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June 15, 2014Today we celebrate Father’s Day. We honor and are grateful for the dads in our parish community. Thank you for the love you share with your own children and thank you for the love you share with all of us. Today is also the Solemn Feast of the Holy Trinity – a major doctrinal feast of the Church seeking to define who God is as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – three persons in one God.
At first blush, there is not an essential connection with the celebration of Father’s Day and the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. And yet, the readings chosen by the Church for the Feast of the Trinity suggest that there is a beautiful relationship between Father’s Day and the meaning of the Trinity. Our dad’s love for us reveals to us the mystery of God’s Trinitarian love for us.
Building on the connection with Father’s Day, the solemnity of the Trinity is not a feast for scholars; this is a celebration for lovers. It is none other than God who invites us into share the divine life of love.
The first reading invites us to be surprised with Moses at the tenderness of the God who gave us the Law to lead us to life.
Moses was prepared to venerate the awesome lawgiver in fear and trembling as he went Mt. Sinai with the two stone tablets. But we learn that he was met by ta loving God. God described himself: “The Lord, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity.”
God’s own explanation of divinity emphasized the tender parental fatherly qualities of patience, forgiveness, and fidelity. The God who draws a wandering people away from sin with bands of love. God describes who He is with the imagery of a Father’s love for us.
The 2 nd reading from Paul’s letter to Corinthians is not to present dogma but to deepen the community’s life in God. Paul reminds us that communion is the way we come to know God. In the words of the apostle Paul: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.”
From the Gospel, in His conversation with Nicodemus, Jesus teaches us that God is love, offers only love, and has sent us His only son to lead us to love. “God so loved the world that He sent His only Son.” May we never forget that God created the world and in the act of creation saw that it was very good. Even when we sin, God does not stop loving us. In fact, He sent His only Son that we might be saved.
The way to know the Triune God is through comprehending God’s love for the world made visible in the Son.
