Father Paul Weinberger, Pastor
St. William the Confessor Catholic Church
Greenville, Texas
Feast of the Holy Trinity
June 11, 2006
”Go therefore and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit
Amen
Two Sunday’s ago, on Ascension Thursday/Sunday, what ever that means, we had the center part of this picture on your bulletin. Now we have the full picture.
View the picture here:
http://www.saintbarnabasarden.org/image ... aphael.jpg
This is a very famous painting at the Vatican, the Disputa, Discussion on the Holy Eucharist. This is very helpful today because it shows the representation of the Trinity. Please don’t let that word bother you. If you are afraid, back away from the word Trinity and you can say God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. We use the shorthand version because it is easier in a discussion to refer to the Holy Trinity.
In the picture you see God the Father and Jesus, whom is God the Son, sending down God, the Holy Spirit upon the Church. Above you see the Church in Heaven and below you see the Church on Earth and that which is connecting the Church with in Heaven with the Church on Earth is the Holy Spirit.
It is important to remember that God the Father is not God the Son nor the Holy Spirit; God the Son is not God the Father nor the Holy Spirit and God the Holy Spirit is not God the Father nor God the Son. But, God the Father is God, God the son is God and God the Holy Spirit is God. In origin, God the Father begets God the Son. God the Father had so much love that this love spilled over, if you will, hence God the Son. We speak of God the Son having been begotten of the Father. There is so much love in God that He can’t contain Himself and this love must be shared. The love that exists between God the Father and God the Son is so profound and superabundant that it is God the Holy Spirit. We cannot understand the Mystery of the Trinity completely; we can speak of it but never exhaust it. God has revealed Himself to us as a Trinity of Persons in One God, the Triune God.
God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are celebrated today on the Sunday after Pentecost. This is a recap; there is Easter Sunday and then forty days after Easter is Ascension Thursday. Ten days after the Ascension we celebrate Pentecost Sunday, which was celebrated last Sunday. It is the birthday of the Church, the sending of the Holy Spirit upon the Church. The following Sunday, which is today, is Trinity Sunday is followed next Sunday by the Feast of Corpus Christi, the Body of Christ. The Friday after is the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. You can see here the image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and on this side is the Immaculate Heart of Mary. If no Feast intervenes then the Friday after Corpus Christi is the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the following day on Saturday is the Immaculate Heart of Mary. I just said ‘if nothing intervenes”. This year something intervenes. On Saturday we celebrate the Solemnity of the birth of St. John the Baptist so the feast of Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart is not celebrated.
The saint who told us about this teaching on the Trinity, St. Augustine, said that the love between the Father and the Son is so profound and life giving. In your bulletin I have provided two paragraphs from Pope Benedict’s recently released ENCYCLICAL LETTER, DEUS CARITAS EST. This means, “God Is Love”. In the first line you read from paragraph 19,
19. “If you see charity, you see the Trinity”, wrote Saint Augustine.[11]
He is definitely the expert, the doctor on the Trinity. This is Trinity Sunday but I would hazard to guess that because the Trinity is sometimes confusing because of diagrams and incorrect answers, that many people give little thought to the Most Blessed Trinity and this is to our detriment and shame.
Next Sunday as I mentioned is the Feast of Corpus Christi and just as the Body of Christ has a heart, for public veneration the Sacred Heart is always seen in the Sacred Body of Christ. So Corpus Christi comes before the celebration of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Again, this is to show how tremendous God’s love is for us.
Centuries ago Our Lord appeared to a woman who was a very good religious. She was at a convent at Paray-le-Monial in France and she made many sacrifices…other than entering the convent. This saint prayed hours on end and was very obedient, maybe even scrupulously so but the Sacred Heart appeared to her. When the Cathedral in Dallas was built it was named Sacred Heart Cathedral. Above the High Altar was the central window of the Sacred Heart of Jesus appearing to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque. Saint Margaret Mary asked the Sacred Heart why He chose her and the answer is not what you might presume. He said,
“Because you are an abyss of ignorance and unworthiness but My Heart is so on fire with love of mankind and for you in particular, My Heart and My Love must be shared. ”
If that is the answer that Jesus gave to one so dedicated to Him like St. Margaret was then I should have just stayed in bed this morning. Jesus’ love is like a waterfall that never ends. Were you to start at the Mediterranean and follow the Nile all the way to its origin you would find the great waterfalls of Lake Victoria that spill over and form the greatest river in the world. Just as we find the headwaters of the Nile in Lake Victoria, all of the grace that God wishes to give to you and me because He is so good comes from the Sacred Heart of Jesus. These are life-giving waters. As the Prophet Isaiah said,
” You shall draw waters with joy out of the Savior’s fountain.”
