One of the most common
themes for songs, poems, music and film is love and relationships.
Even a film that is not specifically a romance will nearly always
have some relationship in it. It is what we are all about.
The vast majority of us want to be in relationships of some kind or
another. Even when youngsters sometimes get involved in very
violent gangs or religious cults, behind this is a need to belong, a
need for community. It is how we are made.
Do you ever wonder
why even after a loving relationship has broken down and caused
broken hearts and so much pain, before too long we want to go out and
find someone else to love? You would imagine that we would
learn from the first time and then never go near anyone again.
But that is not usually what happens. This is because we have
been made in such a way that we want to be in relationship and
meanwhile we turn to our friends or families: another kind of
relationship.
It is easy to think of God
as some kind of powerful Being or Spirit, who runs the universe all
alone. What is easy to overlook is the fact that God is not
alone. Within God there is a community, a relationship which is
based on love. So even if God never created the universe, God
is not by himself wondering what to do. The Holy Trinity is a
community of persons in a beautiful relationship with each other.
They love each other perfectly, they agree perfectly. They are
perfectly content. They don’t need anything else.
So then why did
God create the universe and create us? God created us for the
simple reason that God wants others to share in that same happiness.
What is this happiness? It is ultimately life in heaven, which
means being in the presence of God. And this means light,
happiness, beauty, goodness, harmony, freedom, love and being with
other people we love. This is what it is to be in God’s
presence. God has created us in his image and one of the things
that this means is that we also want to be in relationship.
Even if you are not married people are all the time in relationships
of one kind or another. And when we experience real love, or
very pure love, that is a tiny glimpse of what God is like. We
are created in such a way that we need to be in relationships of some
kind, or we will not grow.
The human family on
earth is also meant to be a picture or reflection of God. When
a marriage works, you have two people who love each other and the
fruit of their love can become a third person. That is exactly
what the Holy Trinity is: a community of persons based purely on
love. The love between the Father and the Son is another
person: the Holy Spirit. Although families don’t always work,
there are many families that do work, even though none are perfect.
In a marriage well lived a man and a woman mirror the Trinity and are
meant to be a reflection of God’s love for his creation.
God’s love for us
is not just a passive love either, as if God created us and then just
sat back to see what would happen. God is intimately interested
in us and in what we do, and that is also why God holds us
accountable for what we do. All of you parents know well that
part of loving your children means holding them accountable, and
confronting them when they do wrong. This is doing them a
favour. God does the same with us. That is why He asks us
to go to confession and acknowledge what we have done wrong. It
is for our own good and it is because He loves us. An
indifferent God would not bother.
God has created us
for happiness and God will bring us to that happiness as long as we
remain open to him.
‘God sent his Son
into the world, not to condemn the world, but so that through him the
world might be saved.’
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