Trinity and Humanity

From the Epistle reading for Ash Wednesday: See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!

This is our biggest problem. We just don’t see. Of course God is invisible – but that’s not the kind of seeing that St. Paul is talking about. He is talking about the kind of seeing that means perception, understanding, and insight into the world as it really is. With this spiritual sight we are able to perceive that God was, in Christ, reconciling the world to himself. With this spiritual sight we are able to know that Christ became sin and therefore we have become the righteousness of God.

Seeing that today is the day of salvation means that we are able to perceive our spouses, our children, our friends – and even our enemies – as they really are: beloved of the Father, reconciled in Christ, and expressing the fruit of the Holy Spirit. And we are able to perceive ourselves as we really are: beloved, reconciled, and bearing the fruit of the Spirit.

St. Paul seems to cry out in the Spirit to us: See! Open your eyes! Look around you and know that God is at work in every nook and cranny of life. His cry is the cry of Lent: the call to awaken out of our winter slumber, to open our eyes to the spring of Easter Day, and to see – to really see, and know, and understand – that God has not abandoned us. In Christ he has saved us from fear and blindness and death.