THE MYSTERY OF GOD AS FAMILY

 

As Christians we believe in one God, who is not alone but a family of three persons. God as one is not in the sense of a person but in the sense of essence and substance. The three persons in the trinity are one in everything except for their relations to each other as Father, Son and Spirit. The three persons joined together as one entity or unity is called TRINITY (Tri-[u]nity– three in unity). Our God is a God of communion. St. John Paul II has stated: “God in His deepest mystery is not a solitude, but a family, since He has in Himself fatherhood, sonship, and the essence of the family, which is love (Holy Spirit).” In human family father and son are not equals because their relations to each other are different and they come into existence at different times in history. Whereas in God, Father and Son are perfectly equal. The thing that makes both of them to co-exist as one in their relations to each other is the Holy Spirit, which is their love towards each other. The breath of God which Father and Son share is the Holy Spirit. We say God loves. But the term ‘love’ is not an attribute of God (one quality among many). We don’t mean the love of God as one of His many activities, rather our God is love (love itself/Himself). In the second reading of today St. Paul says that love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit (Rom 5:5). Here the Holy Spirit is not pouring into our heart something outside of Him. Holy Spirit is pouring Himself into us which is the LOVE – the love of God. The coming of Holy Spirit upon us is infusing of the very essence of God (the LOVE) into us.

In the Gospel, Jesus says that the Holy Spirit will not do anything on His own authority (Jn 16:13). Whatever the Holy Spirit does is the action of the trinity. Moreover, the Holy Spirit is an action of God, the movement of God, the breath of God… what the Father and Son desire, will be carried out by the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit is the desire, He is the movement of the desire and He is the actualization of the desire of other two person in the trinity. Only with the coming of Jesus we are given the revelation of God as trinity. Although the Trinitarian nature of God was not revealed to the people of the Old Testament, God did manifest Himself as trinity in a veiled manner. In all the theophany accounts of God in the Old Testament we witness the pillar of cloud and the mighty wind which represent the Holy Spirit. The voice of God in theophanies is the Son – the WORD which became Man. The operative person behind all these external manifestation is God the Father. Hence, the trinity was present always. In the first reading the Wisdom speaks of Himself as the delight of God (Prov 8:30) who was before the beginning of the earth (Prov 8:23). This Wisdom is the incarnate Son – Jesus, in and through whom the world was made. In the second reading St. Paul speaks of the grace of the incarnate Son. This grace is the Holy Spirit, the reception of whom gives peace to the believer. Jesus reconciled God and man through His death on the Cross and breathing of the Holy Spirit upon us. In baptism, we share that reconciliation by receiving the Holy Spirit. The life in the Holy Spirit is the life of hope. As believers we are given a hope that we would share in the glory of the risen Lord. We too will rise again as risen Lord to share with Him the eternal heaven. This sharing is the greatest grace and the cause for the joy of Christians. In addition to this, St. Paul speaks of suffering as joy of Christians (Rom 5:3). He sees suffering as a means for the character building of oneself. The endurance of suffering disciplines one’s life. The rising of one from each suffering motivates him/her to move ahead with the hope. Therefore, the grace is not an escape from suffering but a reward for the endurance of the suffering.

     As Christians we have God who is a family in nature and who lives in each one of us. The present world is moving away from the concept of family. It does not accept family as the normal reality of our being. The mission of Christians is this distorted world is to secure and restore the concept of family. Where there is family, there is love. Where there is love, there is God because God is LOVE. Let us be living Trinitarians by living in families.