A Note From Father Eickhoff

June 15, 2025

I bought a flashlight from a manufacture website just one time and ever since I have received marketing emails from them announcing new products. This morning, I received an email announcing their latest flashlight – a small handheld model – which is capable of outputting over 5800 lumens with a range of almost half a mile. That is a really bright flashlight. Now, I am fascinated by flashlights, but I have to ask myself: what use do I have for such a flashlight? None really, but I am still thinking of clicking the “buy button.”

A flashlight can illuminate many fascinating things that are normally hidden from our sight, but one thing that it cannot illuminate is the true nature of God. For this purpose we rely not on technological means, but instead we look to the God’s own revelation of His true nature that is laid out for us in Holy Scripture and the teaching of the Church. It is through this revelation that we understand two crucial details about God that are vital to our Christian faith. The first detail is that God is not an impersonable being. As if God were some energy field or force or whatever you wish to call some unknowing, uncaring substrate that underlies existence. Instead, while God certainly underlies all of existence, He certainly does know all that is and more importantly He cares for all that is. He wants a personal relationship with us, His creation. Second, God exists as three persons in one godhead. That is to say that we know God to be God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

It is this second revelation that the Church draws our attention to today as it is the Feast of the Holy Trinity. This knowledge of God as being three persons in one God is the single most fundamental cornerstone of the Christian Faith. Through this knowledge we gain an extraordinary insight into the inner most working and being of God. We understand that the very nature of God is built upon being in relationship with each person of the Holy Trinity. And since relationship is at the very heart of God, this same desire for relationship extends outward to all of creation. Especially those parts of creation that are made in the very image of God: human beings. We as human beings are meant to be in relationship with God. And this relationship is not meant to be some bland, tenuous connection; but rather is meant to be a relationship as strong and as binding as those relationships that unite God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. We are meant to love God in the same sense that each person of the Holy Trinity loves each other.

Yours in Christ,

Fr. Stephen Eickhoff
Pastor