Readings: Deuteronomy 4:32-34, 39-40, Romans 8:14-17, Matthew 28:16-20
The more we know that God revealed to us in the history of the Chosen People, the more we can understand Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. The more we come to speak of this God personally and to know this God personally at work in our lives, the closer we come to some small understanding of the Holy Trinity. Each of us needs to be able to say, completely personally, that God has brought me out from slavery, that our God is a great God, that our God is a God who loves us and cares for us. We want to be able to call on God as our Father in the same way that Jesus does in our Christian Scriptures. As we listen to Jesus speaking to the Father, we come to realize that He calls God His Father in a way that we cannot do by ourselves.
Only as we come to know the Lord Jesus and then accept Him and then be baptized in Him do we receive from Him this possibility of calling on God as our Father in the same way as He does. God is always the Father of everyone and of all that is, but in Christ we have the most personal relationship possible to the Father. In Christ our relationship to the Father is transformed, deepened and made new.
If we have died with Christ and risen with Him, then we can understand today’s Gospel in which Jesus send forth His followers to baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Even if these may not be exactly the words of Jesus Himself, they express the faith of the early Church and show us how the early Christians understood Jesus and the mystery of the Trinity.
May our own understanding and faith grow today as we read these above readings and ponder them. May we continue to study the Scriptures, seeking in them an ever deeper understanding of all of the mysteries of our faith. Let us rejoice in this God who loves us so much and who throughout all history seeks to draw us to Himself. May we know God and rejoice in God.
Fr. Terry