“Today is the feast day of the Holy Trinity. It is a fitting occasion to reflect on what it means to
have faith. According to the first letter of Saint John, ‘God is love.’
When we consider God as love—one God in three persons—the infinite love between God the
Father and God the Son is profound. The Father’s love for the Son and the Son’s love for the
Father is boundless. They have existed together as one God since the beginning. This is
evident in the first chapter of the Gospel of Saint John.
The Father does not keep all His love for the Son, nor does the Son keep all His love for the
Father. This love flows from both of them. This outpouring of love is the Holy Spirit. As we
profess in the Creed, the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.
This overwhelming force of creative love brings all things into existence. The very first verse of
the Bible mentions the Spirit of God moving upon the darkness at the beginning of creation.
Love is a powerful and creative force. It is this love that we receive at Baptism.
When we receive Communion, we receive God, who is love. We return that love to God, we
thank God for it, and we love God because He first loved us. Just as the Father’s love
overflows to the Son and the Son’s love to the Father, our love must also overflow to others.
Our relationship with God is not solitary; it is communal. God’s love outpours to all of us, and in
our relationship with Him, we must let our love outpour to others as well. This includes our
family, those in need, the lonely, the sad, and the hungry. It is in this outpouring of love that we
truly grow in faith.
It’s not enough to simply say, ‘I accept Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior and I am saved.’
That is just the beginning. As Saint James and the parable of the sheep and the goats make
clear, our actions are crucial. We do not earn our salvation by these actions, but our faith
becomes alive when we act upon it. We follow the same model as the Trinity itself.
In a Trinitarian relationship with God, we are compelled to share His love with others through
our good works.”
