A reading from the book of Exodus.
Early in the morning, Moses went up to Mount Sinai
as the Lord had commanded him,
taking along the two stone tablets.
Having come down in a cloud,
the Lord stood with Moses there
and proclaimed his name, Lord.
Thus the Lord passed before him and cried out,
the Lord, the Lord, a merciful and gracious God,
slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity.
Moses at once bowed down to the ground in worship.
Then he said,
If I find favor with you, O Lord, do come along in our company.
This is indeed a stiff-necked people,
yet pardon our wickedness and sins,
and receive us as your own.
Have a wonderful evening.
🎵Glory and grace, glory and grace forever🎵
Blessed are you, O Lord, the God of our fathers,
Praiseworthy and exalted above all forever,
And blessed is your holy and glorious name,
Praiseworthy and exalted above all for all ages.
🎵Glory and praise, glory and praise forever🎵
Blessed are you in the temple of your holy glory,
Praiseworthy and glorious above all forever.
Lord, He had grace, Lord, He had grace for ever.
Blessed are you on the throne of your kingdom,
praiseworthy and exalted above all, forever.
Glory and praise, glory and praise, forever.
Blessed are you who look into the depths, From your throne upon the cherubim,
Praiseworthy and exalted above all forever.
All he had graced, all he had graced for ever.
a reading from the second learner of St. Paul to the Corinthians.
Brothers and sisters, rejoice.
Men, your ways encourage one another,
agree with one another, live in peace,
and the God of love and peace will be with you.
Greet one another with a holy kiss, all the holy ones greet you.
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy
Spirit be with all of you.
E-b-o-n-o-m-e-n-e
Alle el puyo, alle el puyo, alle el puyo.
glory to the Father, and to the Son,
and to the Holy Spirit,
to God who is, who was,
and who is to come.
Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia
Domino's for this school
Laxio, Santi, Vangelis, Seconde, Mjorvane
God, Jadivie, Domine
God so loved the world that He gave His only Son,
so that everyone who believes in Him might not perish,
but might have eternal life.
For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world,
but that the world might be saved through Him.
Whoever believes in him will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned,
because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
Pervam davar vinay.
Lost in the Christmas.
A bishop once examining the candidates for confirmation at a certain parish
asked a young boy to tell him what the Holy Trinity was.
It's one in three and three in one.
And the bishop, gently probing to determine if the boy truly prepared for his sacrament
of confirmation, simply replied to the boy, that's good, but I don't quite understand.
And the boy responded to the bishop, you're not supposed to.
St. Augustine says that if you claim to know fully the doctrine of the Holy Trinity,
Your heretic. It's a mystery.
We can never grasp the how of the Most Holy, Blessed, and All-Adored Trinity,
but we can grasp and know the who.
because the who has been revealed. This is because God continually reveals
Himself to us. Yes, God so loved the world that He gave us His only Son, words from
today's gospel, to reveal Himself more fully to us.
The Father and the Son pour out their love into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.
The third person of the Trinity, whom we celebrated in a very special way last Sunday, on Pentecost
Sunday, marking the 50th day.
The Holy Spirit constantly reminds us that we are now adopted children of God.
That God is not only relational among himself and the three divine persons,
but we are called to be relational with God.
This is something that only Christianity offers, this relational reality.
The Holy Spirit constantly reminds us that we are now adopted children of God and
The Holy Spirit helps us to know the Father so deeply that we can't help but cry out
Abba
When our heads start spinning, if you will, in this crossfire of Trinitarian love, the
Father to the Son and Spirit, the Son to the Father and the Spirit, the Spirit to the Father
and the Son, this crossfire of Trinitarian love, we can respond only as Moses did in
today's first reading.
And that is to bow to the ground in absolute worship.
Rejoice exultantly with all the saints and angels, praising God in the name of
the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Today we celebrate the great universal salinity, my brothers and sisters, of the Most Holy Trinity, also known as Trinity Sunday.
Today's liturgical readings tell us that the Most Holy Trinity is a relational God who constantly gives and loves,
and who constantly as well wants to receive.
from his creatures. This is implied in the fact that he's relational because to
be relational means you not only want to give but you want to receive. And yet so
many Christians, so many Catholic Christians, are so fearful of God.
They don't see God as relational.
In the first reading today from the book of Exodus, God gives us commandments.
