My dear brothers and sisters, the late Pope Benedict XVI's first encyclical was entitled, "God Is Love" (1 John 4:8). It's something we have all heard many times. In fact, we may have become so used to it that we don't remember how revolutionary and unique that conception of God really is.
There are many religions in the world, and many of them have come to understand that God is good. But almost all of them start with man's search for God. And because human nature is limited, that search can only arrive to a limited view of God.
Christianity is different. Christianity is about God's search for man. When Jesus Christ came to earth, he came to rescue the fallen human race from evil and bring it to the joys of eternal life. And so, in Christianity, we have the privilege of receiving God's own revelation of himself - he shows us, in Christ, who he is and what he is like. And his most fundamental and essential characteristic is love. Not power, not knowledge, not transcendence - but love.
This explains why Jesus came to earth in the first place: "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life" (John 3:16).
And this also explains what the Holy Trinity is all about. If God were solitary, how could his nature be love? Love always means relationship and self-giving. God can only be love if he is both one and three: three divine persons, each one fully divine, living from all eternity in an unbreakable unity of mutual love.
God is love. In other words, God is one, as the Catechism puts it, but not solitary (CCC 254).
Theology of the Body
The Catechism teaches us that "The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of the Christian faith and of Christian life" (CCC 234). This is because we are created in the image and likeness of God, as the Bible tells us.
Therefore, if God's essential nature is love, so is ours! We have a built-in openness to other people. We are incomplete by ourselves. We are created to give ourselves to others and to receive others.
This is the real meaning behind human sexuality - the theological meaning of our bodies. God created us male and female. When a husband and wife come together in marriage, they become one flesh; they give themselves to each other completely, holding nothing back.
This is an image of the love of the Holy Trinity. The Father, from all Eternity, loves the Son and pours himself into the Son, and the Son loves the Father in return. And that mutual love is so complete that the Holy Spirit proceeds from it.
Every human family is an image of this Trinitarian love. The husband gives himself without limits to the wife, and the wife receives him and gives herself in return, without limits. And it is through that total love of mutual self-giving that God brings a new life into the world: a child, called to eternal friendship with God. This is the true sacredness and beauty of married love, of sexual love.
This is why the Church never wavers in issues of sexual morality: human sexuality has a deep theological meaning that we must all honour if we are to live life to the full.
Any time we separate sexual love from that meaning, we not only abuse our very selves, but we also rebel against God, who has created us in his image: the image of self-forgetful love.
Praying Like a Christian
This mysterious and wonderful doctrine about God, that he is both unity and trinity, is called by the Catechism "the central mystery of Christian faith and life" (CCC 234).
Everything in Christianity depends on this mystery, which we can begin to understand in this life because God has chosen to reveal it to us. This helps us understand why Christian prayer is so unique.
Christian prayer is a relationship, a heart-to-heart conversation. Our most basic prayer begins, "Our Father." Since God is love, three persons sharing one divine nature, he is personal. He is not a vague, faceless force that we try to tap into with strange rituals, symbols, dances, or ceremonies. He is not some distant, impenetrable being who simply tolerates our existence.
God, as Christ has shown us, is close to us, understands us, cares about us, and invites us into his friendship. In fact, he even adopts us into his family. That is why we receive a Christian name at baptism. And that is why we don't just go off on our own to meditate on Sundays, but we come together to worship Our Father, as members of his family, the Church.
As a result, whenever we pray, we should approach God with confidence and sincerity, as a child approach loving and wise parents. This applies both to personal prayer, and liturgical, community prayer.
The beautiful liturgy of the Church is full of rituals and symbols, but for us, as Christians, they are all meant to remind us of the beauty of his love, and the great dignity we have received through becoming his children. As we profess our faith today in the one, true God, the Most Holy Trinity, let's take those reminders to heart.