June 15, 2014
by Fr. Ron Calhoun
HOLY TRINITY SUNDAY
JUNE 14/15, 2014
This weekend as we celebrate Father’s Day, I am sure we all recall certain memories of our own fathers, living or deceased. As I mentioned in the bulletin, my own dad has been gone for some thirty years and yet memories continue to surface. We all have an experience of fatherhood as well as an image of what the ideal father is like. We bring all of that before God today as we do honor and celebrate our fathers.
And as we celebrate this feast of the Holy Trinity, we have two very clear definitions in our scripture readings of who God the Father is. In today’s first reading from the Book of Exodus, Moses receives the Ten Commandments for the second time as God reveals who He is: He says: “The Lord, the Lord, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity”. God the Father is of course the God of the Old Testament who is merciful and gracious, patient and rich in kindness and fidelity. God is faithful to His people from the Creation in the book of Genesis throughout the years until the coming of Jesus.
And in the today’s Gospel reading, we hear that familiar passage from St. John’s Gospel. He tells us that God so loved the world that He sent His only Son, not to condemn the world but that the world might be saved through Him. It is that generosity that is also characteristic of God’s love throughout the ages. And Jesus demonstrated that love by giving of Himself over and over again until there was nothing left to give.
God’s faithfulness continues today as His Holy Spirit moves among us and leads us to the depth of that love for us.
None of us, Fathers or otherwise, can perfectly reflect those characteristics God has revealed about Himself, but we do look to them as the ideals to which we aspire: loving generosity, patience, faithfulness and kindness in all we do. And the more we come to experience that loving acceptance of God, the easier it is to offer that to one another.