Suffering, injustice, hatred, and fear confront us daily. They have entered our homes. They have entered our hearts.

How can our world be healed? How can we be made whole again?

There is but one answer.

‘’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” (Jn 3:16).

Two thousand years ago, great love compelled God to send his son into the world to save us from ourselves. And his son died a horrible death to show us how to love each other.

How do we respond to the suffering, injustice, hatred, and fear surrounding us?

With love.

Love in the form of a cross.

We talk about love all the time. We use it to describe our favorite food, books, or travel destinations. Too infrequently do we talk about love and the pain it brings—the sacrifice and the suffering.

Our world needs to see love in the form of the cross. This is the only way to heal our brokenness.

Some of us will be asked to carry burdens as heavy as a cross like so many of the saints we admire. But, for many of us, the pain and sacrifice and suffering of cruciform love look like the daily struggle of being a good wife, mother, daughter, friend, co-worker, and neighbor.

It is in these mundane relationships that we are asked by St. Paul to “mend [our] ways, encourage one another, agree with one another, live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with [us]” (2 Cor 13: 11-12).

As we strive to accomplish the daily, mundane duties of love as well as the truly heavy ones, we can rely on the strength of the Holy Trinity, the strength of LOVE itself! The Lord will not deny us his very own strength if we but say: “O Lord, do come along in our company. [We are] indeed a stiff-necked people; yet pardon our wickedness and sins, and receive us as your own” (Ex 34:8-9).

Today, on Trinity Sunday, we celebrate our life in the Trinity—a life made possible by the great sacrifice of love—love in the form of a cross.