Today we celebrate the feast of the Holy Trinity – Father, Son and Spirit – the inclusive God who is three in one and one in three – a God who is a community of love.

This God of love desires, as Jesus tells Nicodemus, that all might be saved and no one be condemned or excluded. Therefore he sent his Son, not to condemn but to save.

He desires that everyone should experience the fullness of life, not tied up in bondage, not experiencing ourselves as lost and condemned, but as loved unconditionally. God loves us and forgives us and desires that we love and forgive ourselves, and others in like manner. He is an inclusive God.

Yet in the world of Christianity – a world that speaks about the unconditional love and forgiveness of God, we can be so exclusive. We judge and we condemn so readily those who are not like us in our families, our communities, our parishes, and our country.

I remember the lesson my father taught me on his dying bed. He was an alcoholic ever since we knew him, and in his drunken state he could be very abusive.

My heart was filled with a lot of resentment towards him. However, when I came to know the love and forgiveness of God for me, I knew I had to forgive him and so I wrote a letter to this effect.

I then bought him a St Joseph Prayer book as a gift. But I never knew whether he used it or not. Whenever we got together to pray as a family, daddy would make a speech, which didn't seem to me to be prayer. Therefore, I felt that he didn't have a close relationship with God – he didn't know the God of love that I knew.

In the hospital, after his leg had been amputated, whenever I went to see him. I could sense that he wanted to pray and not just talk. And so I would read the psalms and other scripture texts for him. But soon I realised that he was more familiar with the traditional prayers of the Church, and I started to say the Rosary with him.

Then I remembered the prayer book I had given him and I asked him: “Daddy would you like me to bring the prayer book for you?” and he said, “Yes”. So I brought the prayer book and I asked him: “Is there a particular prayer that you would like to pray? And he said “yes” and he showed it to me and we prayed it together.

It was a most beautiful prayer professing his love of God and asking for God's forgiveness and salvation. What surprised me even more was that he knew it by heart.

That was a moment of conversion and repentance for me because I realised that I had judged him wrongfully all the time. He knew his God and his God knew him and he died in peace with God.

This is the inclusive God whose desire is that all be saved – the God who asks us to be inclusive in our communities, our parishes and in our families. Each one of us is given to our country, our family, our parish community as gift.

We are called to love and serve and to help those who are lost – to challenge not condemn. We are called o give “our only son” – to make the ultimate sacrifice that others might come to conversion and new life.

“ God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes may not be lost but may have eternal life .”

Father, we thank you for your inclusive love and your desire that everyone who believes might have the fullness of life and that no one might be lost.

We thank you for those persons who have drawn us into your Trinitarian love where we have experienced ourselves as included and loved and forgiven.

We thank you for sending us to love and serve our brothers and sisters. Fill us with your love and compassion that we might bring life to those who are lost.

We ask your forgiveness for our readiness to judge and condemn and exclude those who are not like us – the vagrant, persons with HIV/AIDS, those who are mentally ill or drug addicts.

Help us to be conscious of the fact that you did not send us to condemn others but to encourage them to receive your healing and freedom through our love and openness to them.

In these days when we seem to be losing our way, we pray for our country Trinidad and Tobago named after our loving God.

We pray that we might desire to become what we are named. That we may move out of the hate and revenge and violence to a place of love, forgiveness and inclusiveness.

Linda Wyke, a former Archdiocesan Director of Religious Education, is an active member of the parish of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, San Fernando .