Called to love

“And I found delight in the human race.” We read these words of God in the Book of Proverbs on Trinity Sunday. What a profound reality to hear that God finds delight in us. Let’s take a moment to ponder this: we can be the delight of God. 

During the liturgical year, we go through special seasons: Advent, Christmas, Lent, Holy Week of the Lord’s Passion, Death and Resurrection, and the Easter season which concludes with Pentecost Sunday. These seasons and feast days help us purposefully live the major events in Jesus’s life from his birth to his death, resurrection and ascension into heaven. 

The majority of the year, however, and indeed right now, we pass through “Ordinary Time,” which may appear to be merely a time with nothing special going on. When we say “ordinary,” we usually mean nothing unusual or new. But with faith that is not the case. Ordinary Time means that we are invited to live the very life of Jesus in our daily lives: to bring his life into our homes, schools, sports fields, and workplaces. 

The first Sunday after Pentecost we celebrated Trinity Sunday. Trinity Sunday is a day that is granted to us by the Church to recall that greatest mystery and revelation of the nature of God – that God is love, one God in three persons joined in a bond of love. God created us in his image and likeness to live in a communion of love with one another. God invites us to live as he does, to love without exception. 

We may think that this is an impossible calling, but Saint Paul tells us in his letter to the Romans: “The love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Romans 5:5). We are capable of this sacrifice of love because we have received the “Spirit of Love,” and because Jesus has given us the example. Therefore, I invite all of us to be the first to love, to love everyone, those we like and those we do not like. We can call upon the grace of God to love even our enemies. 

This is what Jesus taught us. This is the life of the three persons of the Holy Trinity. This is the DNA of God and it has been placed in each one of us. 

Imagine what our families and our communities would be like if we try to live in this way! If we would allow the life of the Trinity to be among us everything would change, and peace would be established. 

Is this a dream? Yes, but when God sent his Son into the world, He taught us how to achieve peace by giving his life for all people. Jesus came to teach us the law of heaven – love. Let’s resolve to affirm human dignity through love. In this way we can capture what it means to be God’s “delight.” In this way we can make the months of Ordinary Time our most extraordinary yet.