He gives us His divine nature.
He tells us about His mercy, His graciousness, His kindness, and His pardon, all to lead
us aright, even when we falter and stray from Him.
In the second reading, from the second letter to the Corinthians, we discover that God gives us peace, grace, and fellowship.
And in the Gospel from St. John, we discover that God gives us eternal life and salvation,
but most of all, that God so loved the world that He gave us His only Son.
All these great, beautiful truths, and surprisingly so, all three readings,
They're not long readings from Scripture.
And yet the Old Testament reading, the first reading, the New Testament reading, the second reading, and the gospel
are loaded, are inundated with these truths of the fact that our God is a relational God.
A little bit of a history of this salinity of the Most Holy Trinity, the Arian heresy promoted the false doctrines of Arius in the third century and denied that Jesus Christ was of the same substance as God.
Arianism taught that Jesus was only the highest of created beings.
not of the same substance as God himself. The threat posed by Arianism then, which
was formally condemned in the early church councils of Nicaea in 325 AD, the
same council that gives us the Nicene Creed.
that we pray every Sunday at Mass, and also the Council of Constantinople in 381 AD,
led then to a distinctive emphasis on the preaching and devotional practice of Trinitarian belief.
the lands of Spain and Gaul, modern-day France, which were particularly affected
by the error of Aries. Thus there appeared in the middle of the 8th century
in the ancient Galatian sacramentary used for the Mass, the Roman Missal, the
preface which we actually use for today's feast right after the offatory.
which is a sharpened and abbreviated version of the classical doctrine of what we Christians believe in regards to the Most Holy Trinity.
Also, in 800 AD, a vote of Mass in honor of the Blessed Trinity appeared as a Sunday Mass.
We also have evidence of a special feast in honor of the Most Holy Trinity in the Benedictine
Monasteries in the Land of the Franks and in Gaul before the end of the First Millennium.
Rome hesitated a long while before actually instituting a universal feast in honor of the Most Holy Trinity
for the simple reason that each Sunday contains a memorial of the Most Holy Trinity, does it not?
It was Pope John XXII who ended up inaugurating this feast for the whole universal Church
in the year 1334.
The celebration is held on the Sunday after Pentecost Sunday as a kind of grateful review.
of everything we've just celebrated in these last 50 days and also in anticipation of in the previous 40 days, beginning with Ash, Wednesday, and Lent.
That's a very important point as to why we celebrate Trinity Sunday today. It's worth repeating.
The celebration is held on the Sunday after Pentecost Sunday as a kind of grateful review.
Of the now completed mystery of salvation, which the Father has accomplished through the Son in the Holy Spirit, brought to us during Lent, the sacred Triduum, Holy Thursday night to Easter Sunday morning, Easter Sunday itself, the Easter season, which includes, of course, Ascension Thursday and Pentecost Sunday.
This is why we celebrate the three divine persons in a very special way today, on this Sunday after Pentecost Sunday,
as a grateful review for everything we've celebrated these last 90 days,
that is the 50-day Easter season and the 40 days of Lent,
preparing us for Easter and its 50-day celebration.
The importance and presence of the blessed trinity in the sacred liturgy is a very important one.
Because the liturgy is about going to the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit.
The Latin for that is ADAD 2.
Per, P-E-R, through, that is, through the Son, and in, I-N, in the Holy Spirit.
All things to the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit.
And we have this triad formulary, if you will, peppered throughout the sacred liturgy.
We have it at the beginning during the collect prayer.
We hear it again during the offatory prayer.
It will be intimated again at the closing prayer, at the end of Mass.
All things to the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit.
Now why is that important?
That's important, that little triad formulary, because it's something that each one of us
should take with us outside of our Sunday Obligation Mass and live the remaining 167
hours of the week.
You pray the daily rosary, beautiful, you pray the daily divine mercy chaplain, great.
You have a great sense of your faithfulness to daily duty and how...
ordinary activities, say, at work or in the home, can actually be pleasing
sacrifices to God, Saint Therese's little way, if you will, or Saint Jose Maria
Escrivas, the founder of Opus Dei's way of sanctification for the daily worker.
Beautiful, you know, Saint Therese would say, while needlepoint, during her
needlepoint work, when she would drop the little needlepoint pin, pick up a pin,
For the love of God and save a soul my own mother now deceased
God rest her soul, would say clean out a fridge for the love of God and save five souls, okay?
