What Trinity Sunday reminds us of

YES, what it reminds us of is that we need to reflect and channel the very Trinitarian life of God in our own life. That means that just as in God there are three persons who are perpetually engaged in perfect knowing and loving, we too should try our best to know and love God and everybody else all our life the way God knows and loves himself and all his creation, especially us. 

 Obviously, in our case, this perpetual process of knowing and loving will have a beginning, but it is supposed to end up by being carried up in the perpetual knowing and loving of God in heaven. Here on earth, we should just try our best to live that process as far as we can. 

 And the way to do that is to follow what Christ himself told us as the new commandment we need to live, and that is to love one another as he himself has loved us. Following that new commandment of Christ would necessarily link us in a living way to God the Father and the God the Holy Spirit in the way Christ is linked with these two other persons in the Trinitarian God. 

 If we truly follow Christ’s commandment, then we would have the same sentiment that God in his Trinitarian life has towards us. Or said in another way, we can only follow Christ’s commandment if we have the same sentiment God in his Trinitarian life has towards us. 

 And what is that divine sentiment? We are clearly told about it in the gospel of this Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity that this year falls on June 4. (cfr. Jn 3,16-18) 

 “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life,” the gospel says. “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.” 

 We as persons are patterned after the Trinitarian persons of God. Like God, we have to know God and everybody else, as far as we can, the way God the Father knows himself and everybody else. We should try that our knowledge of God and of everybody and everything else should be as perfect as God knows himself and everybody else. This perfect divine knowledge is personified in God the Son, who as God who became man offers us the “way, the truth and the life.” 

 We have to be properly known the way God the Son, the pattern of our humanity, is known perfectly by the Father. In other words, our knowledge of God and everybody else should go as faithfully as possible as the knowledge God has of himself and of everybody and everything else—a knowledge that is personified in the Son. 

 And we have to love God and everybody else the way God loves himself and everybody and everything else, as personified in the Holy Spirit. This is what Trinity Sunday in the end reminds us of. 

 In the above-cited gospel, we are told that only when we believe in Christ, “the way, the truth and the life” for us, can we avoid condemnation. (cfr. Jn 3,18) And believing in Christ precisely involves the process of knowing and loving God the way Christ knows and loves God and everybody else. Only then can we reflect and channel God’s Trinitarian life in our life.

The anger and mercy of Christ

THE gospel of Friday of the 8th Week in Ordinary Time (cfr. Mk 11,11016) shows us Christ showing two apparently contrasting qualities of anger and mercy. When he got hungry and saw a fig tree that did not have any fruit, he got angry and addressed the tree, “May no one ever eat of your fruit again!” And the tree, while still having a luxuriant foliage, later on withered away. 

 Then when he visited the temple area and saw how some people turned it into a market place, he used some force to drive the vendors and money changers away. He justified that action by saying, “Is it not written: My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples? But you have made it a den of thieves.” 

 But in the same gospel, Christ also told his disciples, “When you stand to pray, forgive anyone against whom you have a grievance, so that your heavenly Father may in turn forgive you your transgressions.” 

 Indeed, God as shown in Christ, the ever-merciful and compassionate God, can be angry. His anger can even turn into fury and wrath. Just read the Old Testament, and you will have a good dose of vivid instances of this divine anger and wrath. 

 Which reminds us that anger is not bad after all. If God can be angry, we, who are his image and likeness, can be angry too. Anger has a place in our life. Except that we have to be most careful with it, since our anger can only be good and righteous only when we are truly identified with Christ. And given our current condition, that identification can only be at best tenuous. 

 To be sure, God’s anger is not a lasting, much less, permanent feature. It’s a passing emotion. As Sacred Scripture puts it, he is slow to anger, quick to forgive. His anger is just for a moment, but his mercy and compassion are forever. 

 If we truly are to be like Christ as we should, then we should not let anger stay with us for long. What should dominate in the end is mercy. Let’s remember what Christ told Peter about how many times we should forgive others. 

