'When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.' Sunday Reflections, Trinity Sunday

The Trinity with the Dead Christ, Lodovico Carracci, c.1590 [Web Gallery of Art]

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

Readings (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, India [optional], Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland, South Africa)

Gospel John 16:12-15 (Revised Standard Version – Catholic Edition)

Jesus said to his disciples: "I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

The Adoration of the Holy Trinity (Landauer Altar)

Albrecht Dürer, 1511 [Web Gallery of Art]

The two paintings above, like many others, depict the Holy Trinity with the crucified, dead Christ. The Catechism of the Catholic Church quotes St Caesarius of Arles: The faith of all Christians rests on the Trinity.

Though it is a mystery that we can never fully understand, the Trinity shows God's total involvement in our lives. Without the Creator we wouldn't be. Without God becoming Man in the Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity, we would not have the possibility of eternal life. Without the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost we would never understand who we are, the beloved sons and daughters of God the Father, the beloved brothers and sisters of Jesus and therefore of one another.

And none of this would be possible if Jesus had not lived among us and died for us. The paintings show us the price that God was willing to pay that we would know him and return his love.

Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman expresses the central mysteries of our faith in Firmly I believe and truly, taken from his extended poem The Dream of Gerontius. Sir Edward Elgar later set this to music, though the setting below is by Ralph Vaughan Williams.

We Christians begin almost every prayer, liturgical or otherwise, with the words In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit or with Glory to the Father . . . The Catechism tells us: Christians are baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: not in their names, for there is only one God, the almighty Father, his only Son and the Holy Spirit: the Most Holy Trinity.

Like the painters Carracci and Dürer, Newman draws us to the Incarnation, the reality of God becoming Man, and the Paschal Mystery, the death and resurrection of Jesus:

And I next acknowledge duly
Manhood taken by the Son.

And I trust and hope most fully
In that Manhood crucified.

The Second Person of the Trinity becoming one of us, living among us, dying for us in a most humiliating way, and being raised from the dead is the source of our hope. It is by following Jesus wholeheartedly that we too are bearers of this hope to others. As Pope Francis said in his homily last Wednesday, Jesus was 'promoted' to the Cross. He was 'promoted' to humiliation. That is true promotion, that which makes us seem more like Jesus.

In the fourth stanza, not sung here, Newman brings us to the central fact that the Holy Spirit, who will guide you into all the truth, does so above all through the Church:

And I hold in veneration,
For the love of Him alone,
Holy Church as His creation,
And her teachings are His own.

Last Sunday, Pentecost, Pope Francis in ending his homily referred to 'the harmony of the Church'. As Christians we cannot go it alone. God, the Holy Trinity, is a Community, the Perfect Community, Three Persons but One God. We are made in God's image, which means we are made to be part of a community. Here are the closing words of the Pope's homily:

Today’s liturgy is a great prayer which the Church, in union with Jesus, raises up to the Father, asking him to renew the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. May each of us, and every group and movement, in the harmony of the Church, cry out to the Father and implore this gift. Today too, as at her origins, the Church, in union with Mary, cries out: 'Veni, Sancte Spiritus! Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful, and kindle in them the fire of your love!' Amen.

Firmly I believe and truly

Words: Blessed John Henry Newman, from  The Dream of Gerontius

Music: Shipston, traditional English melody arranged by Ralph Vaughan Williams

Firmly I believe and truly

God is Three, and God is One;
And I next acknowledge duly
Manhood taken by the Son.

And I trust and hope most fully
In that Manhood crucified;
And each thought and deed unruly
Do to death, as He has died.

Simply to His grace and wholly
Light and life and strength belong,
And I love supremely, solely,
Him the holy, Him the strong.

[And I hold in veneration,
For the love of Him alone,
Holy Church as His creation,
And her teachings are His own.

And I take with joy whatever
Now besets me, pain or fear,
And with a strong will I sever
All the ties which bind me here.]

Adoration aye be given,

With and through the angelic host,
To the God of earth and Heaven,
Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman, John Everett Millais, 1891