'In the human family, gathered by Christ, "the image and likeness" of the Most Holy Trinity has been restored.' Sunday Reflections, Trinity Sunday, Year C

 

The Two Trinities 

Murillo [Web Gallery of Art]

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

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA) 

Gospel John 16:12-15 (English Standard Version Anglicised: India)  

Jesus said to his disciples:

“I still have 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.”

Léachtaí i nGaeilge

Holy Family and Trinity

Jacob de Wit [Web Gallery of Art]

During my kindergarten, primary and secondary school years, 1947 to 1961, my brother 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.

People's Gardens, Phoenix Park, Dublin

[Wikipedia; photo]

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 Francis is probably familiar with Murillo's painting above, The Two Trinities. In his Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia, On Love in the Family he states in No 29 [emphases added]: With a gaze of faith and love, grace and fidelity, we have contemplated the relationship between human families and the divine Trinity. The word of God tells us that the family is entrusted to a man, a woman and their children, so that they may become a communion of persons in the image of the union of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Begetting and raising children, for its part, mirrors God’s creative work. The family is called to join in daily prayer, to read the word of God and to share in Eucharistic communion, and thus to grow in love and become ever more fully a temple in which the Spirit dwells.

Pope Francis highlights this link again in No 71: Scripture and Tradition give us access to a knowledge of the Trinity, which is revealed with the features of a family. The family is the image of God, who is a communion of persons. At Christ’s baptism, the Father’s voice was heard, calling Jesus his beloved Son, and in this love we can recognize the Holy Spirit. Jesus, who reconciled all things in himself and redeemed us from sin, not only returned marriage and the family to their original form, but also raised marriage to the sacramental sign of his love for the Church. In the human family, gathered by Christ, ‘the image and likeness’ of the Most Holy Trinity has been restored, the mystery from which all true love flows. Through the Church, marriage and the family receive the grace of the Holy Spirit from Christ, in order to bear witness to the Gospel of God’s love.

Holy Family with the Infant St John 

Murillo [Web Gallery of Art]

Almost every Catholic in Ireland went to Sunday Mass in those days and our Protestant neighbours went to church. When I was a child it was usually my father who took me to Mass on Sunday morning. And on special days such as Easter Monday, Whit (Pentecost) Monday, which were public but not Church holidays, he 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. This was an experience, without being aware of it, of being drawn into the wider family that is the Church.

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 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 Holy Trinity, God who became Man, who died for us on the Cross and rose again form the dead on Easter Sunday.

Pope Francis has very forcefully reminded us that while the Most Holy Trinity is a mystery that we can never fathom, the Triune God is intimately part of our lives, especially through the sacrament of matrimony and the family: The word of God tells us that the family is entrusted to a man, a woman and their children, so that they may become a communion of persons in the image of the union of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Prayer before the meal 

Adriaen Jansz van Ostade [Web Gallery of Art]

Glory be to the Father . . .

Sung in Latin by the monks of San Pedro Monastery

I cannot find any information on the location of this monastery in Spain.

Traditional Latin Mass

Trinity Sunday

The Complete Mass in Latin and English is here. (Adjust the date at the top of that page to 06-12-2022 if necessary).

Epistle: Romans 11:33-36. Gospel: Matthew 28:18-20.

Communion Antiphon (TLM) 

Tobias [Tobit] 12:6

Music by James MacMillan; sung by Sydney Chamber Choir

Benedicimus Deum caeli, et coram omnibus viventibus confitebimur ei: quia fecit nobiscum misericordiam suam.

We bless the God of heaven, and before all living we will praise Him because He has shown His mercy to us.

'Reach out your hand . . .' Sunday Reflections, 2nd Sunday of Easter, Year A

The Incredulity of St Thomas

Caravaggio [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 20:19-31 (New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised Catholic Edition, Canada)

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’

But Thomas (who was called the Twin^[a]), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, ‘We have seen the Lord.’ But he said to them, ‘Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.’

A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.’ Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’ Jesus said to him, ‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.’

