How many times in your life do you think that you have made the sign of the cross?
This simple gesture, using the names we have for God as Father, as Son, as Holy Spirit, summarizes the primary ways that God shows Himself to us.
The sign of the cross is God’s way of showing that God is love.
Some have a wrong impression of God as fearsome, as vindictive.
Archie Bunker’s God is like that, because Archie creates God in his own image, like himself.
At a dinner scene, Archie was insisting that everyone, including his agnostic son-in-law, Mike, “Thank God for this food which comes from Him.”
Mike suggests it would be appropriate to ask God to lower His prices.
This is blasphemy for Archie who says in anger, “This here is a Christian, God-fearin’ home, and when you’re sittin’ at this table, you’re gonna be just as afraid of God as the rest of us!”
What can keep you fearful is sin ... a turn, turning away from God.
It is precisely because of sin that, out of love, God as Father, sent His son to save us from sin through the power of the Holy Spirit. The sign of the cross reminds us that we are in the circle of God’s love.
The time we live in is what Blessed Pope John Paul II has called the “culture of death.” We get caught in a circle, not of love, but of the habit of sin.
It is this circle of sin out of which God the Father wants to bring us through His son, in the Holy Spirit.
“Affliction produces endurance, and endurance, proven character, and proven character, hope, and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”
Here are five chapters of a change of attitude:
1 I walk down the street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in.
I am lost ... I am helpless.
But it isn’t my fault. It takes forever to find my way out.
2 I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don’t see it. I fall in again. I can’t believe I’m in the same place.
But it isn’t my fault. And it still takes a long time to get out.
3 I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there. I fall in ... it’s a habit. But my eyes are open.
I know where I am and it is my fault. I get out immediately.
4 I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.
5 I walk down a different street.
To understand the Trinity is to understand your relationship with God and with others. When you do you cannot walk down the same street, the same circle of sin because you wisely build your life around God as your way of living in the name of...