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.”
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, DublinSunday 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.
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 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.
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.
