As we approach Trinity Sunday this weekend, we are reminded of the greatest mystery of our Faith: that God is one and three. Although most of us rarely think of this fact, it is the central mystery of everything else we believe.
God’s nature is, and always will be, a mystery. If we could fully comprehend God or His nature, He would not be God! That does not eliminate the importance of thinking about Him, contemplating Him, or trying to know more about Him. But we will never fully comprehend the mystery. In the end, we stand back in awe.
There is, perhaps, a temptation to not think deeply about God. There is a tendency to brush off contemplating Him because we know we can never fully understand. Why try what we know is an impossible feat?
But if we do not contemplate, if we do not strive to know, if we do not think about Him, how we can we fall more deeply in love with Him? How can we fall on our knees in awe, worship, and gratitude? If we never stop to think of His greatness, we can never fully appreciate what He has done for us.
God might feel very removed from us – particularly thinking of Him as “one in three,” or when discussing things like procession and spiration and generation.
So let us return to John’s reminder: God is love. Yet even that might feel removed from us. What does it mean that He is love? And what about when I feel far from that love? Is He still love when I feel alone? When I’m suffering? When I don’t feel loved at all?
If the devil can’t succeed in getting us to either deny God or ignore Him, he wants us to think God doesn’t love us. He wants us to feel shame, loneliness, and abandonment. Maybe God loves others, but not us. The devil wants us to feel the opposite of everything God is.
Close your eyes and know that you are loved. Even if you feel alone. When you feel overwhelmed or anxious. Even if you don’t feel His presence.
You are what God loved you into being to be.
God loved you into existence. If He didn’t love you, you wouldn’t be here.
God’s love is what keeps you in existence. If He didn’t love you, you would cease to exist. Instantly.
Psalm 149 tells us that “the Lord takes delight in His people.” God does not tolerate us or put up with us. He delights in us. God did not create us because He had to or because He was bored. He delights in us. And we find delight when we share in that delight, when we become whom He created us to be.
The Psalm on Sunday reminds us, “Blessed the people the Lord has chosen to be His own.” He chose you. You wouldn’t be here if He didn’t.
If you are here, it is because God loves you. God is love. The Father enterally loves the Son with a love so real it is a third Person, the Holy Spirit. But that love does not remain among the three Persons. They desire to welcome us into that love. And so they created us. They created you freely, in love, for love.
They created you to share in the love of the Trinity. Whenever you feel alone, overwhelmed, anxious, or abandoned, close your eyes and know that you are loved. You are what God loved you into being to be.
Image credit: “The Holy Trinity” (detail) | Antonio de Pereda, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
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