TRINITY SUNDAY (B)

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.

Mt 28:16-20

One day we are told that St. Augustine was walking along the seashore, re-flecting on the mystery of the Holy Trinity. He wanted to understand how could the Father be God, and Jesus be God and the Holy Spirit be God and yet there are not three gods but only one God.

He was distracted by the sight of a boy running to the sea, filling a sea shell with water and then pouring the water into a hole. Amused, he asked the boy what he was doing. The boy answered that he was going to put all of the water of the sea into the hole. St. Augustine smiled and exclaimed, “But that’s impossible!” The boy smiled in turn and said, “It is also impossible for you to understand the mystery of the Trinity.”

Neither are we going to attempt to understand the mystery of the Trinity. What we are going to do is to learn how to live by imitating the Blessed Trinity.

The fundamental Christian belief is that there is one God in Three Divine Persons. God is, therefore, like a family. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit live in a relationship with one another.

The Book of Genesis says that man is created in the image and likeness of God. From this we can conclude that we, too, are meant to live in a relationship with others.

We are born into a family. We work with others. We belong to the Church which is a community of believers. We have friends. We have textmates and chatmates. We are connected to others through Friendster and Facebook. All of these are relationships.

There is a song that expresses the truth that by nature man exists and lives in a network of relationships.

No man is an island, no man stands alone
Each man's joy is joy to me
Each man's grief is my own
We need one another, so I will defend
Each man as my brother
Each man as my friend.

But for these relationships to be happy relationships, there must be love. Without love these relationships become like hell. The Fifth Dimension has a song entitled, “There’s No Love in the Room.” It is about a marriage where love has died.

Sitting around the table watching each other
Feeling kinda sorry for my baby brother
There’s no love in the room
No love in the room.
Mama’s gone her way, daddy’s gone his
I wonder how long it’s been since they kissed.
No love in the room
Once before, long ago, it was here to see
Tell me what’s been happening to our family?

Without love, marriage and family life becomes hell.

Therefore, parents, if you want your child to grow up and have a happy marriage, then love them. You might be asking yourself what is the relationship between a happy marriage and loving your child.

If you want your child to have a happy marriage in the future, your child must be capable of true love. But true love must be learned. And your child will learn true love only if he or she has first experienced true love. And who will give him or her true love? Is it not you, parents?

And remember, it is not enough to love your children. They must feel that love.

Love has been used for so many things and in so many ways that it can be quite confusing at times. I love ice cream. I love my dog. I love my country. I love to swim on the beach. I love my friends. And so on.

Here we use love to refer to relationships between persons and that means human beings and God.

What is the test for true love? How do I know that I love in an authentic way? One criterion is this: My love is true if I seek the good of the one I love.

There were two sisters. One was successful. The other was not. The success-ful kept on telling the other sister to put in order everything so that by the follow-ing year she could go abroad and work. The following year the unsuccessful sister was still in the Philippines because she had not been able to put everything in order. So the successful sister gave her a deadline. My offer to finance your trip abroad is only good for this year. If you do not leave by the end of the year, you are on your own.

Believe it or not, this is an example of true love. It is tough love but true love at the same time. By setting a deadline, the successful sister was prodding the un-successful sister not to take things easy.

I have said in the beginning that the fundamental Christian belief is that there is one God in Three Divine Persons. God is, therefore, like a family. When we were baptized we became part of this family. We became God’s children. God became our Father.

The catechism speaking of Baptism states that we became adopted children of God. The term “adopted” needs to be explained. In ordinary speech, adopted means that a child has his own biological parents but through adoption another set of parents accept him as if he were their own child. AS IF is the operative word here. The child is not really their child but they treat him as if he were their child. This is NOT the meaning of adopted children of God.

The catechism uses the term “adopted” to differentiate our sonship from the sonship of the Word, that is, the second Person of the Blessed Trinity. The Word was always the Son of the Father. There was never a time that he was not the Son of the Father.

Regarding us, on the other hand, there was a time we were not children of God. Before baptism, we were not children of God. After God’s baptism we became real children of God.

I use the word “real” because we really became God’s children. God does not accept us AS IF we are his children. No. Baptism transformed us into his children. “See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are” (1Jn 3:1).

As a practical consequence, when you pray to God address him the way you address your father. Is it Tatang, Itay, Papa, Dad, Daddy? Do this when you pray and at once you realize that there is now a difference. Iba ang dating!

They say that when you love someone, you make yourself vulnerable. It means that when you love someone, you give to that person the possibility of hurting you.

A friend is someone you love (ka+IBIG+an). Suppose it’s your birthday and you tell your friend to come for your birthday dinner. Suppose he or she doesn’t come. You will feel hurt, won’t you? Why? Because he or she is your friend. You might have invited the jeepney driver who gave you a discount because it’s your birthday. But if he doesn’t come, you won’t feel anything at all. Why? Because he is not your friend.

God loves us because we are his children. Because God loves us, he gives to us the power to hurt him. When we commit sin, we really offend God. That is why, when we pray the Act of Contrition we should really mean it.

“Oh, my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended you. And I detest all my sins because I fear the loss of heaven and the pains of hell. But most of all I have offended you my God, who are all God and worthy of all my love. I firmly resolve with the help of your grace, to confess my sins, to do penance and to amend my life. Amen.”

On this Solemnity of the Holy Trinity I have suggested four things that we can do:

1. Let us love our children so that they may learn to love. And having learned how to love, they may have a happy marriage and a happy family.
2. One of the criterion of true love is: Is this for the good of the one I love?
3. God is really our father. We are really his children. When we pray to God, let us call him Tatay, or Itay, Papa, Daddy or Dad.
4. When we commit sin, we really hurt God. Therefore, when we pray the Act of Contrition, let us really mean it.