We live in a world that is hard to sometimes really difficult to understand and, I think, we have let the frustration and uncertainty that have emerged in our own hearts to determine how we respond to various situations that we experience. Just look at all that we have endured over the last couple of years and the things that have happened in our world. COVID and the ways people responded to it. The recent political history of our own country – not only in terms of political candidates and the controversies surrounding them but also the heated debates that have taken place on important social issues. The emergence of different social ideologies that seem so foreign to many of us. Social unrest that has taken place in many parts of the world. The very real possibility of an impending nuclear war because of the situation in Ukraine or the looming threat of war between the United States and China over the independence of Taiwan. There is a lot of uncertainty present in our world.

At times, whenever we are faced with those uncertainties, we often respond to them out of our own fears or our own worries. We say things to others that we shouldn’t, resulting in division in our families, with our friends, coworkers, classmates, fellow parishioners. At times, it can be hard to comprehend why these things are happening and we feel powerless to fix them. We don’t know where to turn or what to do to bring about a resolution to the conflicts and situations that are manifesting in our lives – not only those things that are happening in the world at large, but also those situations that are happening in our own personal lives. You could say that it leads to a sense of hopelessness. And the temptation is to get trapped there. But we can’t!

As Christians, we are called to be different. As we hear in our second reading from the 2^nd Letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians, we are called to foster unity amongst ourselves and, by extension, we are called to bring that unity to the world. St. Paul tells us: “Mend your ways, encourage one another, agree with one another, live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you.”

Now, I don’t know if St. Paul really understood how challenging that could be to accomplish. Admittedly, there are some people that we have in our lives that are extremely difficult to love. But that doesn’t mean we simply give into the temptation to turn against each other; it doesn’t mean that we give ourselves permission to treat those individuals differently. It is something that we have to constantly seek to improve upon. And that’s the whole point of Paul’s letter. He knew that it could be challenging, yet he also knew how important it was for us to love one another.

In the very depths of his own soul, Paul understood something about God and he spent his life sharing it. The characteristic of God that Paul understood, the characteristic that he experienced for himself was that God is love. And the amazing thing is that we are invited to participate in that love.

This morning, throughout the world, the Church celebrates the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity. It’s a day when we commemorate one of the central teachings of our faith. It is our belief in the Holy Trinity that sets us apart from any other monotheistic faith. While we truly believe in the Oneness of God, that there is no other God besides Him, at the same time, we believe that our God exists in three Divine Persons – the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It is one of the great mysteries of our faith because it is a paradox. It is a belief that should not or cannot be when we look at it through the eyes of our limited human reason and yet it is still the truth.

Thankfully, we’re not alone in our inability to completely comprehend the nature of the Trinity – even some of our greatest saints found themselves in heresy trying to explain it. But one that came close to giving us an idea of what it looks like is St. Augustine. He said of the Trinity that no one part is greater than another or the sum of the other two. They are not the same, nor are they separate; in fact, they share the same nature, which is the very meaning of the word consubstantial spoken in our Creed each Sunday. Augustine used the idea and notion of love to explain the Trinity and its three parts – He that loves, and He whom is loved, and Love itself. This dynamic relationship of love is at the very heart of God’s Being – it is God’s foundational identity. The Trinity is God’s love poured out.

The Father created everything through his Word who became human in Jesus, and now that Jesus has returned to the divine realm, the Holy Spirit dwells in us. It is the Holy Spirit who ensures the continuous flow of grace, reminding us of the words spoken by Jesus during His mission on earth. It is the Holy Spirit who continually invites us to participate in that relationship of love.

In the Gospel today, we hear the famous verse John 3:16 – “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.” It is in knowing Jesus and what He was sent to accomplish that we become aware of what God’s loves looks like, that God loves in a Trinity of relationships but remains One. The relationship that exists between the three Persons of the Trinity is the model for which we are called to fashion our own relationships: relationships with our spouses, our children, our friends. It is even how we should model our relationship as Church, as the community of Jesus’ followers, distinct individuals unified as one body under Christ. It is the Holy Spirit who helps us see each other as brothers and sisters of Jesus and children of our Heavenly Father. It is the Holy Spirit that helps us to see that we are God’s family, that we are called to love in the same way H`e does.

This is why Paul constantly encouraged the early Christian communities he established to love one another, to foster harmony and unity amongst themselves. And this continues to be the encouragement that He gives us. It is our responsibility to remind each other of who we are – children of the Father, redeemed by the Son, and called by the Holy Spirit to bring the love of God to one another and to the world. Do we have the courage to do that? Can you imagine what our world would look like, if each and everyone us loved the way that God invites us to love? I encourage each of us to make that our reflection this upcoming week, asking the Lord to reveal to us the various ways that we individually fall short of that goal of our Christian life.

Let it start today. As we come forward to receive him in the Eucharist in just a few moments, let’s take the opportunity to pray that the Holy Spirit give us the courage to love and to reveal to us the ways we fall short. May we may invite Him into our hearts anew today, asking Him to make us living examples of that love in the world, a world that so desperately needs to experience it.

Painting: The Holy Trinity in the Slovak National Gallery. This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author’s life plus 100 years or fewer.