Sunday Reflection with Fr Robin Gibbons - 26 May 2013

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Trinity Sunday

How do you see God? How do you try to express what God is and means to you? It is difficult isn’t it? The writer of Proverbs grapples with the dilemma of trying to express the inexpressible, suggesting that humans can connect and know the Divine One through the route of wonder and worship which leads us to open the depths of our hearts and imaginations.

We learn a deeper more subtle way to know and understand God. We know so little of what God is, men and women though the ages have sought that understanding, have embarked on the task of discovering God, and yet as Jesus hints, the truth is more simple than we imagine, but so hard for us to grasp.

That is why we must become like children, for an integrated child learns to trust to the voice of love in the person of those they love, calling them to do different things, to trust, to learn to see beyond the immediate.

In our society it is quite evident that the young, brought up in a more culturally mixed community than that of the older generation of 60 plus, do not have the same anxieties about racial harmony, immigration, multi-faith communities or the place of different relationships such as a same sex couples in civil society. They are more accepting of difference and challenge those with more entrenched views. But they need the wisdom and experience of the older members to guide and advise, to moderate and balance, young and old need each other in a relationship of loving care.

The Trinity can only be understood when we let go of our hard and fast approaches to faith. We need to look back into the deep workings of God the Creator delighting in the joys of creation as well as weeping with it in its pain. We need the uniqueness of Jesus God amongst us, one who totally accepts and understands us. We open ourselves to the Spirit, ever present, to accept the gift of divine love. The wisdom of the ages, the long search for God, gives us solid approaches to understanding the Divine One, but in the teachings of the Gospel Jesus and the ageless gift of the Holy Spirit we are challenged and renewed.

The living God reveals to us the dynamic relationship of love that is Father, Son and Spirit reaching out to us. Like children, trusting in their love, one day we will know!

Fr Robin Gibbons is an Eastern Rite Chaplain for the Melkite Greek Catholics in Britain.