Sunday Readings: Deuteronomy 4.32-34, 39-40; Romans 8.14-17; Matthew 28.16-20
Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had appointed them. When they saw him, they fell down in homage; but some doubted. And Jesus came and spoke to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, Baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to observe all I have commanded you. Know that I am with you always to the end of the age” (Matthew 28.16-20).
Our God is no smug solitary being enclosed in egocentric self-regard but the living God, three persons in free communion, always going forth in love and receiving love. Our Judeo-Christian traditions testify that our God is irrepressibly friendly, steadfast, faithful, and compassionate toward us.
Three is one more than two, the starting point for social life, notes Brazilian theologian Ivone Gebara. A pregnancy calls married couples to make room in their relationship for another. Gebera grounds her reflection on the Trinity in our human experience of being diverse and multiple but one in origin and being.
As human persons we live in relationships that like molecules with a positive valence stay dynamically open to other bonds. In the social interaction at the heart of our thriving, we experience the dynamic at the irrepressibly generative, lifegiving, love-outpouring heart of God. “Being in communion constitutes God’s very essence— mutual love, love from love, unoriginate love,” writes contemporary theologian Elizabeth Johnson in her book She Who Is. The Spirit is mutual love, the Son is love from love, the Father is unoriginate love.
- What does creation reveal about God?
- What does the incarnation reveal about God?
- What does the activity of the Holy Spirit in our lives reveal about God?