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...

Solemnity of the Most Blessed Trinity. May 22nd, 2016

Today, the Solemnity of the Holy Trinity, is the first Sunday after Pentecost, the Great Fifty Days of Easter. We are back to what is called “Ordinary Time” in the Church’s calendar. But there really is no “ordinary time” in the life of the Church, because a single Holy Mass offered anytime of the year is of infinite value. The Holy Mass is the primary source of the Living Waters of God’s Love, of His Mercy and Grace.

Every Mass brings down upon us the infinite treasures of grace won for us by Jesus’ sacrificial offering of Himself on Calvary; every Holy Mass allows us to adore and receive Jesus in His human resurrected, ascended, glorified, body, blood, soul and divinity; and every Holy Mass gives us the opportunity to come in intimate contact with the entire Blessed and Holy Trinity so that we can become more perfectly united to the Son and through the Son to the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit.

Our Final Goal in this life is in fact, the Blessed Trinity. We have come from the Trinity, everything we have including our loved ones have come from the Trinity. The Blessed Trinity has brought us into being and keeps us in existence; and we are called to return to the Holy Trinity, now through grace, and forever in the life to come—In the Holy Trinity alone do we truly live and move and have our being.

And this is the reason why the truth of the Holy Trinity is the key pillar of the Christian faith and why we celebrate today’s great Solemnity. However, from what we just said, let us never forget that every single Holy Mass on Sunday or even on a weekday is a celebration of the Mystery of the Blessed Trinity.

It took a few centuries for Church to try to discuss and explain the Trinity in ways that are true to the mystery. As a result, we say correctly that the Trinity consists of Three Divine Persons with one Divine Nature, united in perfect unity—Three Persons in One God.

Personally, we can have a great deal of trouble trying to contemplate this Mystery of all mysteries and so it is very easy to just say, “it is a mystery,” and want to leave it at that; however, this is not what God desires. He, the Trinitarian God, wants us to begin now to grow in our understanding of His Divine Nature so that we can grow in our love for Him, and in loving Him that we can serve Him, in order to be happy with Him in this life and fully in the life to come; and be used by Him for others to do the same.
Perhaps the best way to begin to contemplate the Mystery of the Holy Trinity Family is by contemplating marriage and the Human family; that is, the marriage and human family as God has created it and ordained it to be. Marriage and the Human family are meant to actually be a reflection of the Blessed Trinity and a witness to the Love between the members of the Holy Trinity themselves.

But before we begin, we must state from the onset, that God is not like a family--God is THE Family and so the source of all families. And our families are called to be, as much as possible, like God’s Family. God has actually given us our human families on earth so that we might learn to love as the Trinity of Divine Person love amongst themselves. It is in the family that we are to learn agape love, sacrificial and selfless love for another person and to grown closer to God. And it is by the Trinity that we can receive God’s own love alive in our hearts in order to love our family with a divine Love known as Charity—human and divine love united.

So, try to think of the Father and the Son’s love for each other being absolutely perfect (we may never experienced perfect love but we long for it and can contemplate the ideal of Perfect Love which is God Himself). In this perfect divine love, the Father gives all He is and has to the Son and the Son gives all He is and has to the Father and this love between the two of them is so perfect so complete it is actually another person, a divine person who is the Love between the Father and the Son. And these Three Persons are so totally united in perfect love that they are one (the Trinity can only begun to be understood through love, not through mathematics).

Now let us look at a man who truly loves a woman. They so love each other that they unite themselves together in sacred bond called marriage. In this love for one another they give of themselves totally (dare I say sacrificially) to each other in a vow, a sacred oath before God and His Church, in which the two become one. This oneness is shown not only in sacred words at the Altar, but also by the two becoming one flesh on their wedding night through the marital act. In this holy act the two literally become one flesh, and in this one flesh with God’s cooperation they can become one flesh in another person, a child that is the fruit of their love for one another, a child who is in a sense the image of the father and the mother. Now there is a trinity of persons, but still one family.

