Ex 34:4b-6, 8-9; Dn:3:52-56; 2 Cor. 13:11-13; Jn. 3:16-18
Today we celebrate the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity and with it comes the revelation of God as the Father in the Son through the Holy Spirit. Today God reveals himself as “Lord”. What is in a name? For God everything is in a name. God comes to Moses and proclaims his name “Lord”. John proclaims whoever “has not believed ‘in the name of the only Son of God’ has already been condemned”. God changes the name of Abram to Abraham, and Saul becomes Paul. In baptism a parent is asked “what name do you give your child” and in confirmation the person can take on a spiritual name. Religious are given a spiritual name after the saints and the Blessed Mother Mary when taking vows and the Pope takes on a Fatherly name as Vicar of Christ. Why such importance to a name?
A name gives identity to a person as a child in the image of God in the Most Holy Trinity. A name carries with it a charism in how we come to the Lord to offer our very being to be one with God united to him by the gift of self in order to know, love and serve God. No mind can capture the totality of God but by our name we can respond to our call from God and enter in union with him. A name can represent the doorway through which we come to love and to serve God.
Here I am Lord, I Paul, Mary, John, Elizabeth and let us add our name to answering the call. We are called by name to salvation “for God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him” through his name. What name was he given as the Son of God? Jesus! Jesus saves! The love and mercy of God comes to us through Jesus.
Thus, condemnation is of our own making as it was for Lucifer and all the angels who fell from heaven. Lucifer refused to bow to the Son of Man as the Word made flesh falling into eternal damnation. Moses bowed down to the Lord and confessed his people were “indeed a stiff-necked people” as it is today full of wickedness and sins. Moses prayed to the Lord to “receive us as your own” and the Lord sent his Son that we may be one with the Most Holy Trinity. If we fail to place God first in our lives, we carry the sin of pride and break the first and greatest commandment.
The cultural war of our times is a battle of pride over which group is entitled to be first. One race over another, one social class over another, one gender identity over another, a woman before the unborn child, the trans before natural birth identity and yet the Lord says “whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me” in speaking of the final judgment. (Mt. 25:45) In the end the first shall be last because we did not respond to God in our midst. The final judgment begins at the moment of death. We prepare for that moment by the way we choose to live each moment. Each moment is an opportunity to dedicate ourselves to the will of God that we may not be caught by surprise.
In the Most Holy Trinity we receive grace, love and fellowship to live the moment with the joy and peace of the Lord. Grace comes with the Lord’s favor to be a child of God, love comes with mercy to forgive us of our sins, and fellowship comes with the gifts of the Holy Spirit to build up the kingdom of God by the sharing of those gifts. It is not a formula but a way to live our lives. This is what we rejoice in that the one true God has called us to be his chosen people.
The Lord has called us by name. He knows us better than we know ourselves because he created us with an identity that is God given. The world claims that identity is in the mind. A person can choose to identify by any gender or sexual orientation and free to change their mind as if the mind was separate from the body.
We were created for the Lord in mind, body, and spirit. Otherwise, the body becomes simply an object of the mind to be treated as a canvas for art, mutilated to reflect another gender, sold as an object for sexual pleasure, and intoxicated with substance abuse to an early grave. When we claim we belong to God, we belong to him in body, soul, and spirit in which we become the temple for him to remain in us. What impacts the body impacts the soul and the body is to be given the same honor with which we value our mind.
We come to honor our identity in God through the virtue of chastity. Chastity allows us to not to fall into the sins of indulgence but to govern our mind and body through discipline. The work of discipline sets us free to raise our souls to God. Discipline of the mind to stay focused on God and discipline of the flesh to remain chaste for God for the impure cannot contain the pure and holiness of God. Only in his name can we discover our true self, our calling and purpose that reveals the identity for which we were born and the doorway to heaven.
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