It sounds like a puzzle but it connects with the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The fountain began at the point of a soldier’s lance 2000 years ago when the Sacred Heart was pierced and blood and water flowed out and capital graced descended from the cross and now descending from His wounded side in His glorified Body in heaven. Now grace upon grace descends upon mankind and to each of His disciples in particular. It is not because I am so good or you are so good but because of God’s goodness through and through.
Capital Grace, which I referred to on Ascension Thursday/Sunday ascends from the Head. Caput means head in Latin. Christ is the head of the Church and like from the top of a column the graces descend upon the Church of Christ and Her members for a specific reason. Other than God’s goodness, He wishes to enter our hearts and use our hands, backs, our energy, our thoughts and words to continue His work until He comes to judge the living and the dead.
This is why parents bring their children to be Baptized. When the water is poured over the head of the infant three times, these words are said.
“I Baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."
The grace of God working through that water not only takes away Original Sin but the life of the Trinity is given to that child or adult for the very first time. God’s Divine life, His own Life is now welling up in the heart of that person to strengthen and guide him through this life so that he might serve God and then be with Him through all eternity in Heaven. This is very beautiful but it probably doesn’t get a lot of our attention over a twenty-four hour period. There are so many more important things…You know, you can’t even say that with a straight face; can’t even finish the sentence. There is nothing more important than this but we take it for granted. We take electricity for granted until the power goes down and then we all melt in 115-degree weather. But God is not the power company and His grace is lavished upon us so that we might continue His work.
On May 15th, fifty years ago Pope Pius XII noted the Sacred Heart in his Encyclical, Haurietis Aqua. The first line says,
"You shall draw waters with joy out of the Savior's fountain."
He wrote it fifty years ago because he was looking back at the time when Pope Pius IX had extended the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus to the Universal Church. Everyone could celebrate this Feast and honor the Sacred Heart of Jesus. This year is the 150th Anniversary of that extension of the Feast of the Sacred Heart to all dioceses throughout the world. That is why in the late 1800s our Cathedral was named Sacred Heart.
The Holy Father has written beautiful words that can help us today in the Feast of the Trinity. In paragraph 19 of Deus Caritas Est he says,
“If you see charity, you see the Trinity”, wrote Saint Augustine.[11] In the foregoing reflections, we have been able to focus our attention on the Pierced One (cf. Jn 19:37, Zech 12:10), recognizing the plan of the Father who, moved by love (cf. Jn 3:16), sent His only-begotten Son into the world to redeem man.
The Sacred Heart of Jesus reveals to us the Sacred Heart of the Father. The Hebrews understood. In Hebrew theology, whatever is in your heart is on your lips. If something foul comes out of your mouth then evidentially there is something foul in your heart. It makes good sense. So, when God speaks His one Word, who is Jesus Christ and in doing so He reveals His Heart to us. So when the pope writes that we have been able to focus our attention on the Pierced One, recognizing the plan of the Father who, moved by love, it is because the plan has been revealed in Jesus Christ.
By dying on the Cross—as Saint John tells us—Jesus “gave up His Spirit” (Jn 19:30), anticipating the gift of the Holy Spirit that He would make after His Resurrection (cf. Jn 20:22).
Remember when Jesus was right at the point of death, He raised His head with great difficulty and said,
Father, into Your hands I commend My Spirit.
He surrendered His spirit and His very breath so that God the Father and God the Son could send God the Holy Spirit down upon the Church at Pentecost fifty days after Easter. The birth of the Church is animated and breathes with the breath of the Most Blessed Trinity because Christ surrendered His Breath so that the Church could receive His Spirit sent down upon us on Pentecost.
