Love, the Lover, and the Beloved—that’s what St. Augustine says the doctrine of the Trinity is all about. That’s how God reveals Godself to us. That is how we experience God in our lives.

As we come to know God, the Father, intimately as Abba—Daddy, loving and caring parent, nurturer, the protecting one, we are led into a deeper relationship with God the Son, Jesus Christ, savior, healer, brother, friend, the one who has gone before us to pave the way, by God, the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, the Paraclete, the Spirit of Truth, the inspiring one, the empowering one.

It is out of God’s self-giving love that God creates, redeems, and sanctifies us and makes us children of God. As we experience the power of God’s love working in our lives, transforming us into the image of Christ, we are awakened to God’s majestic holiness, to our patent unworthiness. We know how Isaiah felt when he “saw” the Lord; we too recognize our uncleanness. But just as the Lord didn’t leave Isaiah in despair, the Lord cleanses us, reconciles us with God’s steadfast love so our hearts are filled with gratitude, worship, and praise. We want to glorify God with all that is within us, to join the heavenly host in singing “Holy, holy, holy!”

In an unending cycle of giving and receiving, God’s love is always reaching out to us, drawing us ever deeper into the dance of God’s unifying love, so that we may incarnate that love in the world, so that we can be his hands and feet and voice wherever we are, so that we delightedly join Isaiah in saying, “Here am I; send me.”