Family of God

Our God is the only God who is a family of Three— the Holy Trinity.

This teaching of the Catholic Church, inspires many theological works, one of which is our Holy Father, John Paul II's magnificent Theology of the Body. I am now reading Scott Hahn's "First Comes Love".

Before I start writing this piece of short reflection, I'd like to state that I don't intend to start a proper blog— with regular postings and comments and all those. This is solely intended to contain my reflections on readings, or occurences in life where the theology illuminates the economy of God.

One day i must write a thank-you letter to Dr. Scott Hahn; it is through his writings that I first became aware of theology. No I don't mean theology as a branch of study, but theology as in the learning of who God is, to me. After many years of convent education, I still did not know, til today, that in Genesis, God revealed himself to be a plural God. In the Gospel, Jesus revealed the name of God, that is, "the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit."

The connection between the Trinitarian God and the elevated status of sex and the family in the Catholic Church was made explicitly. I had never questioned this connection, but this simply means that when I fully accept this doctrine, I do not quite feel the elation that'd be felt by one who did not use to believe. Hahn's book restored that sense of awe for me.

I experienced a renewal of love when I read and understood for the first time how God sets Himself to be our Father, and receive us into His Family via a covenant, the last and the only one necessary of which, is Jesus Himself. Hahn wrote what the Hebrew notion of family is, why living members of a clan are considered mere trustees of the family— comprised of past, present and future generations, land, rights, titles and name. There's a sense of being completely loved and completely owned, when one belongs to a family as described. In today's situation, of course that view is becoming less practised.

Hahn made a memorable point: leading a Christian life means to participate in the life of the Trinity. "We are empowered to live and love in a godlike manner".

St. Irenaeus wrote: "It was for this end that the Word of God was made man, and He who was the Son of God became the Son of Man, that man, having been taken into the Word, and receiving adoption, might become the son of God."

How amazing it is that we, such sinful and lowly creatures, should be so much loved by our Father!