This was to fulfill the promise of “rivers of living water” that would flow out of the hearts of believers, through the outpouring of the Spirit (cf. Jn 7:38-39).
This is what Jesus means when He says in the Gospel today,
Make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit; teach them to observe all that I have commanded you.
We are made disciples when the Sacrament of Baptism removes Original Sin and any personal sins we have and the Life of the Most Blessed Trinity is imparted to the soul. This next line is absolutely beautiful and it is something we can refer to throughout our lives.
The Spirit, in fact, is that interior power which harmonizes their hearts with Christ's Heart and moves them to love their brethren as Christ loved them, when He bent down to wash the feet of the disciples (cf. Jn 13:1-13) and above all when He gave His life for us (cf. Jn 13:1, 15:13)
I remember once I walked in on my grandfather while he was on the telephone. He was profoundly deaf and had two hearing aids. Fortunately God hooked him up with the right woman because he could even hear her without the hearing aids in a fifty-mile an hour wind. [Laughter] My grandmother had lungs, God rest her soul. When I walked in on my grandfather he had part of the phone here and part of it here. I thought I’d caught him playing on the phone but that was the way he used the phone with a hearing aid. He had the amp here and so he had to talk into one part of the phone and listen to the other.
I once walked into a doctor’s office and I saw a man doing the same thing. He wasn’t hard of hearing though; he had a pacemaker and was getting it fine-tuned. It can be done over the phone but you just have to make sure you call the right number. [Laughter] So now instead of ripping you open they can gently place a pacemaker in you and it sends a pulse to make the heart beat as it should so that it doesn’t beat to slowly or too quickly. These pacemakers are great things and are wonders of science. In a sense, the pacemaker is there so your heart will beat in harmony with your circulatory system. I hope you are taking notes because there is going to be a test.
When we think of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and we should but many don’t, we should think of our hearts being tuned to His Most Sacred Heart. You see here the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary; Their Hearts were in tune always and have never been separated. Their Hearts always beat as one. Any mother who has given birth to a child has had the experience for nine months as her hear beats and just below her heart is the heartbeat of the child. This is a beautiful example in nature as two hearts beating as one. With the Blessed Mother it wasn’t just a physiological phenomenon but a spiritual reality. Before she was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit she had always lived as God commanded her. After the birth of Christ she always lived as God commanded her. Now we know that part of our human family is already in Heaven. The statue over there is of St. Anthony, whose Feast day is Tuesday. We know because the Church tells us, that St. Anthony is in Heaven. This gives us courage and strength.
I had a funeral on Wednesday. A lady passed away and she had been married a very long time. During Lent she’d gone into the hospital and we nearly lost her. She recovered and went home. She had heart problems and died just a few hours after Pentecost ended. I told her husband that he and his wife were married for many years and, (this of course means being married in the Church), if your wife is in Heaven then it means a part of you is very close to God. If she is in Purgatory and on her way to Heaven then a part of you is still very close to God because Purgatory is so proximate and guaranteed of an entrance into Heaven. Remember what the Old and New Testaments say? They say that what God has joined man must not separate. So husband and wife are indeed joined to become one in a sense.
This union of man and woman reveals to us the Trinity because the love between husband and wife spills over into children when God blesses them. The ideal is that our heart beat in union with Christ but the reality is that our hearts do not beat as they should. They are frequently out of rhythm. Remember what the pope said?
The Spirit, in fact, is that interior power which harmonizes their hearts with Christ's Heart and moves them to love their brethren as Christ loved them, when He bent down to wash the feet of the disciples (cf. Jn 13:1-13) and above all when He gave His life for us (cf. Jn 13:1, 15:13)
The paragraph started out saying that if you see charity you see the Trinity. You could truly see charity in Bl. Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who founded the Missionaries of Charity. You could see the Trinity in her as she was working and helping so many people. She bent down to wash the feet of so many but that is exactly what God expects from all of us. He wants to see His Divine Life working in and through our hearts, engaging us in what we do and don’t do or what we choose to or not to do. We are to continue His mission on Earth until He comes to judge the living and the dead.
