Trinity Sunday (John 16:12-15) “When the Spirit of Truth comes he will guide you into all the Truth.”

Jesus explains how God's Presence emerges from within the soul. The Holy Spirit sets us free to be.

The Great Mystery of Divine Love in Jesus Christ is the Great Mystery of the Incarnation and the Trinity. With Moses and the Prophets the Apostles proclaim that God is One. Through their personal experience and observation they also proclaim that Jesus is the only begotten Son of God. Jesus models a plan of salvation that is organic, personal and emerges in a set of relationships.

The Apostles struggled to understand how the man Jesus was also one with the Father. The solution Jesus himself provided was and is the Holy Spirit. In that solution the truth of who Jesus is emerges in the context of a personal relationship.

As the co-eternal Son of God Jesus knows that truth is absolute and definitive. As a particular human being living in a particular place, time and culture Jesus also knows truth for human beings is experiential. Jesus knows these things because he himself is the very pattern of truth. That pattern is steadfast, holy, unconditional universal love.

Someone once commented that the first casualty of war is truth. In our own time we see how the first casualty of politics is truth. Moses and the Prophets observe that the first casualty of the human choice to separate from God is truth. The account of that choice to separate from God reveals the power of deceit to subvert Truth. In subverting truth we distort love.

Satan offered an alternative “truth” to reinterpret the word of God. Satan did this in order to subvert love. Satan himself renounced love for power. He seeks to have all created beings make the same choice. As we make that choice Satan claims us as his slaves.

Adam and Eve chose that distorted truth over the simple and direct meaning of God’s word. In that choice our species rejected steadfast holy universal unconditional love. That choice proceeded from pride and activated the human will to power.

Pride is a distortion of love. The will to power is a distortion of choice. Those two distortions led to the choice we made to separate from God. That choice resulted in a deeply embedded spiritual pain that results in fear.

This is a pattern. It is indeed the definitive pattern that governs our species. And, it is a pattern Moses, the Prophets and the Apostles observed experienced and recorded in the books of the Bible. The defining  problem we experience is a pattern of separation that originates in a lie chosen by pride from the will to power. The undercurrent of that choice is pain that produces fear.

This is a pattern we reproduce in our lives through choices. Law alone cannot break that pattern. Religion alone cannot change that pattern. Reason alone cannot alter that pattern. Only Original Love can transform that pattern of perception and action. The solution to this pattern of distortion is to encounter embrace and live the original pattern of Love. Jesus is that pattern. He reveals the reality of Truth to us in a set of relationships.

Jesus just doesn’t teach that truth is a set of facts we can master and then use. Truth is a set of relationships. Those relationships are the embodiment of the pure potential of the infinite and eternal God. Jesus in his own person reveals that the One God is three co-eternal persons. God himself is a community of love. This image of God is active, dynamic, creative, spontaneous, transcendent, immediate and personal. Jesus does not reveal a static unyielding rigid and inflexible God. Jesus reveals a God who himself is eternally manifesting the infinite potential of love.

It is that God who Jesus invites us to know and to experience. Jesus is the way we know and experience God. God the Father sent God the Son into the world to be our forever friend. Jesus sends the Holy Spirit into the very depths of our souls to help us grow and transform in love.

The Plan of Salvation is reunification with the Father through the Son that manifests eternally by the inner Presence of God the Holy Spirit. Jesus once went so far as to quote the scripture that says: behold, you are gods.

We are not gods by nature. We participate in the Divine Life of the community of persons who are the One God. As we make the choice to be present to God we recognize God is present to us. That Presence emerges from within the soul.

More often than not, we need external reminders of this interior reality. For some of us the beauty of nature reminds us of the truth of God as Creator. For some of us the Chalice of Real Presence is the bread and wine of Holy Communion. For all of us, love in any form reminds of the reality that all human love is the image of the True Divine Love.

Jesus reminds us that fundamentally the truth is that we are not human doings… we are human beings. We are designed by love, for love and in love. Jesus sets us free to be who we are. The Holy Spirit reminds us that Jesus sets us free to be the beloved of infinite and eternal Trinity.