She didn't like cleaning out the fridge too much, okay? It's a task, it's a job. But even the daily
mundane things can be offered up to God as pleasing sacrifices and they can be just as powerful
as praying the daily rosary or praying the Divine Mercy Chaplain. Even recreational things.
Sports. Now, blessed John Paul II.
Love sports.
up until his late 60s and early 70s, he hyped up until his mid 70s. He said that
even recreational activity when it's done truly in a wholesome manner is
really a re-creation, put the hyphen in the word of recreation, is really a
re-creation of body and soul and renewing the body and soul.
as a temple of the Holy Spirit to honor and worship God, the triune God, so even
recreational activity can be offered up as a pleasing sacrifice to God. So whether
it be prayer, whether it be faithfulness to daily duty, whether it be something
recreational, all these things mean nothing.
If they are not offered, ultimately, with a capital U, ultimately, to the Father.
through the sun in the Holy Spirit.
Amen to that truth of our Christian faith.
Rekindle that truth in your mind, heart, and even on your lips
when you come to holy mass.
When you come to holy mass, come to holy mass
with a particularly willed intention
that you wish to offer to the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit, and
make mention of that particularly willed intention, especially the
Offatory, when the priest is offering the bread and wine. I'm saying bread and
wine.
Because at that point of the Offatory,
that's still what it is.
The consecration is not yet taken place.
The Offatory is the part of the Mass.
When the priest says,
blessed are you Lord God of all creation,
through your goodness we have this bread to offer.
Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation, for your goodness we have this wine to offer.
Fruit of the vine and work of human hands, et cetera, et cetera.
That's when you place your particularly willed intention on the pattern with the bread in the chalice with the wine.
And your own particularly willed intention that you made with a deliberate act of the will is offered in unison with the priest's primary intention, which he has as the priest's celebrant.
Now you can bring many, many, many particularly willed intentions to one mass, because the merits of the mass, the merits of any one given mass are infinite, because the merits wrought by our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross are infinite.
So that having been said that you can bring many, many particularly willed intentions to each and every one mass
You should still have one particular one that is especially dear to your heart and
Never forget this this triad of all things to the Father
Through the Son in the Holy Spirit and live it
The remaining one hundred and sixty seven hours of the week
Father Guy Ori, in his book titled The Mass, states that the Mass possesses an aura of
Trinitarian spirituality within it.
We just said that Rome hesitated for many decades, centuries in fact, from about the 800s all the way up to the 1300s.
Rome hesitated on instituting a universal solemnity in honor of the three divine persons because really each and every Sunday Mass already includes that.
And Father Guy Orie proves this in this beautiful quote.
He says,
Mass begins with a profession of trinitarian belief
through the sign of the cross.
It's the very first thing we do at Mass.
At the end of the entrance rites, the great doxology, that is the Gloria, sings lyric praise in honor of the most holy trinity, the three divine persons.
In the Nicene Creed, the church again proclaims its explicit belief in the Trinity.
The conclusion of the Eucharistic Prayer is a Trinitarian doxology.
The whole structure of the prayer, having made manifest the church's belief in the three divine persons.
And then at the end of Mass, in the dismissal, the people are blessed in the name of the most holy Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
So it is the Mass throughout, is enveloped in an aura of Trinitarian spirituality.
And how beautiful that truth is, you know, when I research a liturgical feast like this
to put a homily together, and how it didn't come together too quickly, but yet it developed
organically over the decades and over the centuries.
And then how the Magisterium of Holy Mother Church, through the Apostolic College with the successor of Peter as its head, ended up officially putting the seal of approval on it.
And you couple this type of organic growth of a liturgical feast with the truth that the Magisterium also remains firm, unmoving.
in certain teachings, for example, her doctrinal teachings on the three divine
persons, who they are.
how they are giving and relational, but even other teachings like the so-called five non-negotiables,
you know
contraception, the church's teaching against contraception,
human cloning and embryonic stem cell research,
euthanasia, abortion, and so-called gay marriage. When you couple all of these truths with something like
a historical research of a liturgical feast.