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

John 20:19-31 in Filipino Sign Language

Léachtaí i nGaeilge

John 20:19-31 from The Gospel of John

We can read the words of Jesus to Thomas as a gentle rebuke that has led to the nickname he may carry for all eternity: 'Doubting Thomas'. But I prefer to see him as the one who understood that the Risen Lord must carry the scars of his crucifixion and who made the most explicit act of faith in the whole of Sacred Scripture: My Lord and my God!

The First Reading today (Acts 2:42-47) opens with the words They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. 'The breaking of the bread' is an expression used for the celebration of the Eucharist. We can see in this sentence the essence of the Mass as we celebrate it today: listening to God's word, praying and sharing in the Sacrifice of Jesus and sharing his Body and Blood.

Some commentators say that the failure of Thomas was not to listen to God's word as related by his companions. Maybe he did fail here but did the others have the same awareness as Thomas had that the Risen Lord must carry his scars for all eternity?

In Evangelii Gaudium No 7 Pope Francis writes: I never tire of repeating those words of Benedict XVI which take us to the very heart of the Gospel: 'Being a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction'.

Thomas had been a companion of Jesus for two to three years but what he experienced in today's gospel was precisely what Pope Benedict describes as the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.

Servant of God, Fr Emil Joseph Kapaun 

(20 April 1916 - 23 May 1951)

Celebrating Mass with American soldiers on 7 October 1950 during the Korean War. [Wikipedia]

 In his general audience in St Peter's Square on 31 October 2012 Pope Benedict said: I cannot build my personal faith in a private dialogue with Jesus, because faith is given to me by God through a community of believers that is the Church and projects me into the multitude of believers, into a kind of communion that is not only sociological but rooted in the eternal love of God who is in himself the communion of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, it is Trinitarian Love. Our faith is truly personal, only if it is also communal: it can be my faith only if it dwells in and moves with the 'we' of the Church, only if it is our faith, the common faith of the one Church.

Pope Francis re-echoes this in Evangelii Gaudium Nos 264 - 268: We need to implore his grace daily, asking him to open our cold hearts and shake up our lukewarm and superficial existence . . . Sometimes we lose our enthusiasm for mission because we forget that the Gospel responds to our deepest needs, since we were created for what the Gospel offers us: friendship with Jesus and love of our brothers and sisters . . . The word of God also invites us to recognise that we are a people . . . Mission is at once a passion for Jesus and a passion for his people. When we stand before Jesus crucified, we see the depth of his love which exalts and sustains us, but at the same time, unless we are blind, we begin to realize that Jesus’ gaze, burning with love, expands to embrace all his people. We realize once more that he wants to make use of us to draw closer to his beloved people. He takes us from the midst of his people and he sends us to his people; without this sense of belonging we cannot understand our deepest identity.

What both Pope Benedict and Pope Francis are saying is that while our faith is in a person, Jesus Christ the Risen Lord, it can never be a question of 'Jesus and me'. Pope Benedict says, faith is given to me by God through a community of believers that is the Church and projects me into the multitude of believers. And Pope Francis emphasises that He takes us from the midst of his people and he sends us to his people; without this sense of belonging we cannot understand our deepest identity.

In other words, I can only know myself as a brother or sister of Jesus, as a son or daughter of God the Father when I know myself as a member of their family, which I have become through my baptism.

And that awareness of who I am is strengthened when I join other members of God's family every Sunday as they devote themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

During the current Covid-19 pandemic most Christians are not able to participate directly in the Eucharist. Yet we may do so in a real way - more than a 'virtual' way - through modern technology. 

On Tuesday of this Easter Week 2020 - I participated in such a way in the funeral Mass of a friend named Helen Rickard who was a member of Our Lady of the Visitation Praesidium of the Legion of Mary in Navan, our local town. I'm the spiritual director of the praesidium. The celebrant, Fr Declan Hurley, emphasised that through her baptism Helen had become a sister of Jesus and that she had lived her faith out of that in prayer, especially in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament, often in the middle of night, and in serving others. The following day I watched on Facebook part of the funeral Mass of a priest of the Prelature of Marawi, Philippines, who was my student in the 1970s, Fr Nilo Tabania. I didn't watch it live, but many others did. Like my friend Helen, Father Nilo was a man of great simplicity, a man without guile, like Nathanael in St John's Gospel. Please remember Helen and Father Nilo in your prayers.

