After the refreshing season of Easter, we settle down again to the routine of following Jesus in our daily life. And we start with a reorienting gaze at the central truth about God as Trinity. According to Jesus this mystery touches on our very experience of salvation (John 16:12-15). Trinity Sunday is the liturgical expression of our Christian faith in the unity and equality of the three persons in one God.
God’s plan of salvation
God’s saving love for us was made incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ. Through our faith in Jesus the Son of God we have life in His name and enter into communion with God. This lifelong process means that when Jesus was about to return back to His Father (John 13:1), He had to tell His disciples that they still have a lot to go through: “I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now.” Not that Jesus failed to complete His program, nor were His followers plain incapable of understanding His words and deeds, but rather because the full meaning of what He was saying and doing would be unveiled only later by the events to come and especially by His Passover in His death and resurrection.
Jesus’ disciples were in the making, a vocation in progress. They had become sad and fearful when He announced His imminent departure from them. His disciples have gradually metamorphosed into a cohesive group based on His presence and strength. They naturally felt they would be lost and uncertain without Him. Jesus promised to send them another like Him, the other Paraclete, as their advocate and helper. He has told them everything He heard from His Father (John 15:15); God’s plan of salvation for humankind is definitely under way. Man’s response to this divine initiative remains to be realized. The faithful’s deeper and fuller understanding of Jesus’ revelation would still come; He is the revelation of the Father, and there is no other apart from Him or any further revelation after Him.
In the spirit of truth
The Paraclete would be the one to guide the disciples in the way of all truth, and as their helper assist them in the imitation of Jesus. This presence of the Holy Spirit in the community of believers and their response and openness to His presence would be the guarantee that the witness of Jesus to the Father and His ministry are being continued with authenticity by His followers. The Spirit, the teacher, would remind them and interpret to them the Gospel of salvation; He would refresh in their hearts the words of Jesus they have already received, clarifying to them the revelation of God in the person of Jesus. This includes the imperative that in the Spirit of truth the interpretation of revelation in the light of the evolving community would be part of the fidelity to Jesus Christ.
The increasingly deeper comprehension and assimilation of God’s word in Jesus Christ belongs to the very life and mission of the Church as the community shaped by the word of life. The Gospel is “spirit and life” (John 6:63), and its transmission down the ages to our own time is always the work of the Holy Spirit. The Gospel is “inspired,” alive, effective, sanctifying and inerrant—by the power of the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit means the unbroken bond of Christians with the resurrected and glorified Jesus, shielding us also against the heresies and aberrations that proliferate against the true gospel message.
Alálaong bagá, the task of listening to the Word of God, of meditating on its meaning and scrutinizing it for our own guidance and inspiration here and now and for tomorrow must never cease. At stake is no less than the salvific, life-giving encounter with God and His Son Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of Jesus from the Father is present in the Church, especially in the Word and Sacraments and the ministries, as “Lord and Giver of Life”—creative, saving, sanctifying. It is in this mystery of the Triune God, our “Isatlong Diyos,” that we have eternal life.
Join me in meditating on the Word of God every Sunday, from 5 to 6 a.m. on DWIZ 882, or by audio streaming on www.dwiz882.com.