The family actually reveals to us THE Family that is God. And it is within the human family that the Blessed Trinity desires that we learn to love as He does within His Divine Family; it is in the family that we are to perfect our love for God and one another.
A week ago from this past Friday we celebrated the feast day of our Lady of Fatima and the 99th anniversary of the apparitions of the Blessed Mother to the three shepherd children of Fatima. The Blessed Mother warned the world at Fatima that a great battle was beginning to be waged on earth such as never before in the history of mankind. She said that this battle would be primarily waged against the family. She called for families to pray the rosary daily and wear the brown scapular always as a sign of our personal and our family’s consecration to Jesus through Her Immaculate heart. She called for us to regularly participate in the Sacraments, to remain in the state for grace and to be faithful in our daily duties, among other things, all in order to be able to victorious over the forces of evil, which threatened to divide and so destroy our families.

Can anyone deny that we are indeed truly living this time of a great attack on the family—we are truly living during an all out demonic onslaught on the very nature of the family, which is meant to be lived in the image and likeness of THE FAMILY the Most Blessed Trinity. The attack on the family seeks to create a utopia on earth without God and His plan-will for us. This is really what is at the heart of the gender ideological war which denies and seeks to destroys in our culture and in our minds the very essence of man as God has created man to be, that is, “as man and woman, as male and female He created them.”
Cardinal Sarah, who is the Prefect for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacrament, recently reminded us that,

“..every human being, like the Persons of the Trinity, has the capacity to be united with other persons in communion through the…bond of charity of the Holy Spirit. The family is a natural preparation and anticipation of the communion that is possible when we are united with God…this is why the devil is so intent on destroying the family. IF the family is destroyed, we lose our-God given anthropological foundations and so find it more difficult to welcome the saving good news of Jesus Christ: self-giving, fruitful love.”

In other words, the Cardinal is reminding us that if the family is destroyed we lose what it means to be human, lose what it means to be created in the image and likeness of God, lose what it means to truly love and live to the full in this life and in the life to come in and through communion with God and with one another, this communion which begins in the family itself; in reality if the family is destroyed we begin to lose ourselves.

Cardinal Sarah went on to say that, “the rupture of the foundational relationships of someone’s life—through separation, divorce or distorted impositions of the family, such as cohabitation or same-sex unions—is a deep wound that closes the heart to self-giving love (unto) death, and even leads to cynicism and despair.” He continued, “These situations cause damage to little children through inflicting upon them a deep existential doubt about love. They are a scandal—a stumbling block—that prevents the most vulnerable from believing in such love, and a crushing burden that can prevent them from opening to the healing power of the Gospel.

The cardinal characterized the family as “a natural preparation and anticipation for the communion that is possible when we are united with God. To combat the attacks on the family and Christianity for that matter, Cardinal Sarah offered “three humble suggestions” he urged Catholics to be “be prophetic; be faithful and pray; and do not be afraid to proclaim the truth with love, especially about marriage according to God’s plan. With a voice of resounding hope, the cardinal said, “Perhaps only the beauty of the family can re-awaken the longing for God…and heal the wounds inflicted on our humanity by sin.”

As Christians we know that it is through baptism that God invites us into His own family of love. At Baptism we are baptized into the very mystery of the Holy Trinity. When the Priest pours Holy water over the head, he does it in the name of the Trinity--that is in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. It is by the grace of baptism that we actually begin to share in communion, share in the Divine family life of the Blessed Trinity.

But then we must cooperate with this baptismal grace and be faithful to it. We are called to participate and grow in that 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, we must live our belief and love for the Trinity. Daily and intimately, we must pray each of the Persons of the Blessed Trinity and through our love of Them, assisted by the grace we receive in the Sacraments, we can grow ever deeper in Their love, sharing that love with others, beginning with the members of our family and going out from our families to others.

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. Then, we will be able to love one another as God loves us. Our families will become holier and stronger families, families that are in love with most Blessed Trinity and as a result are in love with one another.

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.