by Fr Nino Vinciguerra

COVID 19 has made us rethink many things about our lifestyle and forced us to make some radical changes. However, it has also reinforced something we know is true and that is simply: human beings need one another, people need people. We’re all in this together has appeared everywhere, even in TV commercials.

While it is true some of us are more extravert than others and some of us get called ‘a people person’ more than others, we all like to have good friends and family around us. To gather with others is central to being a human person.  Experience tells us that all of us to some degree are social beings.

However, it is not only our experience that provides the above insight, we are social beings because of a most profound theological reason.

Namely, we are all created by a God who is a Trinity.

Pope Francis on the Feast of the Holy Trinity said: “Our being created in the image and likeness of the Trinity, calls us to understand ourselves as beings-in-relation, and to live interpersonal relationships in solidarity and reciprocal love,”

Yes, the Human Family loves being in a loving community because the God who made us is a loving ‘Divine Community’ and we are made in God’s image. God lives, loves, works and creates as a Trinity and for this very reason human beings have a deep need to belong to and work with each other.

We are at our best when we lovingly reach out to each other in love, especially to the lonely and vulnerable.

This love is especially seen, Pope Francis says, in our everyday relationships and he encourages us by the example of his own life. Importantly, he reminds us that the God who made us with this wonderful human quality of reaching out to others with compassion, understanding, forgiveness and healing, this God will and does sustain us with the strength of the Holy Spirit.

We’re all in this together not only applies to this moment of COVID 19, it applies to every moment of every day. We gather together as a parish, as families, friends, work colleagues, and as neighbours, because God has created us and calls us to do so.

Gathering, is the principle focus of our website for this month as we reflect on the truth:

“God never ceases to gather us together …”  so that we might love God and our neighbour. 

(Eucharistic Prayer III)

 

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