I spent most of my life as a priest in the Philippines and was well aware of the fact that probably a majority of the people there, certainly in rural areas, aren't able to take part in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass on a regular basis because they live so far away from churches where it is celebrated. The present situation enables us to share in their experience. 

Yet when we participate in Mass through television, online or listening to the radio, we hear the word of God proclaimed to us. This is as real as the voice of a loved one we are talking to on the telephone or through one of the modern internet forms of communication. The conversation is real, not 'virtual'.

Yes, we cannot receive Holy Communion but we can be in true communion with the Risen Lord present body, blood, soul and divinity in the Blessed Sacrament when the priest says the words of consecration over the bread and wine that become the Body and Blood of Christ.

Pope Benedict XVI wrote as follows about spiritual communion in his apostolic exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis (The Sacrament of Charity) in No 55: Clearly, full participation in the Eucharist takes place when the faithful approach the altar in person to receive communion. Yet true as this is, care must be taken lest they conclude that the mere fact of their being present in church during the liturgy gives them a right or even an obligation to approach the table of the Eucharist. Even in cases where it is not possible to receive sacramental communion, participation at Mass remains necessary, important, meaningful and fruitful. In such circumstances it is beneficial to cultivate a desire for full union with Christ through the practice of spiritual communion, praised by Pope John Paul II and recommended by saints who were masters of the spiritual life.

There is a very good post on spiritual communion on Catholic Strength.

In the suffering of so many throughout the world because of the Covid-19 pandemic we can see both the wounds of the suffering Christ and the scars of the Risen Christ. 

May we have the grace to see, with St Thomas, the presence of My Lord and my God especially in suffering, our own and that of others, in whatever form it comes.

All in the April Evening

Words by Katharine Tynan, music by Hugh S. Roberton

Sung by the Glasgow Orpheus Choir

I learned the poem All in the April Evening in Fourth Class (Grade Four) when we had a wonderful teacher named John Galligan, a man who influenced my life greatly, though it was only years later I realised that. I think our class also learned to sing it that year - I'm not totally sure! - under a colourful woman named Mrs Agnes Boylan, who loved to wear large hats like the late Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother of England. She was everyone's 'favourite grandmother'. I learned later that she was the mother of the late Dom Eugene Boylan OCSO, abbot of Roscrea Monastery in Ireland and author of a number of influential books on spirituality.

All in an April Evening by Katharine Tynan

All in the April morning,
April airs were abroad;
The sheep with their little lambs
Pass'd me by on the road.

The sheep with their little lambs
Pass'd me by on the road;
All in an April evening
I thought on the Lamb of God.

The lambs were weary, and crying
With a weak human cry,
I thought on the Lamb of God
Going meekly to die.

Up in the blue, blue mountains
Dewy pastures are sweet:
Rest for the little bodies,
Rest for the little feet.

But for the Lamb of God
Up on the hill-top green,
Only a cross of shame
Two stark crosses between.

All in the April evening,
April airs were abroad;
I saw the sheep with their lambs,
And thought on the Lamb of God.

Canon Patrick Comerford, a priest of the Anglican Church of Ireland, has a very good commentary on the poem on his blog. He puts it in a Lenten context. But Good Friday is followed by Easter Sunday. Katharine Tynan died on Good Friday 1931.

Gregorian Chant setting of the Communion Antiphon

Antiphona ad communionem  Communion Antiphon  Cf John 20:27

Mitte manum tuam, et cognosce loca clavorum,

Put your hand and feel the place of the nails,

et noli esse incredulus, sed fidelis, alleluia, alleluia.

and do not be unbelieving but believeing, alleluia, alleluia.

Below is a setting of the Latin text of the Communion Antiphon by contemporary Scottish composer James MacMillan, sung by The Sixteen, Harry Christophers.

