In saying that God is love, we are not attributing an emotion, a sentiment or a feeling to God but we are affirming God’s nature and being. God is love. God’s acting flows out of God’s being. Everything that God does, he does in love. God’s creating, his redeeming and his sanctifying are all done through, with and in love. God is a community of persons, each loving, giving and receiving in love, bound together as One in love. God is a unity, a communion and a Oneness in love. We know that God is love because of his revelation of love in Jesus and the Holy Spirit whom he has sent into the world. Jesus and the Holy Spirit are witnesses to the divine love of the Father. God gives and receives love from the Son through the Holy Spirit.
All of revelation in Sacred Scripture and tradition reveals to us God’s will to share his love with us as his beloved, adopted children. The purpose of our whole being is to love as God has first loved us. We are created to love. What is the meaning of our life? What is the purpose of our life? What is the final goal of our life? To be loved and to love as we are loved. As John tells us, “As he is, so are we in this world.” (1Jn 4,17) Jesus teaches his disciples, “As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy might be in you and your joy might be complete. This is my commandment: love one another as I love you.” (Jn 15,9-12) Regarding the Holy Spirit, Jesus teaches his disciples, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of truth, which the world cannot accept, because it neither sees nor knows it. But you know it, because it remains with you, and will be in you.” (Jn 15,15ff) Everything in our life, in our society, in our world should be directed to one purpose and one goal, to love one another and remain in love throughout our lives, no matter what happens. As St. Paul reminds us, “And if I have the gift of prophecy and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have all faith so as to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing.” (1Cor 13,2) Nothing else matters.
What if everyone taught their children this one truth of the love of God in the unity of the Trinity? What if everyone learned, knew and practiced in faith this simple fact, “God is love and as God is so are we meant to be in this world.” The Catechism of the Catholic Church informs us: “The mystery of the Holy Trinity is the central mystery of Christian faith and life. It is the mystery of God in himself. It is therefore the source of all the other mysteries of faith, the light that enlightens them. It is the most fundamental and essential teaching in the “hierarchy of the truths of faith.”” The most fundamental and essential teaching that we are meant to pass on and in which we are to form our children is that God is love and that he desires and wills that all people share in his love. We must be prophets in order to teach this truth because it cannot be taught in word alone but it must be lived and demonstrated in the power of the Holy Spirit of love dwelling within us and moving us to action, to give and receive love in all that we do. Without this we are nothing. With this truth, written in our hearts, there would be no racism, no hatred, no enmity, no jealousies, no injustice and no violence. Love is patient and kind, gentle and caring, gracious and humble, serving and sacrificing, compassionate and forgiving and it brings a peaceful order to our entire lives. This is what we must teach our children as the fundamental and essential teaching for life. This is what will heal our world.
As we have witnessed through recent events of senseless violence, the world is still broken and lost. As Jesus warned us, “the world will not accept the Spirit of Truth.” Once in our nation we understood that there were certain essential truths that we must build our lives upon, that we called self-evident truths, that all people are created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights. Freedom comes with recognizing, accepting, acknowledging and teaching certain essential truths of life. Jesus taught his disciples: “If you remain in my word, you will truly be my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (Jn 8,31f) The world does not see or recognize that religious belief is essential but without the fundamental and essential teaching of our faith, without the Spirit of Truth to guide us, without the Word of God to teach us, we have no hope for a better future. We are without direction and lost in the entropy of our own ignorance. Without love, we are nothing. We can demonstrate, we can yell slogans, we can try to assert our power, we can riot and make speeches and intimidate by being a part of a mob all to make our nothing seem like something but without love and truth, we are nothing.
God is love. A simple truth of faith, revealed in the community of interpersonal love that is the Holy Trinity. As God is, so are we meant to be in the world. God wills that we love one another as he has loved us and sent us a sign of his love in Jesus and the Holy Spirit. We know what God wills, what he wants of us, now we have to accept it and act on it. Not really that complicated. Everyone is invited to this table of plenty where we can know the joy of the Lord and live in true freedom where our joy is complete.
So let us approach the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit and share in his divine life and community of love so that we might heal the sins of division and hatred and might live together as one in love and peace. Through forgiveness, let us leave the past behind and enter into the new freedom brought by the love of God with a future full of hope, new life and even joy. Teach your children well the simple truth of God’s love for all his people from all races and cultures of the earth so that they may build with Christ a kingdom of justice, love and peace. In our witness of unity we can be a visible sign of the invisible mystery of the Most Holy Trinity. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit! Amen!