Gospel Reflection on John 3:16-18

May 31, 2026

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. He who believes in him is not condemned; he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.

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How do we picture God, not physically, but as someone next to us who sees us, who knows us, who is about to speak to us? What do we expect to hear from God?

Too often we think of God as a moralist, someone cold, someone who uses power arbitrarily to control and punish. But these are defective images of God.

For the story of our beginnings found in Genesis, the problem begins when Eve began to form a flawed idea of God. She stopped believing that God was loving and truthful. If we have a wrong name of God in our soul, the consequences are enormous. A name is not just abstract information. To us a name may seem only a word that acts as a sort of code for recognizing something. But knowing the name of God means having truly understand who God is, and this is something decisive.

In the Bible, a name is linked to the deepest identity of someone. If God is not father, then who is God? If God is not tenderness, what remains? If God does not love us unconditionally, then we are alone; we must earn the right to exist and survive on our own strength. This leads to an insecure existence derived from an image of God alien to love.

In the last part of the last century, an entire generation left the church because God had been presented to them for a long time as a moralist. And that's the process of dechristianization. People did not want to stay with the God so unpleasant, so petty. This process is still going on. We turn God into a moralist and use God to scold people. Is it any surprise that they flee the church having to scold and board?

We've hidden the true nature of God underneath our anxieties, our efforts to govern the lives of people. The truth is that God wants our freedom and wants to show us love without limits.

In the Gospel passage this Sunday, we get a startling glimpse into the real life or name of God, the corrective to the false perspective of the serpent. It should be a wake-up call for all of us. We see the covenant renewed as the name of God is proclaimed and we discover upon reading it that God's name is mercy. It is essential that we believe in the name of this God. God loves us so much he sacrificed his own child for us. We discover God is not a cold creator who uses power arbitrarily: God is a loving, providential, mother-father. God self-emptied into the explosion that became the universe because God could not help outpouring.

The church proclaims the feast of the Trinity because she's had an experience of who God is.

God is not an intellectual thing, a philosophical deduction, but an experience and adventure of liberation, of mercy, and salvation.

And once we know the love God has for us, we no longer need to justify ourselves. God' Son empties himself for us even as we crucify him. And the Holy Spirit speaking in our hearts gives us the intuition that God is perennially loving and merciful.

And once that intuition takes hold in our hearts, then we begin to have the desire to live life to the fullest: the life lived by the children of God.

On this feast of Trinity, let us look at who God really is: God is a loving, mother-father. God is providential. God is not cold. God does not use power arbitrarily. God sent the Christ who loves us and gives his life for us.

And the Holy Spirit enables us to see day to day the loving and deeply caring nature of God.

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https://youtu.be/EpD9bsydLDk