'My Lord and my God!' Sunday Reflections, 2nd Sunday of Easter (Divine Mercy Sunday), Year C

The Incredulity of St Thomas, Rembrandt [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 20:19-31 (New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised Catholic Edition, Canada)  

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’

But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, ‘We have seen the Lord.’ But he said to them, ‘Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.’

A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.’ Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’  Jesus said to him, ‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.’

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

Léachtaí i nGaeilge 

The Gospel of John (2003) Directed by Philip Saville

Narrator: Christopher Plummer

In 2007, during a visit to Canada I was asked to give a talk to a prayer group. Afterwards, over coffee, I was chatting with on of the members, an elderly immigrant from Germany, who told me how she had become a Catholic. She had been raised as a Lutheran and had been on the verge of joining the Catholic Church for a long time but could not take the final step.

One weekday afternoon, feeling somewhat down because of this she went for a walk. She happened to pass by a Catholic church and decided to go in. While she was there a group of teenage boys came in went up to the front of the church, genuflected before the Blessed Sacrament in the tabernacle, knelt down for a couple of minutes, stood up, genuflected again and went on their way.

These boys were expressing what the Church has always taught: Do not, then, regard the eucharistic elements as ordinary bread and wine: they are in fact the body and blood of the Lord, as he himself has declared. Whatever your senses may tell you, be strong in faith.

You have been taught and you are firmly convinced that what looks and tastes like bread and wine is not bread and wine but the body and the blood of Christ. You know also how David referred to this long ago when he sang: Bread gives strength to man’s heart and makes his face shine with the oil of gladness. Strengthen your heart, then, by receiving this bread as spiritual bread, and bring joy to the face of your soul. (From The Jerusalem Catecheses, used in the Office of Readings for Saturday within the Octave of Easter.)

This is the reason that Fr Jean-Marc Fournier, chaplain to the Paris Fire Brigade, rescued the Blessed Sacrament from the burning Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral in Holy Week.

The visit of those Canadian teenage boys to the Blessed Sacrament was the German woman's My Lord and my God! moment. She became a Catholic shortly afterwards. Those boys had no idea of how their simple expression of their faith had so profoundly touched the life of a person whom they may not have even noticed.

The moment that St Thomas said My Lord and my God! was truly an 'eternal' moment. It led to his martyrdom and to his living with God for all eternity.

My German-Canadian friend's moment is 'eternal' in the same way. It led her into a deeper relationship with the Lord Jesus and with all the members of the Church and points towards an eternity with God himself.

Every such moment in our lives is meant to be eternal, a moment when we experience the presence of God's love so clearly, a moment that we continue to carry with us, sometimes consciously but perhaps more often not being aware of it, a moment that leads us to eternal life.

I think that we my legitimately think of those many moments in the way St John in his gospel writes of the many other signs [miracles] that Jesus did, which are not written in this book. These moments are graces given by God so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

The Mar Thoma Sliva or Saint Thomas Cross, the symbol of the Syro-Malabar Church [Wikipedia]

Nearly nine per cent of nurses in the Republic of Ireland are from India and most of these are Catholics from Kerala who belong to the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church that traces its origins back to St Thomas the Apostle. These, as well as the Syro-Malankara Catholics in Kerala, are in full communion with Rome. 

I have met many Keralite Catholics here in Ireland and also in Britain and know how fervent they are in living their faith.There are Masses in the Syro-Malabar Rite every Sunday in the Archdiocese of Dublin.

May St Thomas the Apostle, whose My Lord and my God! is the most explicit expression of faith in Jesus Christ in the whole of the New Testament, continue to watch over them. 

                                                                                                                    Antiphona communionem Communion Antiphon Cf John 20:27

Setting by contemporary Scottish composer James MacMillan

Mitte manum tuam, et cognoscere loca clavorum,

Bring your hand and feel the place of the nails,

et noli esse incredulus, sed fidelis, alleluia, alleluia.

and do not be unbelieving but believing, alleluia, alleluia.

Gregorian Chant setting

St Thomas the Apostle, Jusepe Martínez [Web Gallery of Art] 

My Lord and my God!