Feast of Saint Simon Stock (16 May 2008)

The great liturgical cycle of the life of Christ, our Redeemer and Savior, begins annually on the first Sunday of Advent and ends on the solemnity of Pentecost. The rest of the year is what we call “ordinary time.” Well, if that is true, you might ask why we find ourselves celebrating two solemnities this weekend and the following?Good question! And the reason is that two of the revelations made to us by Our Divine Lord Jesus are of such enormous importance that they deserve a special celebration after the completion of the Christ cycle. They are the fact of the Blessed Trinity, and of the Holy Eucharist.

The Jewish religion—God’s revelation of himself to humankind before the coming of the Savior—was an unquestionably MONOTHEISTIC religion. That means it professes only ONE GOD. “Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one God.” The Jewish people have always been very tenacious of this basic doctrine in contrast with the many gods of the Greeks, Romans, Persians, Hindus, and other religious of mankind. We Christians have inherited our belief in the one and only God from our Jewish “big brothers and sisters,” and particularly from the greatest of all our Jewish brothers, Our Lord Jesus himself.

But during his lifetime, Our Lord gave to the world a new doctrine which had been unheard of and undreamed of beforehand: that in the ONE God, there are THREE divine Persons: the Father, the Son (Christ himself), and the Holy Spirit. This doctrine has many values for us, certainly one of the most important being that we are made in the image and likeness of a God in whom are three Persons. Thus God is a community, a family, of persons, and we are persons destined to live with other persons: parents first, relatives, friends, spouses, and children or the wider community of society.

So important is it that we know that in the ONE God there are THREE Persons that we have this feast this weekend: the feast of the Holy, Blessed Trinity. We are baptized “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” We use that formula constantly in our sign of the cross, our prayers, both liturgical and private, our blessings, and so on. The “triune” (three in one) God is our Creator, our Redeemer, our indwelling Sanctifier.

Next weekend, I hope to share some ideas with you about the second of these great revelations: that of the Holy Eucharist, the most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar. Thank you for seeking God’s truth. God bless you. Father Victor Brown, O.P.