Sunday, May 26, 2024
Solemnity of the Holy Trinity – Year B

1st reading: Deuteronomy 4,32-34.39-40
Psalm: 32 (33), 4-5, 6.9, 18-19, 20.22
2nd reading: Romans 8,14:17-XNUMX
Gospel: Matthew 28,16-20

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This passage from the book of Deuteronomy recalls the oneness of God: “It is the Lord who is God, above in heaven and here on earth; There are no more ". But the specificity of God is that he speaks: “Have we ever experienced anything like this? Is there a people who have heard the voice of God like you? »

God speaks and his word remains among the people, his word works in the hearts of the people, and, as the prophet Isaiah will say, this word that God gives to his people will not return to him without result (55,11); which suggests an exteriority of the word of God in relation to God. 

The promise of the Holy Spirit which runs through the prophets, in particular the prophet Joel (Jl 3) and the prophet Ezekiel (Ez 36), is fulfilled in Jesus. Last Sunday we celebrated the event of Pentecost where the Spirit descends on the apostles gathered with the Virgin Mary. This promised Spirit abides in us and we can thus distinguish the Spirit of God from God himself. Creator God, the Word of God, the Spirit of God… Basically, when we reread all of Holy History — starting with the story of Creation — we already see present this great mystery that God is Trinity. The Father, his Word, the Spirit… “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us”, Saint John tells us in the prologue to his Gospel (Jn 1,14:XNUMX). At the end of the Gospel according to Saint Matthew that we have heard, Jesus gives his apostles this Trinitarian formula that we know well when he invites them - as a means of making disciples - to baptize “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”. The Trinity is not primarily a subject for theologians nor a puzzle for catechists: the Holy Trinity is just the revelation of God in his intimacy. Thérèse speaks several times of the Trinity, but always as this focus which attracts her. On several occasions, she takes the image of the little bird that cannot fly and the eagles, comparing herself to the little bird that cannot fly and comparing the saints to the eagles. But it is also Jesus whom she compares to the eagle, and she writes in Manuscript B:

The little bird would like to fly towards this brilliant Sun which charms its eyes, it would like to imitate the Eagles its brothers which it sees rising to the Divine home of the Holy Trinity...

And a little further:

O Divine Word, you are the adored Eagle that I love and who attract me! it is you who, rushing towards the land of exile, wanted to suffer and die in order to attract souls to the bosom of the Eternal Home of the Blessed Trinity.

Ms B 05

This blessed Trinity is another way in which Thérèse contemplates this Homeland which is ours, this Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is nothing other than God himself. Our destiny is the very heart of the Holy Trinity. Our final home is to dwell in God. But what Thérèse also understands is that this Holy Trinity towards which we are going comes towards us. I continue the quote from Manuscript B:

It is you who ascend towards the inaccessible Light which will henceforth be your abode, it is you who still remain in the valley of tears, hidden under the appearance of a white host.

Christian life always takes place in a kind of tension where we contemplate Heaven, the Kingdom towards which we are walking and in which we are not yet, while already living from this grace of Heaven since the resurrected Christ continues to give himself to us here below, particularly in the sacraments, and especially in that of the Eucharist.

In Manuscript A, on this same theme, Thérèse specifies:

It is not to remain in the golden ciborium that He comes down from Heaven every day, it is in order to find another Heaven which is infinitely more dear to Him than the first: the Heaven of our soul, made to His image, the living temple of the adorable Trinity!…

Ms A, 48v°

The Heaven of our soul, the living temple of the adorable Trinity… 

This ties in with this tension that I was talking about, where at the same time we walk towards Heaven, but something of Heaven is given to us to experience here on earth by the incarnation of the Word, by the gift of the Holy Spirit which makes our soul, precisely, the place of the presence of the Holy Trinity.

In her poem “Living with love”, from the second stanza, Thérèse evokes this Trinitarian mystery: 

2. Living on Love means keeping yourself
Uncreated Word, Word of my God,
Ah! you know it, divine Jesus, I love you
The Spirit of Love sets me ablaze with its fire
It is by loving you that I attract the Father
My weak heart keeps it without return.
O Trinity! you are Prisoner

What does Thérèse mean when she writes: It is by loving you that I attract the Father?

She simply wants to take as a true statement what Jesus says in the discourse after the Last Supper: “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word; my Father will love him, we will come to him and with him we will make ourselves a home” (Jn 14,23:XNUMX).

The mystery of the Holy Trinity is the intimate mystery of God, and we must both learn to contemplate it in our meditation, in the meditation of the Holy Scriptures; contemplate this mystery... We can help ourselves with different images which are both evocative and at the same time all too short, such as: speaking, speech and breathing; such as: the source, the river and its flow. But we must also understand that the entire Trinity comes to make its home in us, that by loving the Word made flesh, Jesus, we attract the Father, as Thérèse says. And that where there is the Word and the Father, there is also necessarily the Spirit. And we can take it the other way: by welcoming the Holy Spirit who is given to us in fullness in the sacrament of confirmation, by welcoming the Spirit who never ceases to want to arouse in us faith, hope and charity, we open ourselves to the presence of the Father and the Son; for the Spirit, we have heard, is a Spirit who makes us sons and this Spirit in us cries to the father “Abba Father! ", and that this Spirit allows us to welcome the inheritance of the Father, but always as co-heir with the Son and never without him. 

The mystery of the Holy Trinity is the mystery of the love that is God. 

The mystery of the Holy Trinity is the mystery of our own dwelling since the day of our baptism. 

I end with these few words from Thérèse to her sister Céline in letter 165:

What joy to think that the Good Lord, the whole Trinity looks at us, that it is in us and takes pleasure in considering us. But what does She want to see in our hearts? otherwise “music choirs in an army camp? »

(LT 165 – to Céline – July 7, 1894)