By Fr Antony Christy, SDB –
Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity
28th May, 2018 –
Dt 4: 32-34,39-40; Rom 8: 14-17; Mt 28: 16-20
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit! Beginning everything in the name of the Triune God is a holy and happy tradition that we have been raised in, and it is something that should never be lost too, in order that we do not lose the very essence of our baptismal calling. Not only because we are made in the image and likeness of the Trinitarian God, nor merely because we are baptised in their Holy Names, but also because the very Christian experience of God’s Self-revelation right from the very beginning and all that we believe in, draw their essence from the Most Holy Trinity.
The more our human search for meaning deepens itself and varied experiences of problems and possibilities widen our horizons, the more we are brought to understand the fundamentality of relationality, be it in our day to day living or in the overall universal consciousness. And what other model can we have better than the Most Holy Trinity whom we celebrate today, which can be considered the epitome of relationality. The solemnity we celebrate today and the liturgy of the Word this day, offer us a splendid insight to understand our identity and call, as Christians, as people united by the Spirit and as children of the One God who has come across to us all through history, as a God who relates!
The Relating Person of God – Revelation
The first reading brings to our attention a God who relates, a God who relates in the sense of revealing Godself to us. This is exactly what Moses brings to the mind of the people of God, telling them that they have been chosen! That is a privilege indeed to be chosen; but it is also an onus placed on us to remain worthy of it, because when we can be chosen to state, we could lose that state likewise too! God has chosen us, to reveal Godself to us: God relates Godself to us. That is the greatest of all gifts that we as spiritual beings can every receive – to know our source, our origins, our maker and the one who animates us.
God does not do that in any sense of domination or monopoly, and that is the most holistic aspect of a lifegiving relationship. There is freedom, respect and mutual affirmation involved in such a relationship. God has chosen us, not in the sense of having us caged within a perspective or a world view. God has chosen us and chooses to await our free and personal response to that choice. In that God has made Godself a bit vulnerable too, we could reject the offer, as did the people in history, as do people even today, as do we sometimes in our choices!
The Relating Spirit of God – Regeneration
The God who thus reveals Godself, empowers us with God’s own Spirit of relationship with God – as God’s sons and daughters, a sense of being the children and not mere servants; “if we are children we are heirs as well,” says St. Paul. With all the temptations and crises that surround us in responding to the call that we have from God, we are called and empowered to share the glory of God, the glory of being related to God, the glory of relating to God. God not only reaches out to us, but empowers and enables us to reach back to Godself. This is regeneration, that we are reinstated from whatever state we have reached, to the native state of being children, being heirs of God.
The Spirit renews and regenerates, relates once again to the God from whom we have our being. It is the Spirit who speaks within us, sparks our minds and ignites our hearts to seek God, in an attempt to find the very meaning of our existence and the purpose of our everyday life. Our relatedness to God, and the rediscovery of it, is the regeneration that we all stand in need of in our personal, familial and ecclesial lives. That we grow to be that people of God, who are mindful of who we are and from whom we come and to whom we shall return.
The Relating Son of God – Reaching-Out
Jesus, the Son of God, the Christ, the Paschal Lamb is the utmost of God’s revelation as a God who reaches out, and who does not stop with that, but impels us to reach out too! The Gospel presents to us the parting commission that Jesus gave to us, his disciples, apostles and beloved brothers and sisters – co-heirs with him! If we are to be co-heirs, we have to share in everything: as much in sufferings and commitments, as in the glory and the Reign. Being children of the relating God, we cannot close ourselves within, we cannot not reach out. Reaching out to the other, is an essential part of being a Christ-ian.
Go therefore! You believe, go therefore. You relate to God, go therefore. You have been chosen, go therefore. You have experienced the Lord, go therefore. Our encounter and relationship with God, is not to remain with it and on the basis of it, sit on judgement on the others or the rest of the world. It is a commission to go therefore! To go in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, with an assurance that we are given: the Relating God is always with us, relating to us, empowering us to relate to God and enjoining us to relate to our brothers and sisters – relating to them about our relationship with God, relating to them in the Spirit that unites us and relating to them the glories we have encountered in Christ the Son and our Saviour.
May the Most Holy Trinity the epitome of Relationality, help us today to understand the profound call we have received to relate, to build our communities into a bond of loving relationships and this world into a heaven of relationships.
All glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, now and forever!!
Fr Antony Christy , a Salesian Priest from 2005, holds a Masters in Philosophy and (specialisation in Religion) and also a Masters in Theology (Specialisation in Catechetics). He has done doctoral research in Theology at Salesian Pontifical University, Rome. Walking with the Young towards a World of Peace and Dialogue is the passion that fires him on.