Living Our Trinitarian Faith – Optional Memorial Dina Bélanger
(1 Cor 2:10-16; Ps 145; Lk 4:31-37)
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Step 3 of the A.A. program reads, “Made a decision to surrender our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God.”
This step, and today’s readings, invite us to celebrate and live out to the full our Trinitarian faith in God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit – to live in the Spirit, grow in the Father’s love, and become more like Jesus the Son.
While Step 3 is very broad and wide open, allowing members the freedom to claim an image of God with which they are comfortable, we are so privileged to believe in God who is relationship, intimacy, unity, family. The bond of love between the Father and the Son is the Holy Spirit. Imagine the power of that relationship – Father loving the Son, Son loving the Holy Spirit who in turn loves the Father – a dynamic dance of love or perichoresis. That is a God to whom one can feel free to surrender one’s will and life.
In the first reading to the Corinthians, St. Paul focuses on the Holy Spirit, who alone truly knows the heart of God, and the depths of the human person. The Spirit is also the source of all gifts. Paul speaks of being spiritual and unspiritual. I like the phrase “We are all spiritual beings having a human experience.” We are so fortunate to have an intimate on-going relationship with the Holy Spirit, including the ability to receive inspiration and direction in very down-to-earth matters. I remember asking for guidance when visiting communities, feeling urged to turn into a specific home, and walking right into a heated argument a couple was having I ended up mediating. It was rather thrilling just to think the Holy Spirit was involved in such incidents!
The psalm is all about God. In fact, it is a high point in terms of Old Testament theology of God, with its description of God as gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, good to all, compassionate to all of God’s creation, faithful in all God’s works, gracious in all of God’s deeds, and upholding the weak and downtrodden. This description stands out like a shining gem amidst all the other often more violent images of God in the Old Testament.
This Old Testament image of God, highly developed as it is, falls short of the fullness of God’s love revealed by Jesus on the cross. It is no coincidence the curtain in the temple in Jerusalem was torn asunder from top to bottom the moment Jesus died on the cross. That curtain was there to keep people away from the Holy of Holies which only the high priest could enter once he was purified. Now there is no separation between humanity and God. In Jesus’ death we can see right into the heart of God, and what we see is mercy, compassion, humility, forgiveness, unconditional love, intimate relationship and total non-violence. This is our God!
In the gospel, we see Jesus, Son of God, Word made Flesh, the long-awaited Messiah in action, healing a man by delivering him of an unclean spirit. That brings to mind the two-fold mission of Jesus as the Messiah – to redeem and to sanctify, to forgive and to heal. That is something only he can do, and in faith we can come to him for forgiveness and healing. The Holy Spirit gives us spiritual insight to see where we need forgiveness (our sins), and for what we need healing (our sinfulness – that which makes us sin). Then the unconditional love of the Father present in Jesus comes to us through the power of the Spirit, and we are made new.
St. Paul claims we have the mind of Christ – a bold statement. Yet that is what Jesus first preached – believe and repent. Repent in Greek is to do metanoia– put on our highest mind, be the best person we can be. We truly are to put on the mind of Christ, to think and act as Jesus would, to see reality with his eyes. The bracelet WWJD (What Would Jesus Do?) is pertinent here.
One precise summation of our Catholic spirituality is this sentence: We are all coming back to the Father, through Jesus the Son, in the power of the Holy Spirit, with Mary our mother.
Today the church holds up as a model for us a fellow Canadian, Dina Bélanger. Born April 30, 1897, Dina was the only daughter of a well-to-do couple in Quebec City. Dina pronounced final vows with the Religious of Jesus and Mary at the age of 25. Her spirit of praise and generosity inspired her motto, “to refuse God nothing.” Despite failing health, her simple life in the convent as musician and educator is testimony to the value of living our individual call to sainthood. As such she is a model for musicians, artists and educators. Dina died on September 4, 1929, at the age of 32, promising her family and friends to be a “beggar of love in heaven.” She was beatified in 1993.
The Eucharist brings all this together. It is an intimate family meal with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We experience the unconditional love of the Father, made present in Word and Sacrament in the person of Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Forgiven and healed, we are then sent out to live out our Trinitarian faith by loving others as Jesus has loved us, empowered to do so by the Holy Spirit.
We are to follow and believe this Trinitarian faith by knowing that God is the father who created us on this earth. He is the one who created all living beings and rule us and guide us to be like him. He is the one who send his son Jesus Christ to complete his task and to teach people how to love one another and forgive others. He also taught us how to help people who are in need and heal people with pain and sufferings. Besides this, he out live the word given by his father by being crucified on the cross and the next day he is resurrected. He surrender himself and his life to God to save us from any sins and faults we have done wrong. Well to do this task we have to be forgiven for faults and wrong doings by going through reconcilation and repent . We are willing to change our attitude and behavior to walk a new beginning and start over. We have to be pure to have full Trinitarian faith. God is 3 person in 1 that does all this so it can be a peaceful world. Amen . Blessings !
Thanks again for the homily and message about the Trinitarian faith and how to follow that faith . Gracias ! Bishop Lavoie