The Trinity is our Beginning and our End; the Most Blessed Trinity is our ultimate Goal.

June 15th, 2014 Solemnity of the Most Blessed Trinity.

What is the goal of this short life on earth? To know God, that in knowing Him we may love Him and in loving Him we may serve Him in order to be happy with Him in this life and forever in the life to come. In this concise and very true definition of the meaning of life, we discover how much we absolutely need the help of the Holy Spirit to lead us into the knowledge and love of God and even more so, how much we need His help in living this agape (sacrificial) love by serving God and serving our neighbor for love of God. This goal in life is what today’s Solemnity of the Blessed Trinity is all about. The Trinity is our Beginning and our End; the Most Blessed Trinity is our ultimate Goal

This short life is a preparation…a training ground if you will. Here we are to learn to love as God loves. If we are ever to be able to enter into heaven to be with God then we have to prepare ourselves for an eternity in His love by growing in and perfecting that love here on earth. Actually, we are called to really and truly begin our life in heaven while we are still on earth. We don’t have to wait until we die to reach heaven; we can begin to obtain it and participate in it right here and now.

I think most Christian miss this aspect of our life here on earth. Too often Christianity is seen as a religion that calls us to merely, ‘do that, don’t do that, and ‘be good’ in order that we can enter into heaven. But Again, Christianity call us to be more than just “good”, even pagans can be “good.” Christianity calls us to be nothing less than perfect, perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect.

This perfection doesn’t mean we become some kind of superhuman perfectionist in which everything we do is done with mathematical precision. But instead, it means that we are call to live this life on earth with perfect love, with and in God’s own love—for only God’s love can be perfect. We are called to live this life with Divine Love, with our human love elevated and united to Divine love. In other words, we are called to live this life united to God who is Love. This is to have life and to have it in abundance.

God’s love alive in our hearts, (with God own life alive in our hearts) and living our lives in obedience to Jesus’ command of love, we are able to reach our goal, which is heaven. It is when we love with Jesus’ love alive in us, as I said before, it is then that we don’t have to wait until we die to begin to experience the life of heaven, we have already begun to live the life of heaven within us.

Perhaps, to help us better understand what I am saying, we need to a look at our understanding of heaven. We have all heard of heaven described as a place of perfect beauty. There are those who claim to have been taken up into heaven during a near death experience. They have described heaven as a place of perfect happiness, where the trees, the grass and flowers are even more beautiful than here on earth. The problem with these descriptions is that heaven can’t be described, it is that which eye has not seen, ear as not heard nor as it even entered into the mind of man what God as prepared for those who love Him, love Him not just with words but with deeds. And so heaven cannot possibly be described; in fact, heaven is not even a place, it is a Person. Heaven is actually living in, sharing in God’s own Divine nature and God’s own divine love. Heaven is literally sharing in and participating in the very life of God Himself.

God, we have to remember however, is not an isolated being, He is a Trinitarian of persons so united in love that they are one. Where this is love there is unity; where there is perfect love there is perfect unity! God is a divine family, Father, Son and Holy Spirit united in perfect Love. In heaven we will live in unimaginable intimacy and union with this triune God for we shall become a part of His Divine family. But to become part of His family means that we will actually share in His divinity, we will become God. Not that we will cease to be creatures, but that we will share in God’s very nature, in His very being. And so you see then, Heaven is not a somewhere it is a Someone, it is to be immersed in the very love of the God who is Love itself. And so if God is Love, then to have God’s love alive in us can only mean that we have God Himself, Father Son and Holy Spirit alive and dwelling within us—the indwelling Trinity. And if God is within in us that means we have already begun to live the intimate life of heaven on earth, to live the intimate life of heaven in our souls here on earth.

The Church places today’s Solemnity after Pentecost in order to show how much we need the help of the Holy Spirit to enlighten our minds ever deeper into the great mystery of the Blessed Trinity. We need his divine help to understand that God is a Divine Family of Persons so totally united in love that they are one. Assisted by His divine power, the more we worship and adore this great mystery the more we will learn to love in order to share in the love between the Divine Persons who make up this Divine Family. In sharing in this Divine Love we are already in union with the Trinity.

We are, each one of us, called to participate and grow in this Trinitarian love through our faithfulness to God, to His commandments and by following the teachings of Jesus found in the Scriptures and in the Church. In other words, assisted by God’s Grace we must live our belief and love for the Trinity with our deeds. And through our love of the Trinity, assisted by the grace we receive in the Sacraments, we can then grow ever deeper in His love and in union with Him.

The mystery of he Trinity is the starting point of all revealed truth, the fountain from which proceeds supernatural life, and the goal in which 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. In living our lives according to this great truth, by the Holy Spirit which has been given to us, God’s love is poured into our hearts and we become living temples of the Blessed Trinity and so already here on earth begin to live the life of heaven. Here on earth we already become united to the Trinity and so participate in the inner life of the Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity. This is not pie-in-the-sky religion; this is the normal Christian life of intimacy with the Trinity in which every single man and woman is call to participate.

It is at the Holy Mass (receiving the capacity at our baptism) that we are called evermore deeply into the perfection of love, into God’s Love, into the Love between the three Persons of the Most Blessed Trinity. At the Holy Mass we are with the Virgin and the beloved Disciple. Jesus looks down from the cross, His throne of love, and asks, invites, each one of us to come up on the cross (the ultimate act of love) and love Him and our neighbor like this. Like John (in humility) we respond, “how Jesus, how can I love like that, to love like that is to love with a Divine Love and I only am capable of human love (and sometimes hardly capable of that)?”

