THE MOST HOLY TRINITY  - CICLO C – 2022

      On the first Sunday after Pentecost the Liturgy of the Church invites us to celebrate the greatness of our God, to adore him, to contemplate him, to allow ourselves to be fascinated with his beauty and goodness

      Through the readings we will   enter into the mystery of our  one and triune God. Like Moses, we will remove the sandals from our feet because we are on sacred ground.   

      Let us enter into his presence with our imagination and our feelings and overall, with our love.

      More than to try to understand the mystery that goes beyond our mind, let us allow God to seduce our heart, let us allow our imagination and our feelings move freely..     

THE BOOK OF PROVERBS  

v  When we open this book, we are surprised by his miscellaneous nature.  It contains long poems as   well as very short ones, two lines in parallel.   

v  Another thing that makes us wonder, is the apparent lack of theological reflection, it is a very pragmatic book, and we ask, why  has it  been included in the Bible, which is the word of God?  

v  Together with the books of Job, Ecclesiastes (Qoheleth),  Ben Sira (Ecclesiasticus)   Wisdom  the book of Proverbs is classified as wisdom literature.    

v  I have read in a commentary that the Book of Proverbs is the most secular of these five books.   

v  Its author is not Solomon, as we could think on reading the first verse “The proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel” 1.1.   In the same way as the books about the Law (Pentateuch) are attributed to Moses, the Psalms to David, the book of Proverbs is attributed to Solomon, because he was such a wise man. However, he is not the author of the book, maybe he is the author of some proverbs, but not the whole book. 

v  For an Israelite there existed only the cosmos and the web of social relationships, both realities derive from the creation made by God.   The mission of the wise person was to seek the harmony hidden within these two realities and transmit this knowledge by means of sentences and instructions, to help the human beings to live a good life, a truly human life.      

FIRST READING   Proverbs 8:22-31 

Ø  Wisdom speaks and says that she existed from the beginning.  

Ø  Wisdom describes for us the works of God. Let our imagination go to the places where Wisdom takes us: 

·         oceans, springs of water, rivers.

·         mountains and hills  

·         earth and fields   

Ø  She says that she was present when God made the sky 

Ø  when he put the sky as a dome  over the ocean.   

Ø  when he set boundaries to the sea     

Ø  If we pay attention to what Wisdom is saying, God is building a home. The home he has prepared for us to live in.  

Ø  And Wisdoms tells us that she was there beside him as his craftsman, and that she played before him, and was delighted to be with the human beings.

Ø  What a wonderful word, the Wisdom of God, God himself found and still finds his delight among the human beings, in each one of us. 

Ø  The Church sees in this Wisdom the Son of God, through whom all things were made. He became one of us.  In the Eastern Churches they see in this Wisdom an image of the Holy Creator Spirit.   

 RESPONSORIAL PSALM  Ps  8

R.  O Lord, our God, how wonderful your name in all the earth!
When I behold your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars which you set in place —
What is man that you should be mindful of him,
or the son of man that you should care for him?
R. O Lord, our God, how wonderful your name in all the earth!
You have made him little less than the angels,
and crowned him with glory and honor.
You have given him rule over the works of your hands,
putting all things under his feet:
R. O Lord, our God, how wonderful your name in all the earth!
All sheep and oxen,
yes, and the beasts of the field,
The birds of the air, the fishes of the sea,
and whatever swims the paths of the seas.
R. O Lord, our God, how wonderful your name in all the earth! 

ü  The psalmist is in awe to see how God takes care of his creatures.

ü  In a very special way of the human being, to whom he has given power over them.

ü  The psalmist  asks, what is man?

ü  We repeat the same question, who are we that the Son of the Father became one like us, and put his tent among us?  Who are we that God comes to dwell in us?  

SECOND READING  Rom 5:1-5

      Paul speaks of the redemptive work of God for his creation.  

      We have been justified by faith, and this gives us peace with God by Jesus Christ. 

      Christ is he who has given us the grace in which we live, and at the same time we rejoice in hope of the   glory of God. 

      He says that we do not only rejoice in hope, but also in our afflictions.  

      Knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endurance, proven character, and proven character hope.  

      He says that hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.  

      The Holy Spirit is he who completes the work that God has begun in us.  

