Let us take some time during these Post-Pentecost weeks to reflect on our place as the fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, who are today’s embodiment of what our Triune (One –in-Three) God created us – and all those who came before and will come after us – to be:  full participants in the life of this God.  Let us put aside our usual focus on and preferences for our own family, group, or nation and place ourselves into the broader context of our true selves: our One-in-Many Humanity incorporated into our One-in-Three God.

Jesus’ life teaches is that “only great love and great suffering are strong enough to take away our imperial ego’s protections and open us to authentic experiences of transcendence.”¹

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed for us. . . . We know that all creation is groaning in labor pains even until now; and not only that, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, we also groan within ourselves as we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.  Romans 8:18,22-23

TRINITY – OUTPOURING LOVE

“The Second Person of the Trinity, twinned with Jesus, is a clear message about universal love and necessary suffering as the divine pattern—starting with the three persons of the Trinity, where God is said to be both endlessly outpouring and self-emptying. Like three revolving buckets on a waterwheel, this process keeps the Flow flowing eternally—inside and outside of God, and in one positive direction.”²

HUMANITY BECOMING OUTPOURING LOVE

“In some ways, the object of our affection is arbitrary. It can begin as a love of golf, a clean house, your cat; or a desire to cultivate a certain reputation for yourself. Granted, the largeness of the object will eventually determine the largeness of the love, but God will use anything to get you started, focused, and flowing. Only a very few actually start this journey with God as the object. And that is fully to be expected. God is not in competition with reality, but in full cooperation with it. All human loves, passions, and preoccupations can prime the pump, and only in time do most of us discover the first and final Source of those loves. God is clearly humble and does not seem to care who or what gets the credit. Whatever elicits the flow for you—in that moment and encounter, that thing is God for you! I do not say that without theological foundation, because my Trinitarian faith says that God is Relationship Itself. The names of the three “persons” of the Trinity are not so important as the relationship between them. That’s where all the power is at.”³

BEING DRAWN INTO OUR TRIUNE GOD

“The Great Circle of Inclusion (the Trinity) is a centrifugal force that will finally pull everything back into itself—exactly as many physicists predict will happen to the universe the moment it finally stops expanding.”⁴

Let us pray:  Help me, dear God, to let myself be joined with Jesus and all humanity in being drawn into You.

EUCHARIST – OUR INCARNATION

“We are not just humans having a God experience. The Eucharist tells us that, in some mysterious way, we are God having a human experience!”⁵

“The Eucharist then becomes our ongoing touchstone for the Christian journey, a place to which we must repeatedly return in order to find our face, our name, our absolute identity, who we are in Christ, and thus who we are forever.”⁶

“St. Paul expresses his full belief that there is a real transfer of human and spiritual identity from Christ to Creation, to the elements of bread and wine, and through them to human beings.

The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?  Because the loaf of bread is one, we, though many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf. 1 Corinthians 10: 16-17

For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over, took bread, and, after he had given thanks, broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’” 1 Corinthians 11: 23-25

As a body is one though it has many parts, and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body, so also Christ.  For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free persons, and we were all given to drink of one Spirit. 1 Coninthians 12: 12-13

“Eucharist, like Resurrection, is not a unique event or strange anomaly.
Eucharist is the Incarnation of Christ taken to its final shape and end.
It is all one continuum of Incarnation.
Who we are in God is who we all are.
Everything else is changing and passing away.”⁷

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1. Rohr, Richard. The Universal Christ, The Crown Publishing Group, 2019, p.50.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid., p. 75.
4. Ibid., p. 137.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid., p. 138.