In His image and likeness

In His image and likeness

 

In the olden days, sermons or homilies are started and ended with the Sign of the Cross: in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  At the beginning of every Mass, the celebrant invokes the Trinitarian greeting: The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all! He also ends up with the blessing invoking the three persons in one God.

 

When Jesus came to our world, he taught us to see God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  One of the ways we get to know God as Father is through the world of creation and through God’s providential love for us.  We know God as Son through the ministry of Jesus among us.  We get to know God as Holy Spirit through the Spirit’s presence and work in us and in the Church.  This is the celebration we mark today.  We celebrate God whom we have come to learn through our faith as Father, as Son and as Holy Spirit, three persons in one God.

 

The Book of Genesis mentions that we are created in God’s image and likeness. It somehow describes God’s oneness as well as God’s diversity in three persons as manifested in our human condition.

 

We believe that God’s oneness is also manifested in the uniqueness of each and every human person.  DNA technology has reinforced this singular uniqueness of each human being.  Each and every one of us has his or her own character with its own idiosyncrasies.  The uniqueness of every person stems from being created in God’s image and likeness.

 

Our social nature as human beings is also rooted in God’s Trinitarian nature. Our communitarian spirit belies our sharing of God’s plurality as persons.  We need one another.  We are redeemed not only as individual persons but as a people, as a community, as Church.  The diversity of the gifts and talents of our respective persons are unified by the same one Spirit of God.  The unity and diversity that is found in our communities is the manifestation of God’s oneness in three diverse persons, united by the principle of selfless love.

 

As we celebrate Holy Trinity Sunday, let us celebrate our uniqueness as individual persons and our unity as community which manifest the diversity of the three persons in one God.  Let us celebrate our being created in God’s image and likeness.

 

Let us take to heart what Christ has mandated us to do, that is, to spread the Good News of His love to all the world by our word and example: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you, and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age….”