JONATHAN’S innocent face always glows, especially when he serves at Mass and sees me presiding. The glow also comes from being part of an active church and from the utmost care that he receives from his parents.
After Mass, Jonathan would ask me for my blessing. “Padre, echeme su bendicion,” he would always plea. Of course, I would tenderly and lovingly lay my hands on his head and say a prayer of protection, always ending every blessing with the Trinitarian formula, “En El Nombre del Padre y del Hijo y del Espiritu Santo.”
I assume that Jonathan knows this invocation of the Three Persons in one God, having learned it in his First Communion class. However, each time I say this prayer for Jonathan, I want to impress on him the dynamic nature of God. That God wants to relate to him as the Father who wants the best for him, as the Son who desires to guide him with his Words of Eternal life, and as the Holy Spirit who wishes to nurture and to sustain his faith through the Sacraments of the Church.
This Sunday is the Solemnity of the Holy Trinity, a feast that we celebrate this year at the beginning of June, also traditionally a month of weddings and graduations. How fitting it is then to say that the Holy Trinity is not a mere dogma but a divine personhood in three dynamic ways that creates, saves, and sustain us in all stages and key moments of our lives.
The God that we worship is the Creator who has given each of us a life of many possibilities, a mind of rich imagination and creativity, and a heart of deep compassion and love for others. The God that we adore is the Redeemer that wants us to feel his unconditional love and compassion for all. The God that we love is the Grace that dwells in the world, within us and around us, allowing us to become his partners of creation and re-creation and of reconciliation and redemption.
God is not a distant God at all, but One who cares and is completely involved in our lives, The words of the Book of Deuteronomy attest to this truth:
“Did anything so great ever happen before? Was it ever heard of? Did a people ever hear the voice of God speaking from the midst of fire, as you did, and live? Or did any god venture to go and take a nation for himself from the midst of another nation, by testings, by signs and wonders, by war, with strong hand and outstretched arm, and by great terrors, all of which the LORD, your God, did for you in Egypt before your eyes? This is why you must know, and fix in your heart, that the Lord is God in the heavens above and on earth below, and that there is no other.”
Certainly, the God that we want to convey to our children and young people like Jonathan is the God who says, “I am with you always, until the end of age” Then we can be confident that they can pursue their dreams and not feel alone in this world!
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Reverend Rodel G. Balagtas attended St. John Seminary in Camarillo, California and earned his Doctor of Ministry in Preaching from Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis, Missouri. For twenty years, he has been in the parish ministry of large multi-cultural communities. Since 2002, he has been the pastor of Immaculate Heart of Mary Church in Los Angeles. Please email Fr. Rodel at [email protected].