Do you remember the great toilet paper shortage of 2020? That is the year we all learned the term ‘supply chain disruption’. Due to the Covid epidemic all sorts of things were in short supply – paper towels, masks, disinfecting wipes, even milk. We still hear more than we want to about the supply chain almost every time we go shopping. 

One thing that is never in short supply is God’s grace. 

Unconditional love, mercy and grace begin in the Godhead – in a God who reveals Himself as Father, Son and Spirit: the Trinity. It begins inside God, as it were, in a triune relationship of love between three persons. The reciprocal and eternal love between the Father and the Son and between the Son and the Father and the Spirit. It is a love that always reaches outside of itself to others. It is a love freely available and in abundance – a love which in return calls us to imitate what we receive by the way we live our lives. 

We find in Genesis, that God created man “in his own image, in the image of God He created them.” God’s image in us is fulfilled in our ability to create, think, feel, and relate. We are communal. We need others. Based on our desire for relationships we reflect the relationship of the Trinity.  

Being made in the image of God we carry within us the unconditional love that begins with the Trinity. Our way of life, our devotion in prayer, our interaction with everyone around us, are all informed by the awareness of God’s unconditional love in our lives. We freely receive and freely give of God’s love. This is our high calling.

Today’s Mass readings help us to comprehend the effect that the Trinity has on our lives. “God so loved the world, that he sent his only Son, not to condemn but to save” we read in the Gospel of John. God offers a self-description in our First Reading from the Book of Exodus when God reveals to Moses, “… a God of tenderness and compassion.” St Paul urges the community in Corinth, “Agree with one another, live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you.”

The image of God that permeate our being reflects, however imperfectly, the love and perfection of the triune God. God is perfect and complete in and of himself, yet his perfection is not the static, cold perfection of a mathematical expression, nor is his completeness located merely in his power and knowledge. His perfection and completion are most deeply revealed in relationship, in the giving of himself in ways we can only begin to comprehend. 

Our lives as Christians celebrate the goodness, faithfulness, and love of our Triune God, Father, Son, and Spirit. The Trinity is not an abstract concept, meant to overwhelm our finite intellect. Nor can the Trinity ever be removed from the context of love to be a subject of dry academic exercise. Love requires a movement of the heart in giving and receiving love.  A love that is static, frozen and motionless is far from complete. God is not static, or even stoic. God is merciful and gracious, “slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity.” 

Why does faith in the Trinity matter? Because through this faith, we know that we matter to the eternal and infinite God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is the unique joy of being a Christian. Faith in the Trinity brings us closer to God and unites us with him in an unbreakable bond of love. The Trinity fulfills the deepest longing of the human heart for eternal love, a longing imprinted within us at our creation in God’s image. Our faith tells us that the Trinity has a heart, eternally beating within the incarnate Son. Prophets and poets have dreamed of such fulfillment, and our hearts yearn for God. 

As we move on from the high liturgical seasons of Lent and Easter, we are reminded on this first Sunday of Ordinary Time that at the core and center of this ‘ordinariness’ is a God whose very being is infinite love.