For me personally, and I don't even say this as a Catholic priest,
I don't even say this as a Catholic. I say this simply as someone who does a little bit of research
and knows the teachings of the church. For me personally, not even as a priest, not even as a
Catholic. To me personally,
it's an absolute truth of the fact when you couple these things together that
the Catholic Church is the one true church.
Presenting truth unabashed.
Leading souls to truth.
Not only when you look at her doctrinally, but when you look at her historicity, her historical content, and how organically these great liturgical feasts have grown.
And how we, as baptized and confirmed Christians, have a duty to share these truths with others.
Father O'Ree has it correct, huh?
Mass begins with a profession of trinitarian belief
through the sign of the cross.
At the end of the entrance rights,
the great doxology that is the glorious
sings lyric praise of the trinity.
In the Cree, the church proclaims its explicit belief
in the trinity.
The conclusion of the Eucharistic Prayer is a trinitarian doxology.
The whole structure of the prayer, having made manifest the church's belief
in the three divine persons. And at the end of Mass, in the dismissal,
the people are blessed in the name of the most holy trinity.
The mass throughout is thus enveloped in an aura of trinitarian spirituality.
The great church father and doctor St. Athanasius who died in 373 said
the grace and the gift of the trinity are given by the father through the son in the Holy Spirit.
Let us not forget that.
The grace and gift of the Trinity are given by the Father
through the Son in the Holy Spirit.
You know, in St. Paul's letter to the Corinthians,
his second letter to the Corinthians,
was today's second reading chapter 13 from that letter.
We have one of the three options for the greeting
of the priest to the congregation
at the very beginning of mass for the entrance rights.
Does this sound familiar to you?
I'm reading it right from the second reading
from today's Liturgy of the Word.
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God
and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
That's one of three options for the priest when he greets the people at the beginning
of Mass.
And yet I've heard from non-Catholics, from non-Christians that the Mass is not scriptural.
history is needed, research is needed, the study of truth is needed.
The Triune God, my dear friends, continually lavishes an eternity of love on us to quote
First Corinthians chapter 2 verse 9.
We cannot bear all of this as John 16 tells us.
There's so much love being lavished on us by the three divine persons.
We cannot bear it.
John 16. It's like attempting to drink water from a fire hose. You ever try to do
that? I hope not. It's like trying to drink water from a fire hose.
the great patron of parish priests.
We should have so much confidence that we should go straight to him like a bullet from a gun.
We should do so with confidence that's like from a bullet from a gun.
with that force, with that confidence, with that power, with that speed.
That's the confidence.
That we should go to this triune loving relational giving God
Even though his love for us is so unfathomable, so much, so immense that to try to even think
about it or absorb it would be like trying to drink water.
We cannot bear it all. Therefore, the Father and the Son mercifully help us receive their abundant love by pouring out the Holy Spirit in two-hour hearts, especially last Sunday on Pentecost Sunday, that same spirit of truth.
That same spirit of truth who makes us cry out, Abba.
Father. It's a relational term.
The very word father implies by its very nature relationship.
The Lord God my friends has prepared us for this Trinity Sunday by giving us a
new Pentecost last Sunday following the 40 days of lint and penance and the
50 days of the Easter celebration 90 days of truly looking at self.
We talked about self-knowledge yesterday.
Well, there's 90 days wherein we're called to particularly
grow in self-knowledge.
the 40 days of Lent and the 50 days of Easter.
The Lord God has prepared us for this Trinity Sunday
by giving us a new Pentecost last Sunday
on Pentecost Sunday following the 40 days
of Lent and penance and the 50 days of Easter celebration,
concluding with the Pentecost novina.
What better day than today this Trinity Sunday,
this day of grateful review
of these great mysteries of salvation brought to us in these last 90 days but
especially in these last 50 days.
What better day than today this Trinity Sunday for the spirit of truth to guide us to all truth even into the truths of the depths of the Triune God.
What better day for the Holy Spirit to pour out into our own hearts the love of the Most Holy Trinity.
Come Holy Spirit, lead us today much deeper into the heart of Trinitarian
life and love.
Come, Holy Spirit, lead us today much deeper into the heart of Trinitarian life.
What a gift we Catholics have in the absolute solidity.
of our one holy Catholic, meaning universal.
to present us unabashed with such truths.
and doctrinal truths, all rooted, of course, in the Spirit of Truth Himself.
Come, Holy Spirit, lead us today much deeper into the heart of Trinitarian life and love.