Trinity: God At Work And Love
Thoughts on the Gospels
Feast of the Holy Trinity –by Joe
John 3:16-18

“We live alone; we die alone.” Those were the words of a man dying in ICU many years ago. He was alienated from his family, convinced that, in their eyes, his faults outweighed any good he had done. Their rejection had left him cynical about relationships. “Color it how you will, that’s the reality,” he said.

Not five feet away, on the other side of a thin wall, another man lay dying. But he could have well have been in entirely different world. “Nobody expected this,” he said, “but it’s okay. I’ve had great friends and a great family. Nobody’s here but they’re still with me. They always have been. I trusted life and I trust death. It’s okay; I’m at peace. It’s all good.”

Some say that spirituality is an individual and private reality but it isn’t. We experience God indirectly through the goodness, the beauty and the promise of his creation. Other people are essential to our understanding of God because other people help us see the meaning of the world around us and the possibilities of life. They help us understand what our own lives are all about: the possibilities we embody.

We speak of the Trinity: The Creator, Love’s Revealer, The Beckoning Future. Speaking of the Trinity is speaking of the power and dynamic of life. Speaking of the Trinity is also speaking of the role of others in making us who we are and empowering us to accomplish all we can.

It is easy, in the ordinary of life, in the race and chaos of life to overlook what we are to one another. But pondering the Trinity means pondering what Jesus revealed about God. Central to his teaching was that God, The Trinity, acts through each of us for all of us.

Seeing the Trinity isn’t about discovering an esoteric, divine reality out there somewhere. It’s about our giving and nourishing life, our loving without question, our encouraging and supporting others to hope and live fully. We find and live faith with one another or not at all.