Sunday Gospel Reflection, May 26, 2024: In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit...

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit…

What does our relationship with the Trinity call us to? 

    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

Sunday Scripture Reflection, May 27, 2018: In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit...

 In the name of the Father, and of the Son,and of the Holy Spirit… 

 What does your relationship with God look like? 

   We understand God to have been, from the beginning of time, relational.  As Psalm 33 reminds us, even in Creation, God was also Word and Spirit:  By the word of the Lord the heavens were made; by the breath of his mouth all their host.  Moreover, we too are called to relationship with God in the psalm, hoping for his kindness, waiting for the Lord, trusting that God is present to us in our every moment.  Moses reminds the people of this relationship in Deuteronomy:  Did a people ever hear the voice of God speaking from the midst of fire, as you did, and live?  Yet, while God does not need our promise in relationship, God would like our participation, and so Moses tells the people that they must keep God’s statutes and commandments as a way of fixing in their hearts that the Lord is God.  This is how God gives identity to his people:  they are called by God who has ongoing care for them and who will keep his promises.

   Jesus will insist on this relationship in new ways at the end of Matthew’s Gospel, after the Resurrection:  I am with you always, until the end of the age, he tells his disciples.  And, because he will dwell in them in the form of the Spirit, they are to go out, aware of that presence within, and draw others in to comprehension and awareness of all God is doing in this world:  Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  This is participation in the relationship Jesus comes to embody, to give body to.

   We are called through baptism and death and resurrection to union with God.  Having, as Paul tells the Romans, received a Spirit of adoption, we are children of God, and can now call God Abba, Father!  If we are one with the Spirit God gave to us, we are children, blessed into a relationship of intimacy, of union with God in all God’s persons, not falling back into fear, but relying on God’s love, fixed in our hearts, God, who is present to us – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – in every moment, as he promised.

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.

Image source: www.wordle.net