Sunday Reflections, Trinity Sunday Year A, 31 May 2026

The Coronation of the Virgin

Velázquez [Web Gallery of Art]

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16, Gospel).

Readings (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, Ireland, New Zealand)

Readings (English Standard Version, Catholic Edition: England & Wales, Scotland, India)

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

Gospel John 3:16-18 (English Standard Version, Anglicised)

Jesus said to Nicodemus:

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

Léachtaí i nGaeilge

The Adoration of the Holy Trinity (Landauer Altar)

Albrecht Dürer [Web Gallery of Art]

Three years ago I visited a parish in Dublin for a mission appeal on behalf of the Columbans with Angie Escarsa, a Columban lay missionary from Zambales, Philippines, who has been here in Ireland since the late 1990s. I concelebrated and preached at the Saturday evening Mass.

I noticed a young man in a hospital-style wheelchair-bed up near the altar-rails with his parents. I observed how they cared for him during Mass, with devotion and tenderness. I briefly met the family afterwards and learned that the young man had been very badly injured in an accident. It was clear that he needed full-time care.

On Sunday morning another Columban, Fr Dermot Carthy, concelebrated and preached. He is a native of the parish who came home four years ago from Peru where he had worked for 62 years. I simply attended Mass and stayed at the back of the church. (This can be a good experience for a priest from time to time.) I noticed an elderly couple two pews in front of me, both of them white-haired and not very tall. The wife helped her husband a number of times to stand, doing so in a way that indicated a tender love for the man she had spent most of her life with - 61 years as I learned when I met them after Mass. I told them that they had made my day, which they had. The face of the wife lit up when I said this. 

I noticed a young family at the Mass, husband, wife and four children, three girls and a boy. The eldest was in her white First Communion dress, as she had made her First Holy Communion the day before. I saw only one other girl in her Communion dress. When I made my First Holy Communion in 1950 every child would be at Mass the following Sunday, the girls in their white dresses, the boys in their new suits with a white rosette attached to the left lapel of their jacket. I met the family briefly after Mass and told the parents that they too had made my day, which they had.

I saw in each of these couples and families a reflection of the Holy Trinity. We are made in God's image and God is a Community of Three Persons, eternally generating life and drawing us into that life. Each of the three couples I met had shared in that power of generating life through marriage. The elderly couple had grown old gracefully, no doubt with many difficulties as well as joys along the way, but clearly loving each other with the love of Jesus the Risen Lord whom they had given to each other in the Sacrament of Matrimony. Their serenity spoke to me of God's love, of the life-giving Trinity in whom I find my origin and with whom I hope to spend eternity.

The middle-aged couple were carrying a heavy load, but with great love. They had generated their son with God's own loving power of creating which He had shared with them through their marriage. Now they were sharing together in carrying the cross with Jesus whom they had given to each other as the source of their love for each other when they exchanged their marriage vows. They understand the meaning of the words for better, for worse in those vows. The extraordinary love for their adult son who cannot look after himself comes from the heart of the Blessed Trinity.

I constantly marvel at the willingness of young married couples to bring children into the world and to raise them. This speaks particularly powerfully to me when I see parents raising their children in the Faith. I am blessed to know such couples and families and am aware that it is not at all uncommon for couples to have a child - or a parent - who needs special care.

In the lives of each of us there are individuals, married couples and families, often unaware that they are gifts of God to others, who draw us into the eternal life of the Blessed Trinity.

Blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear (Matthew 13:16).

For Irish Readers

The legend is that St Patrick explained the Trinity by holding up a shamrock. There are three leaves but only one shamrock.

Preamble to the Constitution of Ireland

In the Name of the Most Holy Trinity, from Whom is all authority and to Whom, as our final end, all actions both of men and States must be referred,

We, the people of Éire,

Humbly acknowledging all our obligations to our Divine Lord, Jesus Christ, Who sustained our fathers through centuries of trial,

Gratefully remembering their heroic and unremitting struggle to regain the rightful independence of our Nation,

And seeking to promote the common good, with due observance of Prudence, Justice and Charity, so that the dignity and freedom of the individual may be assured, true social order attained, the unity of our country restored, and concord established with other nations,

Do hereby adopt, enact, and give to ourselves this Constitution.

The Preamble has no legal force but is an expression of values. In 2015 the voters of Ireland changed the Constitution so that same-sex 'marriage' could be introduced. In doing so they removed  any connection between marriage and bringing new life into the world. In 2018 the voters, the majority baptised and confirmed Catholics, amended the Constitution to allow the killing of babies in their mothers' wombs. Both decisions were implicitly a rejection of the eternally life-giving Holy Trinity. Explicitly they were a rejection of life-giving and and of life.

Benedictus sit Deus

Setting by Mozart who composed this music when he was twelve.

Antiphona ad introitum   Entrance Antiphon (Cf. Tobit 12:6)

Benedictus sit Deus Pater, Unigenitusque Dei Filius, Sanctus quoque Spiritus, quia fecit nobisum misericordiam suam.

Blest be God the Father, and the Only Begotten Son of God, and also the Holy Spirit, for he has shown us his merciful love.

Traditional Latin Mass

Trinity Sunday

The Complete Mass in Latin and English is here. (Adjust the date at the top of that page to 05-31-2026 if necessary).

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

Holy Trinity and the Saints in Glory

Sebastiano Conca [Web Gallery of Art]

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 (Matthew 28:19; Gospel).

     

                         

 

'God is the Trinity, he is a communion of love; so is the family.' Sunday Reflections, Trinity Sunday, Year C

 

The Two Trinities 

Murillo [Web Gallery of Art]

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.

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, 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.

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 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].

Pope Leo XIV

[Wikipedia; photo]

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.

