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THE REVELATION OF THE TRINITY BY CHRIST IS FOR OUR SALVATION
SCRIPTURE READINGS: EX 34:4-6, 8-9; 1 COR 13:11-13; JN 3:16-18
http://www.universalis.com/20140615mass.htm

The first reading tells us who God is. According to the revelation given to Moses, God is the “I am who am”. In other words, God revealed Himself as being involved in the history of His people. He is there with them and yet transcends them. Hence, the response of Moses to God’s revelation of His name is that God is a “God of tenderness and compassion, slow to anger, rich in kindness and faithfulness.” Yes, this is who God is. This is the experience of Moses and the Israelites. God is someone who has been faithful to Israel even when Israel had not been faithful to Him. This love and mercy of God is what the Israelites experienced in their lives.


However, God is not contented simply to be involved in our history from above. God wants to share with us in our history. Consequently, the Father’s love for us is so great; indeed as the gospel puts it, “God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in him may not be lost but may have eternal life.” In other words, God incarnated Himself in the world in Jesus so that He could be truly present to us in person. In the Old Testament, God only spoke through the prophets or manifested His presence in the history of the people. But in the New Testament, God’s word is personalized in Jesus Christ and thus also assumed history into Himself.


Consequently, for us Christians, to see Jesus is to see the Father. Because in Jesus, we see the Father’s love and mercy incarnated in a human person. In Jesus, we come to experience for ourselves personally who the Father is. Jesus is the self-expression of the Father’s unconditional love. Jesus is the symbol of God in the sense that He truly manifests the Father even though the Father is much more than what the human Jesus could mediate.


However, not only does Jesus manifest to us the Father, but at the same time, He reveals to us the Spirit of the Father. In sharing the same mind and will with the Father, Jesus reveals to us who the Spirit is. The Spirit of love and unity that Jesus has with the Father is therefore the Spirit that they have in common. This is the Spirit that Jesus shares with His Father. The Holy Spirit is therefore what the Father and Son have in common and which they give to each other.


If that is the case, then it means that if we were to share the life of God, then we must believe in the Son Jesus. This is only obvious since the life of Jesus is but the expression of the life of God. To believe in Jesus is to believe that His life is truly the expression of God’s life in Him. The corollary to faith in Jesus is therefore to acquire the Spirit, the Spirit that He shares with the Father. Thus, to share the life of God is to share the life of love and giving between the Father and the Son. Thus, the revelation of the Trinity is in order that we might share in the life of God the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit.


Concretely, this life of love and fellowship must be lived out in the Christian community and in our daily lives, as the second reading tells us. Hence, St Paul tells us that if we want to be happy and live the life of the Trinity, then we must grow to be perfect by living in peace and unity with each other. Only then the God of love and peace can be with us. How can we live in love and unity with each other considering that we are different?


Firstly, we must rely on the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. That is, we must surrender ourselves to Him, listen to Jesus, follow His way of life and acquire His way of living the Spirit of the Father. We must listen to His word, followHhis way of life so that we can share in the eternal life of God. Refusal to recognize Jesus as the presence of God in person will lead to our condemnation because we fail to see the life of God in Him and thus will hinder us from experiencing God’s love in person and the truth about life and about God.


Secondly, we must be touched by the love of God in our lives. We must come to experience God’s personal love for us, His mercy and concern for us. Until and unless we live by the love of God, we cannot live in the love of God. However, this love of God the Father must be historically experienced as the Jews did. The only way to experience the Father’s love is in Jesus, and through our personal relationship with Him, especially when we relate to Him both in our minds and in our hearts.


However, this grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Love of God our Father can be mediated to us only through the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit which is the mutual love and Spirit of the Father and Son that can enable us to be in fellowship with the Father and the Son and with each other. For this reason, we speak of fellowship in the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit is one person in the other two divine persons; and then in all of us, bringing us the Spirit of the Father and the Son. This is why we say that the Holy Spirit sanctifies us because He brings about the indwelling of the Father and the Son in us.


In this way, we can understand why confession in the Trinity, the unity of persons in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is important for us. It is not mere curiosity in trying to pry into the personal life of God. Rather, in coming to understand the personal life of God, the unity in diversity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit we are able to live the life of the Trinity in our own lives, which is in imitation of the Trinitarian life, since we too are called to live in unity in diversity. In this way, through mutual giving, sharing and loving, we experience the fullness and the life of God in us.

Written by The Most Rev William Goh