As Christians, we make a very bold claim.
We claim that God is our Father. We claim that the One who created the universe
with all its billions of people knows each of us individually and loves us
personally. We claim that He formed each of us in our mother’s womb with the
care of a sculptor molding clay. There is not one second of our lives that we
go unnoticed by Him. Despite all the world’s problems, He has nothing better to
do than care for us. We do not claim
that He is like a father, but that He really is our Father in a way that our
human fathers can never be. Therefore, we can bring our cares and concerns to
Him. We can count on Him to help us through any difficulty. We can be assured
that we are never alone. God, our Heavenly Father, is always by our side
sustaining us with an unconditional love.
We make another bold claim - that this
love of God became visible in the person of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. This
Jesus who lived in history was no mere teacher or prophet. Rather, He is the
eternal Son of God come down to earth, taking on our human nature, to reveal
the love of God. In Jesus, we are able to see and touch God. In his encyclical,
God is Love, Pope Benedict writes:
“No one has ever seen God as he is. And yet God is not totally invisible to us;
he does not remain completely inaccessible.... In Jesus we are able to see the
Father.” The love of God, therefore, is no mere feeling or lofty ideal. It is a
person, the person of Jesus Christ, who shows the Father’s love by offering His
life on the cross for us and by rising from the dead to give us the hope of
everlasting life.
If all that were not enough, as Christians
we claim another great dignity - that the Father and the Son are alive and
active in us and among us through the person of the Holy Spirit. Like the
Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit is the one eternal God. At the beginning of
creation, He was breathed into Adam to give him life. He was present throughout
the Old Testament through the prophets of Israel. He was at work in the life of
Jesus and raised Him from the dead. Then He was poured out upon the apostles at
Pentecost to continue the saving work of Jesus in the world through the
centuries. That Holy Spirit now lives within all the baptized, reminding us of
our dignity as daughters and sons of God, inspiring us to do good works and
strengthening us to live and witness to our faith. The Holy Spirit is the
presence and love of God made visible in us through baptism.
The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity comes
down to this - God is a family. He is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is the
nature of God that He is love and that His love becomes real in the persons of
the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Because His love is so great and
overflowing, God invites us to become a part of that family. We are rescued from a life of sin and death through adoption
into God’s family. And we enter into this family through baptism in the name of
the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
We are sons and daughters of God called to
an intimate and personal relationship with the Father, in the Son and through
the Holy Spirit. It is so beyond our ability to comprehend that the only
appropriate response is awe and gratitude for such a tremendous gift.
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