Advent and the Tenacity of the Holy Trinity

In my daily journey’s I enjoy looking for events which could be a great photograph.  One theme recurs to me time and time is the tenacity of life to grow where it just should not.  Life sprouts forth from parking lot cracks, granite rock faces, and dry deserts where you scratch your head and ask how and why?  Each time I see life exist where it should be futile, I am served up a reminder of the tenacity of the Holy Trinity in reaching out to us to join them in our daily and eternal journey.

               On a hot summer day, you stand in a parking lot.  You feel the hellish burning heat reflected off the asphalt.  It is a manmade feature on the planet serving a valid purpose, but comes with its own downside in this fallen man influenced world.  Yet as you walk in and out of that lot you see grass and weeds poking their stems as high as possible despite lack of a deep soil or multiple run ins with car tires.  Is this not a reflection of how God’s love comes through the offering of his son to heal original sin?  He came from what the world calls total insignificance.  Jesus preached the word and then was threatened, beaten and crucified despite his innocence.  Yet the same Jesus rose again to preach some more.

               When climbing a mountain, you see a massive tree on the side of a great cliff as you ascend at great effort to see reach your destination.  You see its massive roots wrapped around outcroppings and separating fissures to reach virgin water and soil deposits.  Is this not like how the word of Christ when preached and evangelized by deeds wraps around our jagged personality flaws perfectly?  Is this not the image of Christ digging into our conscience to build our faith in God to survive a tempest from hell through the sacraments of our faith?  Is this not Christ touching John the Baptist in the darkness of the Elizabeth’s womb, and launching the prophet with zeal on his mission for life?

               In my years in the high desert of Fort Irwin, I saw with amazement donkeys surviving in the wild by constant movement from remote water source to water source.  I could barely fathom how they knew which way to go, yet they thrived in good health on that desert floor.  Now almost twenty years since those days, I can see how this points me to the guidance of the Holy Spirit in my life.  The Holy Spirit held my hand through heights of success to the throws of crushing defeat, through good health and bad for my clan, through valleys of faithless people shooting arrows at me from all sides, through my failures due to my own faults, and into the arms of God filled friends to heal my wounds.

               The tenacity of the Holy Trinity is a blessing for each of us, and perfectly explained in this Advent season.  We have the plan for our salvation created at the beginning of time coming to fulfillment because the Trinity never stops working on this world.  God creates life and a plan to atone for our sins, incarnates the Word of God in Jesus to allow God the Son to physically walk the earth with his cross for our sins, and then God the Holy Spirit leads the Holy Family through dangerous deserts on a Donkey to the safety of a cave to prepare for a birth.  This tenacious Trinity can easily be overlooked in the bustle of our lives.  However, when we embrace the Trinity in the moments it reveals itself in our lives we are directed to eternal life with God.