The mystery of our faith which we celebrate today is one of the few rejected almost automatically by people who don\u2019t share the Christian belief. The idea of three persons in one God\u00a0 is used as \u201cevidence\u201d against faith. At the same time these \u201cprophets of unbelief\u201d produce some scientific theories which are seemingly unbelievable. Is it possible to understand the universe before time? What about the theory of many parallel universes existing beside each another like bubbles in bathing foam? Can we imagine that some atomic particles may be, at the same moment of time, in two completely different places within the atom? We deserve to be called fools if we reject scientific achievements just because we can\u2019t understand or imagine them.<\/p>\n
Nowadays philosophical and theological arguments concerning God and his existence don\u2019t stimulate feverish discussions like in the past. Busy with everyday problems we don\u2019t waste our time on impractical issues. When we bring religion into our lives this is rather like looking for answers and support in facing our common problems. Quite right! Jesus became man to help us in our ordinary lives and to lead us into the eternal one. His aim wasn\u2019t to provide material for academics to ponder over.<\/p>\n
Does it mean that what we believe in isn\u2019t important? Obviously it matters! When I\u2019m sick I take some medicines \u2013 not anything, but a particular one. Wrong drugs cannot help in the least; they can kill. Something similar happens if we believe in the \u00a0wrong doctrine: it does not help in the least; it can kill. Religious fanatics and religiously disappointed people are two opposite extremes of a mistaken religion. For the first, religion justifies everything, even murder. For the last, religion should make their lives nice and smooth, but surely this never happens.<\/p>\n
So, what practical meaning does the mystery of the Trinity have in our common, ordinary lives? If any… The Trinity is a community where there exists \u00a0unconditional and perfect love between the Father and the Son; their love is so great that it\u2019s a person: the Holy Spirit. Hard to imagine? Think about a family: the wife and the husband love each other and their love becomes a person in their child. The power of their love takes on the form of another individual. My answer to the question about the practical meaning of the Trinity is this: we need to be reminded that our common, ordinary love towards one another should be the same as the love within the Trinity \u2013 great and unconditional. And a word of consolation for everybody who can\u2019t love like this: it is our aim to achieve that love some time in the future. But don\u2019t wait too long for that time to come: start perfecting your love today \u2013 your family and friends will soon (appreciate this and) show their gratitude.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The mystery of our faith which we celebrate today is one of the few rejected almost automatically by people who don\u2019t share the Christian belief. The idea of three persons in one God\u00a0 is used as \u201cevidence\u201d against faith. At the same time these \u201cprophets of unbelief\u201d produce some scientific theories which are seemingly unbelievable. Is it possible to understand the universe before time? What about the theory of many parallel universes existing beside each another like bubbles in bathing foam? Can we imagine that some atomic particles may be, at the same moment of time, in two completely different places within the atom? We deserve to be called fools if we reject scientific achievements just because we can\u2019t understand or imagine them. Nowadays philosophical and theological arguments concerning God and his existence don\u2019t stimulate feverish discussions like in the past. Busy with everyday problems we don\u2019t waste our time on impractical issues. When we bring religion into our lives this is rather like looking for answers and support in facing our common problems. Quite right! Jesus became man to help us in our ordinary lives and to lead us into the eternal one. His aim wasn\u2019t to provide material for academics to ponder over. Does it mean that what we believe in isn\u2019t important? Obviously it matters! When I\u2019m sick I take some medicines \u2013 not anything, but a particular one. Wrong drugs cannot help in the least; they can kill. Something similar happens if we believe in the \u00a0wrong doctrine: it does not help in the least; it can kill. Religious fanatics and religiously disappointed people are two opposite extremes of a mistaken religion. For the first, religion justifies everything, even murder. For the last, religion should make their lives nice and smooth, but surely this never happens. So, what practical meaning does the mystery of the Trinity have in our common, ordinary lives? If any… The Trinity is a community where there exists \u00a0unconditional and perfect love between the Father and the Son; their love is so great that it\u2019s a person: the Holy Spirit. Hard to imagine? Think about a family: the wife and the husband love each other and their love becomes a person in their child. The power of their love takes on the form of another individual. My answer to the question about the practical meaning of the Trinity is this: we need to be reminded that our common, ordinary love towards one another should be the same as the love within the Trinity \u2013 great and unconditional. And a word of consolation for everybody who can\u2019t love like this: it is our aim to achieve that love some time in the future. But don\u2019t wait too long for that time to come: start perfecting your love today \u2013 your family and friends will soon (appreciate this and) show their gratitude.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermon","category-year-c"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1488\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}