The solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity presents us with the fundamental option of entering into the communion of the Triune God. We are given the choice to live in union with God as followers of Jesus (Matthew 28:14-20).
Defined by baptism
Excluded from among the Jews by the mid-80s AD, the gospel according to Saint Matthew sought to define the proper identity of Jesus’ followers. They are their own distinct ekklesia or God’s assembly with its own mission, order and authority. Gathered around the risen and glorious Jesus to whom “all power in heaven and Earth has been given,” they have been commissioned by Him to go and make disciples of all nations. (The non-Jewish world is part of Matthew’s gospel from the start as dramatized with the story of the Magi from the East searching for the newborn Messiah.)
Mandated to invite the nations to the fellowship of the victorious Jesus, the disciples are to perform initiation with the familiar Jewish rite of washing with water. But more than just the ritual purification it originally signified, Christian baptism is effective of the new life of union with God. Entrance and membership in Jesus’ own ecclesial community is characterized by this rebirth in water and in the mystery of the Triune God. It is to be “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” What the death and resurrection of Jesus brings about in his community is entrance into the Father’s love and life that adopts the believer, so that one can now cry “Abba” (Father)! It means participation in the love and life of the Son, so that he/she is redeemed by Jesus Christ and incorporated into Him. And it means as well union with the Holy Spirit, so that the faithful is sanctified and guided by the “Breath of the Father and the Son.” Baptism in the power of the Christ’s Paschal Mystery fructifies in the definitive reconciliation and communion between God and humankind.
Evangelizing others
The entire process means discipleship, a way of life in imitation of Jesus, configured to Him in word and in deed. The gospel scene of Jesus on a mountain giving worldwide mission and authority to His followers to teach and baptize recalls the theophanies in the Old Testament. The setting on a mountain for many of the important events in Matthew’s gospel (4:8; 5:1; 17:1) implies that what Jesus commands carries divine power. It is this full authority ascribed to the Son of Man (Daniel 7:14) and claimed by Jesus (Matthew 11:27; 26:64; 25:31) that His followers are backed up with when they go about their mission. He mightily promises to be with them always until the end of the world.
But to evangelize others demands that the followers themselves are evangelized and truly His disciples. This is what the evangelist implies when at the start of the encounter with the risen Jesus on the mountain, He noted the lack of faith of some. They are not perfect; they also must struggle and learn to believe in Jesus with all their hearts. And it is a lifelong process of maturation and transformation, a growth in willingly surrendering oneself to Him completely, opposite the original self-willed independence of the first man and woman in “paradise lost.”
Alálaong bagá, in Jesus’ death and resurrection, God takes the initiative to reconcile us with Him. It is now possible for humankind to be regenerated and recreated in baptism into a life of communion with the Trinity. The Father gladly adopts us; the Son generously includes us among those He has redeemed; and the Holy Spirit dynamically pours upon us the abundance of divine gifts. Our counterpart to this mysterious love that is God must be our readiness to respond in kind and love back in an offering of our self-willed independence in exchange for the recreating dependence of a true Christian disciple on God’s power and love.
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