The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity is celebrated on our Church’s calendar this weekend—and what a good time it is for us to hear God’s message as we find ourselves in the midst of the Coronavirus, the just protests and the unjust riots. But first, what is this Solemnity all about?

“The Most Holy Trinity asks us to understand “The fundamental dogma, on which everything in Christianity is based, is that of the Blessed Trinity in whose name all Christians are baptized. The feast of the Blessed Trinity needs to be understood and celebrated as a prolongation of the mysteries of Christ and as the solemn expression of our faith in this triune life of the Divine Persons, to which we have been given access by Baptism and by the Redemption won for us by Christ. Only in heaven shall we properly understand what it means, in union with Christ, to share as sons (and daughters) in the very life of God. The feast of the Blessed Trinity was introduced in the ninth century and was only inserted in the general calendar of the Church in the fourteenth century by Pope John XXII. But the cultus of the Trinity is, of course, to be found throughout the liturgy. Constantly the Church causes us to praise and adore the thrice-holy God who has so shown His mercy towards us and has given us to share in His life.” Excerpted from My Sunday Missal, Confraternity of the Precious Blood.

On this Solemnity we hear in the brief Gospel of John proclaimed today that “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. “

As a mere mortal, sometimes I wonder watching the news of the world “how can God so love this world? As we look across the world or around our nation today, with all the human anger, all the human hatred, all the violence and injustice between all kinds of peoples, the prejudices we all have or the simple unwillingness to go past the “self” and make things righteous by way of the common denominator we all possess, the DIVINE IMAGE AND LIKENESS, how can God “so love the world?”

What is His Love? What comprises His Love?

His Love created the world ex nihilo—out of nothing, from chaos— upon darkness He brought Light into the world—and infused in the world and upon humanity the creative magnificence of God: His Likeness and Image (Genesis 1:26), thus we are made and created with the gifts or attributes of Intellect, Free Will, Self-determination, and a Spiritual and Immortal Soul, and interior life.

Our God “so loved the world” that he elevated humankind above the animal kingdom—from reflex action or instinct to intellect; He then illustrates His Love as Truth, not commanded to love Him back but given the Free Will—to choose—to Love God back. He makes us capable of self-determination, thanks to the Free Will and
Intellect, and, then infuses us with an Interior Life—the spiritual life—so that we can see that the material world does not completely satisfy us so we seek, in truth, God and all with which He shall enlighten our lives.

In this great Love of God, we are now made in His Image and Likeness and given the gifts of Love to which we are called to imitate God’s action in our world. When there is violence and hated, prejudice and mistrust, we are able sow peace and harmony; we are able to spread equality—not in the gifts given us, since God bestows the gifts of the Holy Spirit as we need them to accomplish His Will, but rather God asks us in justice to provide for equal opportunities: education, health, shelter, freedom and the opportunities to achieve happiness. We have been give the Free Will to choose that which want to follow and were we hope to go.

The Inspired Word of God, the Sacred Scriptures, are meant to be the teaching tools from which we learn about His Word made flesh—the Christ—given to the world as a teacher and a Savior. And upon the Cross He
exemplifies “No Greater Love Than This: to Lay Down Ones Life for a Friend.”

This is the Love of God: Unconditional, yet ladened with responsibility for one and other; or as CS Lewis notes in The Four Loves, that love includes the search for the excellence of the other.

This is what our world needs today—more of God’s Love being accepted in our lives and lived out in-and-through our lives. The search for justice for all, which in fact is the search for the excellence for others, is the recognition that all lives are of God—yes,—and not dependent upon the color of their skin, or their religious beliefs or an
arbitrary age or stage of development. Humanity Matters. Once we recognize that then the man-madedistinctions that often times separate us will fade like the other material items of this world, and then joy, hope and Love of the interior self will prevail—eternally.

Let us pray for His Godly Love to rest upon and accepted by us all for the good of all. And give thanks for the Trinitarian God who chooses to illustrate His Singular, Great Love in Three Divine Persons.