF PERSONS
This holy mystery of the Godhead three persons in one God, distinct in character and equal in divine nature is something incomprehensible. Yet, this mystery is the reality that though equal to divine nature. God the Father is not God the Son, or God the Holy Spirit, or vice versa.
THE THEOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE TRINITARIAN GOD WE CELEBRATE TODAY ARE:
1. In God, there is a living community or family of love, sharing and cooperation
2. There is an indivisible Unity; a bond of love. In God, there is a relationship, community, and communication.
3. There is equality of nature in the diversity of beingness.
4. The unity in diversity of the Holy and Blessed Trinity is all-inclusive with exceptions.
5. There is NO hierarchical structure in the Trinitarian God. The three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are co-equal and co-eternal in nature and existence.
6. There is unity in diversity and not uniformity in the Trinitarian Godhead. God the Father, not the Son or Spirit, nor the Son is the Father and Spirit. Equally, the Spirit is not the Son or the Father.
7. The three Persons are distinctive in character but equally in nature and substance. There is individuality but not individualism is the Godhead.
IT HAS SOME IMPLICATIONS FOR OUR CHRISTIAN FAITH AND LIFE
1. We are called to sustain human equality in a world of picking and choosing who we like or don’t like.
2. We are different and unique in his or her distinctiveness or ways, but there is a possibility of correlation of perfect unity and harmony; when there are no manipulations and unhealthy competition
3. We can do better as a community of faith in sharing, collaborating, and working for the common good of all human families.
Hence, the Christian history and faith in the Creed teach us that God the Father is the Creator of mankind and the world; God the Son is the Saviour of humanity and the world, and God the Holy Spirit is the consoler and sanctifier humankind and the world at large.
Thus, in this mystery, we see the individuality of the Divine Person in the community as opposed to man’s individualism in the human community.
OUR PRAYER
Lord, in a world of manipulative relationships, dissensions, and divisions caused by inequalities, discriminations, individualism, and competitiveness, a place where the human family and even our religious family are not devoid of these besetting evils. Help us to imitate the Trinitarian community of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as a perfect example of unity, harmony, and peaceful co-existence in the community. Amen!
DIVINE PRAISE OF GODHEAD
Oh Most Holy Trinity, we firmly believe that in the divine plan of all ages: God-Abba (Creator) planned salvation by sending the Son (Saviour) and Spirit (Sanctifier) to lead us to eternal life. Glory to the Tri-Uno God—Father, Son, Spirit, forever and ever. Amen.
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