Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ Jesus, The month of May is dedicated to increased devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Let us ask Jesus and St. Joseph to teach us to practice great love for the Immaculate Heart of Mary! This Sunday we celebrate the mystery of the Holy Trinity! This week I share with you a meditation on the Holy Trinity. I encourage you to reflect over this message a few times this week: “The Blessed Trinity – Solemnity: Today the Church celebrates the feast of the Blessed Trinity. The liturgy of the Holy Mass invites us to loving union with each of the Three Divine Persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This feast was established for the Latin Church by Pope John XXII, to be celebrated on the Sunday after the coming of the Holy Spirit, which is the last of the mysteries of our salvation. Today we can say many times, savoring it, the prayer: Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. Revelation of the mystery of the Trinity: ‘Tibi laus, Tibi Gloria, Tibi gratiarum actio:’ to You be praise, to You be glory, to You be thanksgiving, world without end, O Blessed Trinity! (Trisagium Angelicum) Having completed the commemoration of the mysteries of salvation, from Christ‟s birth in Bethlehem to the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the liturgy now invites us to contemplate the central mystery of our Faith: the Blessed Trinity, the ineffable mystery of God‟s own inner life and the fountain of all Gifts and Graces.
In His infinitely wise providence God gradually revealed to mankind His inmost Being, that is, as He is in Himself, and not just as the Cause of created things. In the Old Testament He makes known above all His oneness, and His complete transcendence from the world as its Creator and Lord. We learn that God, unlike the world, is uncreated; that He is not limited in space (He is immense) or in time (He is eternal); and that His power knows no limits (He is omnipotent). Know therefore this day, and lay it to your heart, says the liturgy, that the Lord is God in Heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other. (First Reading, Year B: Deut. 4:39) Only You, Lord, are God. The Old Testament proclaims above all the greatness of Yahweh, the one God, Creator and Lord of the universe. But He is also revealed as the Shepherd Who seeks His flock, Who looks after His own indulgently and tenderly, Who forgives and forgets the frequent infidelities of His chosen people. At the same time we get glimpses of the paternity of God the Father, of the Incarnation of God the Son (Whose advent is foretold by the prophets), and of the action of the Holy Spirit, Who vivifies all things. But it is Christ Who reveals to us in all its fullness the inner working of the Trinitarian mystery and calls us to participate in it. No one knows the Father except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him. (Matt. 11:27) It is He Who speaks to us of the co-existence of the Holy Spirit with the Father, and Who sends Him to the Church to sanctify it until the end of time; and He it is who reveals to us the perfect oneness of life of the Three Divine Persons. (Gospel, Year C: John 16:12-15) The mystery of the Trinity is the starting point of all revealed Truth, the fountain from which proceeds supernatural Life, and the goal whither we are headed: we are children of the Father, brothers and co-heirs with the Son, and continually sanctified by the Holy Spirit to make us ever more and more resemble Christ; accordingly, we deepen in the understanding of our divine filiation and become living temples of the Blessed Trinity. Since it is the central mystery of the Church‟s Faith, the Blessed Trinity is continually invoked in the liturgy. We were baptized in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: and in Their Name also are our sins forgiven. We begin and end many prayers by invoking the Father, through Jesus Christ, in the unity of the Holy Spirit. Often during the day we say the prayer: Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. God is my Father! If you mediate on it, you will never let go of this consoling thought! Jesus is my dear Friend (another thrilling discovery) Who loves me with all the divine madness of His Heart. The Holy Spirit is my Consoler, Who guides my every step along the road. Consider this often: you are God’s - and God is yours. (J. Escriva, The Forge, 2) The soul’s relationship with each of the Three Divine Persons: The divine Life in which we are called to participate is extraordinarily bounteous indeed. The Father eternally engenders the Son, and the Father and the Son together breathe forth the Holy Spirit. This generation of the Son and the spiration of the Holy Spirit is not something that took place at a particular moment in time and gave rise once and for all to the Three Divine Persons. No. These „processions‟, as the theologians call them, are eternal. In the case of human generation, a father begets a son but thereafter both father and son continue to exist independently of the act of begetting, even if one of them later dies. The man who is father is not just „father‟: both before and after begetting he is „man‟. In God, by contrast, the essence of the Father consists in giving life to the Son: this is what determines Him as a Divine Person really distinct from the others. Among human beings, the son who is begotten has a separate existence from his father; but the essence of the Only-begotten Son of God consists precisely in being Son. (cf. J. M.
