In the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses makes it clear that the Lord God seeks a relationship with his people. God, Moses states, continues to support and sustain the people with strong hand and outstretched arm; the people, for their part, must remain faithful to God: You must keep his statutes and commandments, Moses tells them, that you and your children after you may prosper. Most importantly, Moses stresses the fact that the Lord is God in the heavens above and the earth below, and there is no other. It is this one unique God that Psalm 33 portrays in all his goodness: Upright is the word of the Lord, and all his works are trustworthy. God has been with God’s people from the beginning, delivering them from death and preserving them from famine. Faith in this one true God is essential to the survival of the people of Israel.
Our understanding of the one true God deepened significantly with the coming of Jesus who, at his Ascension, promised the gift of the Holy Spirit to remain with his disciple to the end of the age, as he says in Matthew’s Gospel. Jesus is the key that opens access to God to all of humankind, wedding heaven to earth through his death and rising, when the barrier between the two was destroyed. Thus, the disciples can go forward in his name, baptizing all in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. By invoking this clear Trinitarian formula, Jesus is asking his disciples to bring the faith they have to bear on others’ lives, allowing God – the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, three in one – to be witnessed to through them.
As disciples of Christ, we who are led by the Spirit of God are sons and daughters of God, as Paul reminds the Roman community. We are called to embrace the Spirit of adoption that is ours through baptism, when God took us to himself and enclosed us in his infinite love, that we might enter into and accept the grace of God. The Spirit is one with us, bearing witness with our spirit, with the very essence of who we are as adopted sons and daughters, joint heirs with Christ. We gather at Mass in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and depart in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, entering into union with them and leaving in union with them. Heirs to the promise, we are children of God, and all power – the power of his love – is ours, that we too might bring our faith to bear upon our world as we witness to the power of the Trinitarian God in our own lives.
This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com
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