What follows is an excerpt from Pope Benedict’s book The Spirit of the Liturgy. The book was published in the year 2000 when he was known as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. This passage is taken from pages 88-89. In this passage he is writing about the moment when someone WORTHILY receives Holy Communion. Now I have to say that I have seen in all my years as a priest and before that as a lay catholic, we don’t always approach Holy Communion with the attention and dedication that we should. Sometimes people appear to be daydreaming and sometimes people are so impressed by having received Holy Communion that they walk out of Church and begin conversing with others about “whatever” and then go on their merry way. If that is our goal then we shouldn’t go to Communion at all because then Communion is received merely so that Jesus has a chance to pass through our physical bodies. That isn’t what He wants! He wants us to surrender!
.“The Living Lord gives Himself to me (in Holy Communion), enters into me, and invites me to surrender myself to Him, so that the Apostle’s words come true: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me“ [Saint Paul’s letter the Galatians 2:20.] Only thus is the reception of Holy Communion an act that elevates and transforms a man.”
In a sense when the priest, deacon or the Extraordinary Minister says, “the Body of Christ” and the recipient says, “Amen” Jesus has just been surrendered into the hands or the mouth of the person who is about to receive Holy Communion. This is what He expects; He expects me and invites me as He enters into my body and my soul to surrender myself to Him.
Only thus is the reception of Holy Communion an act that elevates and transforms a man.”
After you receive Holy Communion today go back and sit or kneel and go through the steps that are expected. When he was known as Cardinal Ratzinger, the Holy Father has very easily and in a straightforward manner made the Divine Imperative. If I receive Holy Communion worthily I am allowing Jesus to enter me and I am surrendering myself to Him, asking Him to raise me up, elevate me, and transform me.
In front of me on the lectern is a picture of the Sacred Heart and there is a door behind Him. It is the wish of the Sacred Heart of Jesus that each one of us will strongly desire to open the door of our heart to Him. It’s not like a police raid on TV; Jesus is not going to kick in the door to my Soul.
When you worthily receive Holy Communion He enters into you so that you will invite Him in and surrender yourself to Him. If you are not going to do this ...if you are not going to surrender yourself to Him...If you refuse to speak to Him when you are in the Real Presence of this Divine Guest...then, by all means don’t come to Communion! Don’t receive Holy Communion! This is the way to see Holy Communion as it is transforming the disciples guiding us to the work that we have to do.
As it says in paragraph #19,
… moves them to love their brethren as Christ loved them, when He bent down to wash the feet of the disciples (cf. Jn 13:1-13)
I heard a report that recently a man climbing Mt. Everest had a heart attack. Imagine that. Someone having a heart attack while climbing a mountain! I don’t know why they do that. People spend thousands of dollars to climb that mountain and you couldn’t get me up there with a gun pointed to my head. Anyway this man was reported missing but he wasn’t missing, he was right there next to the path. Another man was climbing up and looked up and saw the man who had been reported missing. Had everyone else who had gone before this man seen the other man lying there?
”Oh, he is dead!
What is this?
“He is dead so we are just going to leave him there because I have already spent all this money. I am only going to be here this long to climb this mountain so I can go back home and tell everyone I climbed Mt. Everest."
The man that was climbing and noticed the other man lying there, looked over to see the man move and open his eyes, which would make my heart stop or jump off the mountain. The man stopped, called for help and actually took the man down the mountain. The man had frost bite but he was alive.
God expects us to continue His work otherwise, why did He give us the grace? Remember what Christ said to that beautiful nun, St. Margaret Mary?
“Because you are an abyss of ignorance and unworthiness but my Heart is so on fire with love of mankind and for you in particular, My Heart and My love must be shared. ”
His love was so overwhelming that it had to be shared with her and with the world. God will share His love but He expects us to surrender our hearts to Him so that He can raise us up. If you don’t want to do that and it is not the driving force of your every day or week, you are not getting ready. You see, this is anticipating the day when I will surrender myself to God for all eternity. My weekly Holy Communion or my daily Holy Communion, which is even better, is a way that I can allow Him to enter into me while I surrender myself to Him so that He can raise me up and transform me. One day will be the last time this ever happens; it is God’s Divine plan; the plan of God the Father revealed in His Son Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit.
”Go therefore and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit
Amen