Readings (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan,)
Readings (English Standard Version, Catholic Edition: England & Wales, India, Scotland)
Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)
Gospel John 16:12-15 (English Standard Version, Anglicised)
My apologies for having printed the wrong gospel earlier. Here is the correct gospel.
Brothers and Sisters: Since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
During my kindergarten, primary and secondary school years, 1947 to 1961, on schooldays my brother Paddy and I had breakfast and dinner - a midday meal for almost everybody in Ireland in those days - with our mother. In the evening we had 'tea', as that lighter meal is known in some English-speaking countries. The four of us were together for tea, my father having his dinner and tea combined. I often heard my mother 'complain' about having to prepare two dinners on weekdays. It would never have occurred to her or to any other working-class housewife in urban Ireland in those days to have dinner for the whole family in the evening. Now that is the norm.
However, we did have dinner together on Saturdays and Sundays. My father, like other construction workers, had a half-day on Saturday. Saturday was the only day when we had soup, usually barley soup, served in cups, not in bowls. Sunday dinner was special and the only day when we had dessert.
Sunday dinner was special, as it was for all families, and meant extra work for my mother who would spend the whole morning after Mass and breakfast preparing it. My father would take the two of us to meet our paternal grandfather and then for a walk in the nearby Phoenix Park.
I don't ever recall my parents telling us that we were a family. We just knew. But it was only as an adult and after ordination that I realised that it was at our evening meals on weekdays and at our midday meals on Saturdays and Sundays that I experienced, without being aware of it, what family is. And our Sunday walks with my father were what is now called 'bonding'. Another part of that was Dad taking us to soccer games from time to time in nearby Dalymount Park.
When in 1968 I went as a young priest to the USA to study I discovered that families there had to really work at being families, as the family couldn't be taken for granted, as it still could be in Ireland at that time.
Pope Benedict XVI was probably familiar with Murillo's painting above, The Two Trinities. In his Angelus talk on 27 December 2009, the Feast of the Holy Family, he said, The first witnesses of Christ's birth, the shepherds, found themselves not only before the Infant Jesus but also a small family: mother, father and newborn son. God had chosen to reveal himself by being born into a human family and the human family thus became an icon of God! God is the Trinity, he is a communion of love; so is the family despite all the differences that exist between the Mystery of God and his human creature, an expression that reflects the unfathomable Mystery of God as Love. In marriage the man and the woman, created in God's image, become 'one flesh' (Gen 2: 24), that is a communion of love that generates new life. The human family, in a certain sense, is an icon of the Trinity because of its interpersonal love and the fruitfulness of this love. [Emphases added above and below].
Two weeks ago in his homily during the Holy Mass on the occasion of the Jubilee of Families, Pope Leo XIV said: Christ prays that we may 'all be one' (John 17: 21). This is the greatest good that we can desire, for this universal union brings about among his creatures the eternal communion of love that is God himself: the Father who gives life, the Son who receives it and the Spirit who shares it.
Further on Leo XIV speaks of marriage and the family in this way: For this reason, with a heart filled with gratitude and hope, I would remind all married couples that marriage is not an ideal but the measure of true love between a man and a woman: a love that is total, faithful and fruitful (cf. St Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, 9). This love makes you one flesh and enables you, in the image of God, to bestow the gift of life.
And in this sentence the Pope summarises my own experience and that of so many others: In the family, faith is handed on together with life, generation after generation. It is shared like food at the family table and like the love in our hearts. In this way, families become privileged places in which to encounter Jesus, who loves us and desires our good, always.
Almost every Catholic in Ireland went to Sunday Mass when I was growing up and our Protestant neighbours also went to church. When I was a small child it was usually my father who took me to Mass on Sunday morning. My mother, who had to take care of my baby brother Paddy went to a later Mass. (Paddy is 79 this Sunday and is now in a nursing home. You might say a prayer for him. I remember my Dad taking me up to my parents' bedroom to see my baby brother the day he was born.) And on special days such as Easter Monday, Whit (Pentecost) Monday, which were public but not Church holidays, Dad would take me to High Mass in one of the churches in Dublin belonging to religious orders such as the Capuchins and the Dominicans.
Before Pope Pius XII changed the Holy Week liturgies in 1955 the ceremonies on Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday were held in the morning. Not too many would attend these. But on the afternoon of Holy Thursday my mother would take my brother and me to visit seven churches for adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at the Altar of Repose. That practice disappeared after 1954 in Dublin but is alive and well in the Philippines in the larger cities where it is called Visita Iglesia and is done at night with thousands of young people walking from one church to the next. On those childhood Holy Thursdays I experienced, as I look back, being drawn into the wider family that is the Church and into the life of the Trinity.
I must confess that as a child I didn't appreciate too much my father bringing me to High Masses or my mother bringing me to visit seven churches on Holy Thursday. But I could see clearly how Dad loved the solemnity of the High Mass and how central the Mass was to his life. He went to Mass every day of his life right up to the day he died. I am grateful now for the way my parents brought me into the life of the Blessed Trinity in this way. But I am also grateful for the way they drew me into the life of the Trinity, without my being aware of it, through our daily family life, especially our evening meals together.
Judaism, Christianity and Islam are often referred to as the three monotheistic faiths. Those who belong to these three faiths believe in only One God. I have often heard Catholics say in a well-meaning way, 'We all believe in the same God.' But that is not so. Only Christians believe in a God who is a communion of persons. And only Christians believe that Jesus Christ is the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, God who became Man, who died for us on the Cross and rose again from the dead on Easter Sunday.
Traditional Latin Mass
Sunday of the Most Holy Trinity
The Complete Mass in Latin and English is here. (Adjust the date at the top of that page to 06-15-2025 if necessary).
Epistle: Romans 11:33-36. Gospel: Matthew 28:18-20.