Holy Family with the Infant St John 

Murillo [Web Gallery of Art]

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.

Firmly I believe and truly

Words by St John Henry Newman

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.

Holy Trinity

Jusepe de Ribera [Web Gallery of Art]

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 (Matthew 28:19; Gospel).

'Salamat sa Ginoo - Thanks to the Lord!' Sunday Reflections, Trinity Sunday, Year B

 

Holy Trinity

Jusepe de Ribera [Web Gallery of Art]

Readings (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland)

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

Gospel  Matthew 28:16-20  (English Standard Version, Anglicised)

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him they worshipped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  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. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Léachtaí i nGaeilge

Antiphona ad introitum  Entrance Antiphon

Benedictus sit Deus Pater, Unigenitusque Dei Filius, Sanctus quoque Spiritus, quia fecit nobiscum misericordiam suam.

Blest be God the Father, and the Only Begotten Son of God, and also the Holy Spirit, for he has shown us his merciful love.

This is also the Offertory Verse in the Traditional Latin Mass on Trinity Sunday.

Twelve years ago around this time I gave a retreat to a group of Canossian Daughters of Charity in the Philippines. They included four novices and seven professed Sisters, including one from Malaysia. Their foundress, St Magdalene of Canossa bequeathed to the Sisters the mission of 'making Jesus known and loved above all'. This comes from a stance of standing at the foot of the Cross with Mary.

During my talks each morning I shared many stories of individuals who had made Jesus known to me, usually with no awareness that they were doing so. Some were persons I knew. Some are now dead. Some I met only once in passing, never learning their names. Most were poor. I know that my stories triggered off similar memories among the Sisters of people who had made Jesus known to them as the Sisters in turn had made him known to those they were serving.

I see this in the context of the Communion of Saints, the angels and saints in heaven, the members of the Church on earth, the souls in purgatory. The story of creation tells us that we are made in the image of God. But what the author of that first account of creation didn't know is that God is a Community of Three Persons. Made in God's image, we are made to be in community with others.

Jusepe de Ribera's painting of the Holy Trinity above, like a number of other paintings, shows the dead Christ. The expression on the face of the Father shows suffering. It is very similar to the face of the father in Rembrandt's The Return of the Prodigal Son, painted about thirty years later. I don't know if Rembrandt was familiar with de Ribera's painting.

Return of the Prodigal Son [detail]

Rembrandt [Wikipedia]

The Blessed Trinity call us into the circle of their life through suffering. We know the suffering of Jesus. Some of the great artists show to us something of the suffering of the Father.

Peasant Girl Bringing Basket

Adolf Fényes [Web Gallery of Art]

One of the stories I told involved two persons I met only once, a mother and her daughter aged about 13 or 14. When they first approached me outside a retreat house in Cebu City on the morning of Holy Thursday 1990. I made an excuse that I was only visiting. While inside I saw the two of them sitting on the steps. The daughter had her head on her mother's shoulder. Clearly, they were tired and hungry. When I was leaving I gave them enough to buy breakfast. The young girl looked at me with the most beautiful smile I've ever seen and said to me, Salamat sa Ginoo! 'Thanks to the Lord!' She wasn't thanking me but inviting me to thank the Lord with her and her mother for his goodness. Through her hunger and tiredness she had come to know something of God's bountiful love, the love of the Father that Rembrandt reveals so powerfully.

As I reflect on this incident now, 34 years later, I see it in the light of today's Second Reading, Romans 8:14-17. St Paul writes, For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God . . . When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness. That young girl was led by the Spirit of God to thank the Father for having provided her and her mother with breakfast that day, for having listened to their prayer, Give us this day our daily bread. And she invited me as her brother in Christ to do the same. Without being aware of it she was celebrating the reality of the Holy Trinity.

And she has been calling me into the life of the Holy Trinity for all those year. I've no idea what became of her. I went to the Philippines in 1971 to do my part in making disciples of all nations and have baptised many in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. But that young girl, and many others like her, have been constantly teaching me to observe all that I have commanded you and assuring me in the name of Jesus, I am with you always, to the end of the age.

Benedictus sit Deus

This is Mozart's setting of today's Entrance Antiphon, composed when he was twelve.

Blessed Carlo Acutis

3 May 1991 - 12 October 2006

Beatified 10 October 2020 [Wikipedia; photo]

On Thursday 23 May Pope Francis cleared the way for the canonisation of Blessed Carlo Acutis. He died from leukaemia at the age of 15. He was a computer 'geek', a skill which he used to be a 'web missionary', as the title of the video below states. If you google his name on YouTube you will find a number of videos about him, most of them short. The one below is just over 30 minutes but is very comprehensive, showing many aspects of his life as seen by others, young people of his own age who were friends of his, and others, young and older, on whose life Blessed Carlo had a huge influence, some while he was alive, others who came to know about him after his death, people drawn closer to Jesus Christ because of him. I've watched the video a number of times and each time it has been a prayerful experience, of being closer to God and with a sense of wonder at how the Blessed Trinity invites us into eternal life.

Young people can draw us into the life of the Holy Trinity, as did the 13- or 14-year old girl in Cebu City with me, as does the 12-year-old Mozart with his setting of Benedictus sit Deus, as has Blessed Carlo Acutis been doing before and after his death. Mozart and Blessed Carlo are known internationally, the young girl known only by her family and neighbours. We never know who may be drawing us into the eternal life of the Blessed Trinity.

Blessed Carlo, pray for us!

Blessed Carlo Acutis

Traditional Latin Mass

Trinity Sunday

The Complete Mass in Latin and English is here. (Adjust the date at the top of that page to 05-26-2024 if necessary).

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

Baptism

Giuseppe Maria Crespi [Wikipedia]

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 (Matthew 28:19; Gospel).