Reflections on the Readings
The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity
June 15, 2014 - Year A
What Love Looks Like
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. (John 3:16-17)
My earliest memories are of a home where love was made visible by hugs and kisses; the ones I received; the ones I saw mommy and daddy exchange. I saw love in the way mommy took care of me and my brothers and sisters; the way daddy worked sometimes two jobs and provided for our large family of six kids. But the family table was always filled with enough food to feed lots of hungry kids. And on hot summer days love came in icy cold aluminum glasses filled with homemade orangeade.
On hot and humid summer afternoons mommy would pack us kids in the car and drive the few blocks to mama's house. In those days I saw the joy of life and love in the way mama and her daughter, now with a growing family of her own, talked and talked and talked. I didn't know it then, but I know now that I was looking at love as it was between generations. I know what love that lasts looks like.
Then there were the miscarriages. I know that mommy endured three. Two occurred when I was still at home. I know what love looks like in times like that. It's when daddy held the fruit of married love and reverently buried his stillborn children. One was buried in our back yard by the Lilly; the other child was laid to rest by a tree at the cemetery. Mommy and daddy made a home where me and my brothers and sisters could learn what love looks like - what love for the born, the unborn, and the stillborn looks like.
Married love between a husband and his bride is a communion of persons and is a picture of the Triune God of Love who in His inmost being is a communion of Persons - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In marriage, husband and wife, the two become one. In their freely given gift of each for the other their home becomes a place where love is increased in its free exchange. We learn of this deep and faithful love when we are born to parents who make a home where love is visible, touchable, and embracing.
There is another birth, a birth of the water and of the Spirit. In Christian baptism we are immersed into the very heart of the infinite Love of the Thrice Holy God and are born again. In paragraph 233 of the Catechism we read: Christians are baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: not in their names, for there is only one God, the almighty Father, his only Son, and the Holy Spirit: the Most Holy Trinity. Through the years we learn more and more what this Holy and Redeeming Love looks like. We find it and know it in the Sacraments of the Church. Especially this is so in the confessional. In that Sacrament we feel again and again God's Love for us in the forgiveness of sins. This Love came looking for us when God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
In the Incarnation God in his fulness came close to us. Through the power of the Holy Spirit He became flesh in the womb of the most blessed Virgin Mary, and assumed our humanity. Upon his birth, His mother and ours, bathed the face of the Savior of the world with her joyful tears. In that moment we see in the welcoming arms of the Virgin and in the close and protective presence of her most chaste spouse, Joseph, what Love, Holy Redemptive Love, looks like. Amen.
Dennis Hankins is a parishioner at Sacred Heart of Jesus Cathedral, of the Diocese of Knoxville, TN. Prior to uniting with the Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil 2006, Dennis served as a priest in the Charismatic Episcopal Church. E-mail Dennis at: dennishankins@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter: @dshankins or visit him at: www.dennishankins.com
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