 “LORD, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus answered, “I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times.” (Mt 18,21-22) 

 With those words, Christ clearly tells us to be always merciful of everybody. Such attitude would truly make us like God as we are supposed to be. God forgives everyone, or at least offers it to everyone, including those who are openly opposed to him. It’s up to us to receive that divine offer. 

 If need be, we have to make a shout-out of this word of forgiveness if only for everyone to follow this clear commandment of Christ: “Forgive and you shall be forgiven.” (Lk 6,37) He reiterated this injunction when he said: “For if you will forgive men their offences, your heavenly Father will forgive you also your offences. But if you do not forgive men, neither will your Father forgive you your offences.” (Mt 6,14-15) 

 It’s clear therefore that we can only be forgiven if we also forgive others. This injunction is meant for everyone, and not only for a few whom we may consider to be religiously inclined. That’s why when asked how many times we should forgive, he said not only seven times, but seventy times seven, meaning always. 

 When we truly identify ourselves with Christ, mercy would have the last word. Our anger would just be a passing emotion.

Faith cures our blindness

THAT’S what the story of the blind man, Bartimaeus, teaches us. (cfr. Mk 10,46-52) As the gospel narrates, when he heard that Christ was passing by, he immediately called for Christ. In spite of being told by Christ’s disciples not to disturb Christ, he just went on calling for Christ. 

 And that was when Christ asked the disciples to bring Bartimaeus to him. When Christ asked the blind man what he wanted, he unhesitatingly said, “Master, I want to see.” And that was when he gained his sight, with Christ telling him, "Go your way; your faith has saved you." 

 Like Bartimaeus, we have to acknowledge our blindness and humbly beg Christ for a cure by repeating Bartimaeus’ words, “Master, I want to see” (ut videam). (Mk 10,51) That’s because even though we may enjoy good vision at the moment, we have to realize that to be able to see things properly and completely, we simply do not rely on our eyes nor any of our senses. 

 Our eyes and senses can only capture a little part of the whole reality that governs us. They can only perceive what are called the sensible realities, still light-years away from the intelligible, not to mention the spiritual and supernatural aspects of reality. 

 Still, what they get and gather are very useful and in fact are indispensable, since the data they give are like the raw material that will be processed by our more powerful faculties of intelligence and will. In this sense we can already consider ourselves as suffering from some kind of blindness. 

 We need to be more aware that nowadays there is a strong tendency to base our knowledge of things mainly on the material and sensible realities alone. That’s why we have these disturbing phenomena of materialism and commercialism comprising our mainstream world of knowledge and understanding. We miss the more important spiritual and supernatural realities. 

 And so, we should just go to Christ to gain our proper vision of things. Regardless of how others may restrain us from getting the attention of Christ, as what happened to that blind man, we should just insist, fearlessly and shamelessly, in asking Christ for a cure. Christ will always attend to us, no matter how disturbing we may appear to him according to our human standards. 

 But first of all, we should be like that blind man, acknowledging our own blindness. Yes, we are all blind, even if we may be gifted already with immense knowledge of things because of our studies and experiences. 

 In fact, we can say that we are more blind the more knowledge of things we seem to accumulate, because this latter status usually sheds some light that blinds us rather than clarifies things for us. It tends to take us away from God rather than lead us to him. 

 Let’s hope that we can echo what is attributed to Socrates, i.e., that “the more I know, the more I realize that I know nothing.” These Socratic words somehow also find basis on some words of St. Paul who said: “The one who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know.” (1 Cor 8,2). 

 And that’s because a knowledge that is not guided or enlightened by faith is a knowledge that does not lead to charity. It leads to pride, vanity and arrogance instead. Again, St. Paul in this regard said: “Knowledge puffs up, but charity builds up.” (1 Cor 8,1) It’s a blindness that prides itself of seeing things perfectly.