Gospel Reflection 2020/2021

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI beautifully explains that, “Jesus has revealed to us that God is love ‘not in the oneness of a single Person, but in the Trinity of one substance’. God is the Creator and merciful Father; God is the Only-Begotten Son, eternal Wisdom incarnate, who died and rose for us; God is the Holy Spirit who moves all things, cosmos and history, toward their final, full recapitulation. Three Persons who are one God because the Father is love, the Son is love, the Spirit is love. God is wholly and only love, the purest, infinite and eternal love...”

This love between the three Persons in the Holy Trinity has been expanded and extended to us and the whole of creation. The Scripture passages of this Sunday share the same theme:

(1) Moses recalled that the living and loving God, out of His mercy and compassion, worked great wonders for the Israelites [Dt 4: 32-34, 39-40]. He spoke to them from the heart of fire, led them out from the land of slavery, and protected them with mighty hand and outstretched arm.

(2) St Paul [Rm 8: 14-17] reminds the Romans, and us today, that the living and loving God, out of His mercy and compassion, has poured into our hearts the spirit of sons: we are not called to be slaves; but we are the children of the Most High God, heirs of God and coheirs with Christ.

Meditating on the loving relationship between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, we can perceive that God’s love is eternally true, holy, selfless, sacrificial, living, life-giving and outpouring. How great is our God! How wonderful His love!

Yet, constantly at odds with the Holy Trinity is the ‘unholy trinity’ – the ‘I, Me and Myself’. The love of the ‘unholy trinity’ is the total opposite: it is delusional, unholy, selfish, self-serving, stagnant, toxic and dead. Scary as it may sound, but the ‘unholy trinity’ of ‘I, Me and Myself’ is another name for the evil spirit – or at least they are bedfellows.

Let us renounce the ‘unholy trinity’ [cf. Mt 16: 24]. We must only worship and serve the Trinitarian God – the One in the Trinity and the Trinity in Unity. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, we are missionary disciples sent out to the whole world to make disciples of all nations. ‘Being sent out’ is to ‘go out’ – to go out beyond ‘I, Me and Myself’ to share the divine love of God and to proclaim Jesus to the whole world.

Let our fervent prayer be:

“O Most Holy and Blessed Trinity, fill me with Your love that I may share Your love with the world.”