Paved Paradise
I was a weird little kid. I’ll own that.
“How weird,” you ask? Well, for starters I used to collect in a Mason jar all the little cardboard tabs that popped-off the merchandise that would hang on hooks at our local Kmart and Acme. Don’t ask me why.
It gets better: I used to beg to be taken to the local TV station in Philadelphia to meet the cast of Scooby Doo. (Yes, I now realize they are cartoons; apparently I didn’t grasp that concept earlier in life.)
And then there’s this: my infatuation with cars was such that my Dad would buckle me up in his own and take me for a spin through the JC Penny parking garage at the mall so that I could look at rows upon rows of 1970’s gas-guzzlers.
Told you I was weird. And God bless my father through all these phases of my early years: he never once let me face my weirdness alone.
On this Father’s Day weekend, we find ourselves celebrating Trinity Sunday, which at its heart is the recognition and celebration of a love that knows no bounds. A love that gives and receives, fully and equally. A love that sacrifices one for the other. A love so pure and real that only love comes from it.
I will be the first to claim that explaining the Trinity is never easy – in some ways, it will always be a mystery. But then again, so too is love.
At the same time, though, our Scriptures give us some clue as to the depth and richness of Trinity love, and what it means to live in the light of such an embrace.
Notice in the Gospel of John that everything Jesus says about His Father and the Spirit comes while seated around the Table where He has celebrated the Last Supper and offered His own Body and Blood as Food for the journey. “Take this, all of you, and eat – this is Me given for you.”
A Love poured out and yet remaining completely full and authentic. A Love that declares that everything held in the Heart is of the Father to be given back in return. Thus, when we see Jesus’ merciful and sacrificial love for us, we see the Father’s love for us. When we see Christ offer His Love back to God on our behalf, we see God receiving that love as if we offered it ourselves. And a love that gives and receives in such a way can only be called the Holy Spirit.
We hear so often these days the phrase: “Love is love is love,” meaning: it doesn’t matter who you love as long as you do.
But I think that expression misses the mark in so many ways – cheapens love, actually. Here’s why – and here’s what Trinitarian love teaches: love that is of God is never selfish. Love that is of God doesn’t come easily, nor is the sole focus one’s own personal feelings. In fact, both Paul and Jesus declare in today’s readings: You want love? Meet it at the Cross.
Our Lord at the Last Supper told it plainly: You won’t be able to bear all that I have to tell you, nor will it make sense until after you experience Calvary. It’s only in the light of the Cross where the power of the Spirit teaches us how to love and receive love.
The Spirit speaks through the lens of suffering offered to the Father for others.
Paul, too, echoes the sentiment to Romans when he writes to them: “We boast of our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, endurance brings character and proven character leads to Spirit-filled hope.” In other words, says the Apostle, love grows when we pick up our cross and offer it to the Father through the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit.
In God’s Wisdom, as spoken in Proverbs, Love always was and always will be when it gives itself away freely, no strings attached.
I think back to those days with my Dad, when I begged for drives to local parking lots to look at row after row of Fords and Chevys. Over and over, I pointed to vehicles that we had just passed three minutes prior and ask: “Cadi-yac?” (Cadillac) “Beetle?” And ever so patiently, my Dad would respond, affirming my answers or telling me the make and model I had guessed incorrectly.
I know now that there were 100 other things that he could have been doing those days. But herein lies the truth: he chose to love another over following his own pursuits. He gave, even when it wasn’t convenient. He sacrificed himself for love.
By driving around a parking lot? Yes. Exactly that.
At the heart of Trinity Sunday love is the recognition that we are invited through our Baptism to live fully in God’s sacrificial love, allowing His Spirit to pour itself into us so that we can pour that love beyond ourselves and back to Him. In a word, we are called to literally live the Love of Christ whom we receive in Eucharist, so that transformed into Him, we give ourselves away like Him: forgiving, serving, healing, putting our selfish-selves away in pursuit of the good of others. There, we find and love the Father.
Remember Paul: Cross-moments carried with and for Christ lead to endurance which lead to character and then to hope. When we learn love through Calvary – even the Calvary moments of life’s daily inconveniences and frustrations, we are learning to live and love in the Spirit of God.
Quite a few years ago now, I gathered at the bedside of a father who had just been placed on hospice care after a diagnosis of inoperable cancer. What impressed me so deeply that afternoon was that this Dad was fully-alert, not just hours away from passing into eternity. Perhaps equally significant was his desire to gather all his children and grandchildren around him as he was sacramentally prepared to meet our Lord. He knew not exactly when.
Twenty-seven people surrounded this Dad with love, and I watched him as he invited them into that sacred space: his eyes met theirs, and his face clearly showed the depths of his heart. He spent his life pouring himself out for those 27, and they knew it. Now, they returned to this man’s Calvary, and loved him with the love he first gave them.
At one point, a young grandson approached and put his own high school baseball cap on his grandfather’s head and kissed his cheek, offering these words: “Pop, I want to be just like you.” To which the patriarch of the family replied: “Never be afraid to sacrifice in love for those you love, and even those you don’t. Don’t make it all about you. Then you will know how to love courageously and unselfishly, and you’ll find God.”
It may have been the best definition of Trinity love that I ever heard.