Sunday, June 15, 2014

Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

How often do we turn on the evening news only to be greeted by the spectacle of countless brothers and sisters being slaughtered or exiled because they proclaimed the "wrong" name for God? And how often do we turn away from such visions certain in the knowledge that we are better than those who perpetrate such evil? But are we? Yes, we put down our swords, at least the faith-based ones, a few centuries ago. But that has not stopped so very many of us from asserting that the "infidels" will get their comeuppance in the end. "Whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God." But then the Trinity wanders into the mix. If we confess that God goes by multiple names and faces, how can we be certain that any of our siblings are worshipping the wrong one? Two thousand years ago, we knew less than half of God's faces. But now we know that we have seen them all? If the Trinity teaches us anything, it is that the Divine One is not an I, but rather a very big we. It also reminds those of us who use the "correct" names that we are still a "stiff-necked people" who do not understand our Parent nearly as well as we think we do. Fortunately, our stupidity, not to mention "our wickedness and sins", has never stopped them from embracing us as their own. "Glory and praise for ever!"