Love, the Lover, and the Beloved—that’s what St. Augustine says the doctrine of the Trinity is all about. One in three, three in one; that’s how God reveals Godself to us. That is how we experience God: interrelationship, continuous flow, perichoresis—the divine dance. 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, God’s refining fire of Love, 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 recognize our uncleanness. But just as the Beloved didn’t leave Isaiah in despair, the Holy One cleanses us with God’s steadfast love so that our hearts are filled with gratitude, worship and praise. Filled with joy, 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 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 I am; send me.”