What’s the reason for each Person of the Trinity?

On the first Sunday after Pentecost, we celebrate and honor God’s character as the Most Holy Trinity.

The first reading shows us the Father as he parented the baby nation of Israel. We see that he is “a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in kindness and faithfulness” — the Perfect Father.

If we have difficulty seeing him this way, it’s because we’ve never experienced a human father-figure who showed us what perfect fatherhood looks like. Our spirits need healing. We’ve been projecting human imperfections onto our image of God. Even the best parents and teachers fall short of the wonderfulness of God’s fatherhood. We need to consciously differentiate him from our human dads and other human authorities.

The second reading shows us the entire Trinity: the grace of Jesus, the love of the Father, and our friendly partnership with the Holy Spirit. In this and because of this, we are to rejoice, mend our ways, and live in peace with one another.

In other words, because Jesus bore our sins as he died on the cross and then conquered death, he provides us with grace so that we can resist sin, and he provides us with the Father’s love so that we can love one another no matter what, and he provides us with the Holy Spirit, who fellowships with us and empowers us so that we can continually live as holy Christians.

The Gospel reading shows us the depth of the Father’s love. He doesn’t condemn us for our sins; he gives us his Son to rescue us from the destructive results of our sins. Our sins condemn us and sentence us to eternal death, but Jesus saves us from this by taking us to eternal life — if we want him to!

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