GOSPEL  Jn 16,12-15

v  Jesus says to his disciples that, he has many more things to tell them, but they cannot bear them at that moment.  

v  The Holy Spirit will help them to understand and to live what Jesus has taught them during his earthly life. The Spirit will guide them to the whole truth. He will remind them, all the words of Jesus.

v  He will not speak on his own; he will speak what he hears in the intimacy of the Trinitarian life. 

v  He will glorify Jesus, because he will take what is Jesus' and declare  it to them.   

v  Why does Jesus say that the Spirit will not speak on his own? 

v  Jesus had said to his disciples that the Spirit was the promise of the Father, the Father was giving the Spirit to them.  However, it seems as if the Spirit was given by Jesus.

v  The answer is found in the next verse: everything that the Father has belongs to Jesus.

v  The mission of the Spirit among us has been, to make possible the creating and redemptive plan of the Father in the Church and in the world. 

v  This is our God, the Christian God, God who is a Trinity of persons, a community of persons united by the love generated between the three divine persons. He is the Creator, the Redeemer and the Sanctifier.   

 I want to share with you a homily on the Most Holy Trinity given by Bishop Baron from Winona-Rochester, USA in 2017.

o   He invites us  to go with our imagination and look at the different beings of creation, from the tiniest ones to the larger ones, plants, animals and inanimate beings. He takes us  in this tour into matter itself and asks us to look at the atoms, protons, neutrons, etc… to go inside our own body composed by so many cells each one with its task. Afterwards he takes us to the celestial bodies, the galaxies the millions and millions of stars and planets. Finally he invites us to contemplate with awe this creation and to discover in it a constant communication and the capacity of each created being to reproduce itself.

o   From this contemplation Bishop Baron leads us to the contemplation of our God: the Father reproduces his own image exactly equal to himself, it is the Son, equal to the Father but another autonomous being , when both look at each other with love.  They are in awe ah! and this sigh or breath is the Holy Spirit who is another person the third person of the Trinity.

o   The Holy Spirit is the love that is communicated among the three divine Persons inside the Trinity.

o   God the Father has the capacity to reproduce his own image equal to himself and at the same time different as we say in the Profession of faith  God from God, light from Light begotten not made of one being with the Father… we say also I  believe in the Holy Spirit who proceed from the Father and the Son…

o   God has a continuous communication of love, admiration, and dedication among the three Persons of the Trinity, our only God.

o   The three divine Persons want to share their being and their happiness and the result is the wonderful creation that we have which has come to existence through the overflow of their love and, has  imprinted in some way their image in it,  making creation able to reproduce and to communicate.

CLARETIAN CORNER                    

 

 TERESITA ALBARRACIN

There was the tradition that when a young woman began her novitiate her name would be changed. Mari Carmen, this was her baptismal name, manifested the wish to be called like the young French Carmelite Little Theresa of Lisieux. Her wish was granted by her superiors and she was called Teresita. On April 10 1944 she made her first profession, beginning her life as a Claretian Missionary Sister, in the newly acquired house of Sarria ( one of the neighborhoods of Barcelona -Spain). From the rooftop she probably had contemplated   many times the city of Barcelona and, on very clear days, she could even have seen the Mediterranean sea which had cradled her since her birth.

A short time after her profession, she was assigned to the kindergarten class. She had always been very apostolic and manifested her desires to be sent as a missionary to save souls (Information give by her first Master of Novices in the Information Process);  but the superiors, for the moment, gave her that assignment.

She wrote “I love my vows and ask and want to fulfill them until death, because being poor I detach myself from the earthly things, being chaste and pure I resemble Jesus and Mary and, being obedient, I touch God Himself.”(Positio pp.88-90)

   

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

BARRON,Robert, Bishop. Homily on the Most Holy Trinity, 2017 in YouTube.

CONFERENCIA EPISCOPAL ESPAÑOLA, Sagrada Biblia, versión oficial, 2012

CONGREGATIO DE CAUSIS SANCTORUM, Mariae Teresiae, Positio super virtutibus 1994.

RAVASI, Gianfranco, Según Las Escrituras, Año C, 2006

SCHÖKEL, Luis Alonso. Comentario a La Biblia de nuestro Pueblo. 2010.