Happy Trinity Sunday! In today's Gospel, we hear Jesus declare together all three Persons of the Trinity. "Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit."

Made in the image and likeness of God, we are called to imitate God's immanence by giving and receiving love with one another in community. However, this is not limited only to those close to us, though that's where love often starts. We also imitate the economy of God when we go out, when we extend our love and care in a life-giving way. "Go therefore?" Every believer is sent on mission. Every believer is invited to follow Jesus and the Apostles "to the nations," to the margins, to the people who require a little extra reach. This could be a distant relative, the residents of your local homeless shelter or even the forgotten neighbor next door! When we love well, we create something beautiful-a relationship, a holy moment, a foretaste of heaven.

As one of the most important solemnities on the Church's calendar, it has a rich depth of meaning, but here is how Pope Benedict summarized it in 2012:

This Solemnity makes us remember and relive the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles and the other disciples gathered in prayer with the Virgin Mary in the Upper Room (cf. Acts 2:1-11). Jesus, risen and ascended into Heaven, sent his Spirit to the Church so that every Christian might participate in his own divine life and become his valid witness in the world. The Holy Spirit, breaking into history, defeats aridity, opens hearts to hope, stimulates and fosters in us an interior maturity in our relationship with God and with our neighbor.

This Sunday's Gospel is known as the "priestly prayer" of Jesus. The entire passage is Jesus entrusting us to the Father. "When I was with them I protected them ? I guarded them," Jesus says. He asks his Father, "Keep them in your name." In this prayer of Jesus, we see the paradoxical tension of our life as Christians in the world. He anticipates struggle for the believer. He describes it in strong words, words that could even appear frightening to the believer. "I gave them your word, and the world hated them." Not only that, but with our eyes on eternal life, we "do not belong to the world." And yet in the midst of those realities, Jesus doesn't take us out of the world. On the contrary, "as you sent me into the world, so I sent them into the world."

"I have called you friends." Authentic friendship can seem hard to come by these days, especially in our transient society. We move away from family, change jobs, switch parishes, and end up in entirely new places with entirely new people. When we look for new friends, we all have different qualities we're looking for. While we may think of certain standards of behavior necessary to be a "good" friend, we would hardly refer to them as rules or "commandments."