God is a multi-tasker

FROM A READING FOR MAY 27, MOST HOLY TRINITY
‘For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption...’ -- Rom 8:14-15

The Most Holy Trinity is a mystery and, like all things that are mysterious, there is only so much we can say about it. What we can say is that God is a multi-tasker.

One can see, in the mystery of the Trinity, the various roles and relationships that God has in our lives as Father, Son and Holy Spirit:

•  God as Father is revealed as the creative life-giver who continually calls us to be re-created.

•  This is made possible through God the Son, through the suffering and death of Christ on the cross. From the cross flows the water which brings about our redemption and reconciliation.

•  God the Holy Spirit communicates God’s presence in our lives. This continual communication with God through the power of the Holy Spirit means we are sanctified and we are called to sanctify others. Sanctification means we have been made holy by the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives. That presence is felt in the word we proclaim and the sacraments we receive.

These are the multiple tasks of the Most Holy Trinity. We are baptized into the ministry of God the multi-tasker: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit” (Mt 28:16-20).

There is a great deal we can say about the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity, because God has revealed Himself to us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and we experience God’s self-communication through the various tasks the three persons of the Most Holy Trinity carry out. As each person of the Most Holy Trinity carries out those tasks, the other two persons of the Trinity are present. Tertullian, a great second-century theologian, uses a plant as an analogy for the Most Holy Trinity: God the Father is the root; Jesus Christ, the Son, is the stem; and the fruit of the plant is the Holy Spirit. Each portion of the plant is distinct, and each portion of the plant has a distinct role that the other portions do not carry out — but all portions of the plant are present in the others. Even as each portion of the plant has specific tasks, the plant remains one, so all those tasks each part of the plant has to do are being carried out by the entire plant.

The presence of God the multi-tasker is infused in us from the moment of our baptism and manifested through the power of the Holy Spirit.

The first reading this Sunday (Dt 4:32-34,39-40) clearly reveals all that God has done for the people of Israel. It is through the words of Moses that they are reminded of the multiple tasks God has endeavored to do, which have brought about their freedom and new life in the covenant of Exodus, Sinai and the land: “With strong hand and outstretched arm, and by great terrors, all of which the Lord, your God, did for you in Egypt before your very eyes” (Dt 4:34).

The Israelites had much to say about who God was, because they saw the signs of what God did to establish them as a great people and nation. As the psalm (Ps 33:4-5,6,9,18-19,20,22) proclaims, “Blessed be the people the Lord has chosen to be His own.” The Israelites could say with confidence that they were God’s chosen people. Not by assumption did they make this statement, but through experience of the many tasks God performed for their establishment.    

The second reading (Rom 8:14-17) speaks of what Jesus Christ, the Son of God, brought about through His suffering, death and resurrection: “The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.”

We are called to suffer with Christ by accepting the tasks our Lord came into the world to accomplish. We are called to die with Christ by being willing to die to self. The Holy Spirit enables us to be glorified with Christ by our accepting a share in the multiple tasks of God’s unfolding plan of salvation.

Even though the Most Holy Trinity is a mystery, there is much we can say of the triune nature of God. We only need to look to the multiple tasks God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit has achieved for us in our lives.