Pero-Sanz, The Athanasian Symbol, Madrid, 1976) And it is through Him, making ourselves like Him by the constant impulse of the Holy Spirit that we obtain and grow in the awareness of our divine filiation. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of sonship. When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is the Spirit Himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ. (Second Reading, Year C: Rom. 8:14-17) Among men, paternity and filiation are circumstances that fall short of defining the subject completely; but in God, paternity, filiation and spiration constitute the entire Being of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. (A Carthusian, The Trinity and Interior Life, Madrid, 1958) From the moment man is first called to participate in the divine Life through the Grace of Baptism, he is destined to participate in it ever more and more; along this path he must journey continually. From the Holy Spirit we constantly receive impulses, motions and inspirations to encourage us to travel faster along the way that leads to God, and to revolve in an ever tighter „orbit‟ around Our Lord. Our heart now needs to distinguish and adore each one of the divine Persons. The soul is, as it were, making a discovery in the supernatural life, like a little child opening his eyes to the world about him. The soul spends time lovingly with the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and readily submits to the work of the lifegiving Paraclete, Who gives Himself to us without the slightest merit on our part, bestowing on us His gifts and the supernatural virtues! We have run ‘like the deer, longing for flowing streams’ (Ps. 41:2), thirsting, our lips parched and dry. We want to drink at this source of living water. All day long, without doing anything strange, we move in this abundant, clear spring of fresh waters that leap up to eternal Life (cf. John 4:14). Words are not needed, because the tongue cannot express this wonder. The intellect grows calm. One does not reason; one looks! And the soul breaks out once more into song, a new song, because it feels and knows it is under the loving gaze of God, all day long. (J. Escriva, Friends of God, 306-307) Praying to the Blessed Trinity: The Blessed Trinity dwells in the Christian soul as in a temple. St. Paul explains that God’s Love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit Who has been given to us. (Second Reading, Year C: Rom. 5:5) And there, in the inner recesses of the soul, we learn to be intimate with God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit. You, O Eternal Trinity, are a deep ocean, into which the more I penetrate, the more I discover, and the more I discover, the more I seek You (St. Catherine of Siena, Dialogue, 167), we say in the intimacy of prayer. My God, Blessed Trinity! Draw from my poor being what most contributes to Your glory, and do with me what You wish both now and in eternity. May I no longer place between us any voluntary hindrance to Your transforming action… Second by second, with a forever ‘actual’ intention, I desire to offer You all that I am and all that I have. Make my poor life, in intimate union with the Word Incarnate, an unceasing sacrifice of glory to the Blessed Trinity… My God, how I wish to glorify You! Oh, if only in exchange for my complete immolation, or for any other condition, it were in my power to enkindle the hearts of all Your creatures and the whole of creation in the flames of Your love, How I would desire to do so! May at least my poor heart belong to You completely, may I keep nothing for myself nor for creatures, not even a single heartbeat. May I have a burning love for all mankind, but only with You, through You and for You… I desire above all to love You with the heart of St. Joseph, with the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and with the adorable Heart of Jesus; and finally, to submerge myself in that infinite ocean, that abyss of fire that consumes the Father and the Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit, and love You with Your own infinite love… O Eternal Father, beginning and end of all things! Through the Immaculate Heart of Mary I offer You Jesus, Your Word Incarnate, and through Him, with Him and in Him, I want to repeat ceaselessly this cry that rises from the bottom of my soul: Father, glorify continually Your Son, that Your Son may glorify You, in the unity of the Holy Spirit for ever and ever. (John 17:1). O Jesus, Who said: ‘No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him’ (Matt. 11:27), ‘Show us the Father, and we shall be satisfied!’ (John 14:8) And You, O Spirit of Love! ‘Teach us all things’ (John 14:26) and ‘form Jesus with Mary in us’ (Gal. 4:19) until we ‘become perfectly one’ (John 17:23) in ‘the bosom of the Father’ (John 1:18). Amen. (Sister Elizabeth of the Trinity, Elevation to the Blessed Trinity in Complete Works, Burgos 1985)” (From: In Conversation with God by Francis Fernandez) Through the intercession of Mary, the Mother of God, St. Joseph, and St. Columbkill, may God grant us the grace of a great love for each of the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity! In Christ through Mary, Fr. Kasel
Comments