Jesus then looks down and says, “Son behold, your mother! Mother behold your son!” It is then that we can begin, as did John, to offer our human love, human hearts, our fiat, our total sacrificial loving yes to Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary. She then places our yes (our hearts our whole being, all that we have and are) into the Heart of Jesus and He for His part accepts it as her own.

Jesus then says to us, “Not only will I help you love with a divine love, I will give you my very heart to do so… “The Body of Christ.” Through the offering of our Heart to Jesus through Mary, and to the extent we give ourselves fully (with the Virgin’s help as well), it is then that through the power of the Holy Spirit that our human nature, our human love is elevate to the Divine level, we become more and more united to the heart of Christ; our heart and His begin to beat as one. Christ comes and abides in us, lives in our, loves in us and with us. With Him, Jesus brings the Father and the Holy Spirit and God begins to live more perfectly in our souls, and where there is God there is perfect love. We then begin to live life on earth, life in an intimate union with the Goal of our existence, The Father, Son and Holy Ghost and we begin to share that intimate life with others.

Let us pray: O my God, Trinity whom I adore, help me forget myself entirely so to establish myself in you, unmovable and peaceful as if my soul were already in eternity. May nothing be able to trouble my peace or make me leave you, O my unchanging God, but may each minute bring me more deeply into your mystery! Grant my soul peace. Make it your heaven, your beloved dwelling and the place of your rest. May I never abandon you there, but may I be there, whole and entire, completely vigilant in my faith, entirely adoring, and wholly given over to your creative action. Our Lady, daughter of the Father, Mother of the Son, and spouse of the Holy Spirit, help us to offer ourselves in a sacrifice of love at this Holy Mass and at every Holy Mass, so that we, like you will live and lead others to live, in the Divine life and Love of the Most Blessed Trinity, beginning now, and fully in the life to come. Amen


Canticum Quicumque...Symbolum Athanasium

Whosoever willeth to be saved, * before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic faith.
Which faith except every one do keep whole and undefiled, * without doubt he shall perish eternally.
Now the Catholic faith is this, * that we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity.
Neither confounding the Persons, * nor dividing the substance.
For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, * and another of the Holy Ghost.
But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost is one, * the Glory Equal, the Majesty Co-Eternal.
Such as the Father is, such is the Son, * and such is the Holy Ghost.
The Father Uncreated, the Son Uncreated, * and the Holy Ghost Uncreated.
The Father Infinite, the Son Infinite, * and the Holy Ghost Infinite. * The Father Eternal, the Son Eternal, * and the Holy Ghost Eternal.
And yet they are not three Eternals, * but one Eternal.
As also they are not three Uncreated, nor three Infinites, * but One Uncreated, and One Infinite.
So likewise the Father is Almighty, the Son Almighty, * and the Holy Ghost Almighty.
And yet they are not three Almighties, * but One Almighty.
So the Father is God, the Son God, * and the Holy Ghost God.
And yet they are not three Gods, * but One God.
So the Father is Lord, the Son Lord, * and the Holy Ghost Lord.
And yet they are not three Lords, * but One Lord.
For, like as we are compelled by Christian truth to acknowledge every Person by Himself to be God and Lord, * so are we forbidden by the Catholic Religion to say, there be three Gods or three Lords.
The Father is made of none, * neither created, nor begotten.
The Son is of the Father alone: * not made, nor created, but begotten.
The Holy Ghost is of the Father, and the Son: * not made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding.
So there is One Father, not three Fathers; one Son, not three Sons; * one Holy Ghost, not three Holy Ghosts.
And in this Trinity is nothing afore or after, nothing is greater or less; * but the whole three Persons are Co-Eternal together, and Co-Equal.
So that in all things, as is aforesaid, * the Unity in Trinity, and the Trinity in Unity is to be worshipped.
He therefore that willeth to be safe, * let him thus think of the Trinity.
But it is necessary to eternal salvation, * that he also believe faithfully the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The right Faith therefore is, that we believe and confess, * that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and man.
God, of the Substance of the Father, Begotten before the worlds: * and Man, of the substance of His mother, born in the world.
Perfect God, Perfect Man, * of a reasoning soul and human flesh subsisting.
Equal to the Father as touching His Godhead, * inferior to the Father as touching His Manhood.
Who, although He be God and Man, * yet He is not two, but One Christ.
One, however, not by conversion of the Godhead into Flesh, * but by taking of the Manhood into God.
One altogether, not by confusion of Substance, * but by Unity of Person.
For as the reasoning soul and flesh is one man, * so God and man is One Christ.
Who suffered for our salvation, descended into hell, * rose again the third day from the dead.
He ascended into heaven, He sitteth on the right hand of the Father, God Almighty, * from whence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
At whose coming all men shall rise again with their bodies, * and shall give account for their own works.
And they that have done good shall go into life eternal, * but they that have done evil into eternal fire.
This is the Catholic Faith, * which except a man believe faithfully and firmly, he cannot be safe.
V. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, * and to the Holy Ghost.
R. As it was in the beginning, is now, * and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

Ant. Glory be to thee, O equal Trinity * one Deity, from before all ages, so now and for evermore.