REFLECTION FOR TRINITY SUNDAY

Every year, on the Sunday after Pentecost, we celebrate the Solemnity of the Holy Trinity. The word itself seems to make no sense: Trinity, from tri-une, meaning three-in-one. What does this mean? All attempts to explain it seem only to make it more complicated. It is a point on which Christians are often challenged by non-believers; how can you believe in a God who is both three and one? Surely it is illogical? How do we answer this challenge?

Firstly, we must stress that however much we do understand about God, he will always be beyond our comprehension. Even in heaven, with all eternity before us, we will never be able to fathom the depths of God. He is infinite. Otherwise

, eternity would be unendurable. Never being able to comprehend God fully is a blessing, considered from the perspective of eternity. But in fact, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is not difficult to understand. It depends upon our grasping two different aspects of God one by one,

First, we worship ONE GOD. So we confess every Sunday at Mass. Christianity does not worship a multiplicity of Gods. God is One, Simple, Indivisible. We share with Judaism the declaration, “Hear, O Israel; the Lord, your God, the Lord is One” and with Islam, “There is no God but God,” He is One, Absolute, Eternal, All-knowing, All-seeing. There can be absolutely no doubt or question about this at all.

Secondly, and here Christianity differs profoundly from both Judaism and Islam, we encounter and experience this one God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Each of the three is for us a distinct person, not merely one person appearing in three different forms. Each of the three plays a different role in the story of our salvation, in the history of the Church. They speak of themselves as distinct: “He who has seen me has seen the Father…I will send you another Advocate…we will come to him and make our home with him” and so on. Nor do we see any one of them as superior to the others; all three are co-equal.

As long as we see either our faith in the One God, or our relationship with Father, Son and Holy Spirit independently, there is no problem. It is when we try to combine the two that the divine mathematics defeats us. We believe in One God; we encounter him as Father, Son and Spirit; let this be sufficient for us, for the rest is unfathomable mystery. We may understand it better in eternity; we can be sure we will never understand it now. But faith carries us beyond understanding, and though we may not understand, yet we can believe in him, we can love this three-in-one God. In the words which follow our quotation from Deuteronomy above.”…and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and with all your strength…”

POPE FRANCIS' GENERAL AUDIENCE 27 MAY 2015

"The covenant of love between man and woman, a covenant for life, is not improvised; it is not made from one day to another"

Continuing these catecheses on the family, today I would like to speak about the [time of] engagement. Engagement -- we hear it in the word – it has to do with trust, confidence, reliability -- confidence in the vocation that God gives, because marriage is first of all the discovery of a call from God. It is certainly a good thing that today young people can choose to marry on the basis of mutual love. However, the freedom of the bond in fact requires a harmonious awareness of the decision, not only a simple understanding of the attraction or of the sentiment, of a moment, of a brief time ... it requires a course.

In other terms, the engagement is the time in which the two are called to work hard on love, a participated and shared work that goes in depth. As they discover one another, that is, man “gets to know” woman by getting to know this woman, his fiancée; and the woman “gets to know” man by getting to know this man, her fiancé. We must not underestimate the importance of this knowledge: it is a fine obligation, and love itself requires it, because it is not only a light-hearted happiness, an enchanted emotion ... The biblical account speaks of the entire creation as the fine work of the love of God; the Book of Genesis says that “God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). Only at the end did God “rest.”  From this image we understand that the love of God, which gave origin to the world, was not an extemporaneous decision. No! It was fine work. The love of God created the conditions of an irrevocable, solid alliance destined to last.

The covenant of love between man and woman, a covenant for life, is not improvised; it is not made from one day to another. There is no express marriage: one must work on love, one must journey. The alliance of love of man and woman is learned and refined. I allow myself to say that it is a crafted alliance. To make two lives only one life, is also almost a miracle, a miracle of freedom and of the heart, entrusted to faith. Perhaps we must make more of an effort on this point, because our “sentimental coordinates” have become somewhat confused. One who pretends to want everything immediately, then yields also on everything – and right away -- at the first difficulty --  (or on the first occasion). There is no hope for the trust and the fidelity of the gift of self, if the habit prevails to consume love as a sort of “integrator” of psychic-physical wellbeing. This is not love! The engagement puts in focus the will to protect together something that must never be purchased or sold, betrayed or abandoned, no matter how tempting the offer might be. However God also, when he speaks of the alliance with his people, does so at times in terms of engagement. In the Book of Jeremiah, speaking of the people that had distanced themselves from him, he reminds them when they were the “bride” of God and says thus: “I remember the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride” (2:2). And God undertook this journey of engagement; then he also made a promise: we heard it at the beginning of the audience, in the Book of Hosea: “I will make you my bride for ever, I will make you my bride in justice and in law, in love and in benevolence. I will make you my bride in fidelity and you will know the Lord” (2:21-22). Long is the way that the Lord travels with his people in this course of engagement. In the end God marries his people in Jesus Christ: he marries the Church in Jesus. The People of God is the bride of Jesus. But what a long way! And you, Italians, in your literature have a masterpiece on engagement [I Promessi Sposi]. It is necessary that young people should know it, that they should read it. It is a masterpiece, which tells the story of an engaged couple that suffered so much pain; they travelled a path full of difficulties until they arrived in the end at marriage. Do not leave aside this masterpiece on engagement that Italian literature has in fact offered you. Go ahead, read it and you will see the beauty, the suffering, but also the fidelity of the engaged couple.

In her wisdom, the Church keeps the distinction between being engaged and being married – it is not the same – precisely in view of the delicacy and depth of this verification. Let’s be careful not to scorn light-heartedly this wise teaching, which is nourished also by the experience of conjugal love happily lived. The strong symbols of the body hold the keys of the soul: we cannot treat the bonds of the flesh with heedlessness, without opening some lasting wound in the spirit (1 Corinthians 6:15-20).

Certainly today’s culture and society have become rather indifferent to the delicacy and the seriousness of this passage. And on the other hand, it cannot be said that they are generous with young people that are seriously intending to start a home and bring children into the world! Rather, they often put a thousand obstacles, mental and practical. The engagement is a course of life that must mature as fruit, it is a path of maturation in love, until the moment it becomes marriage.

The pre-marital courses are a special expression of the preparation. And we see so many couples, that perhaps arrive at the course somewhat against their will, “But these priests makes us do a course! But why? We know!” – and they attend against their will. But afterwards they are happy and thank us, because in fact they found there the occasion – often the only one! – to reflect on their experience in terms that aren’t trivial. Yes, many couples are together for a long time, perhaps also in intimacy, sometimes living together, but they don’t really know one another. It seems strange, but experience shows that it is so. Because of this, the engagement is re-evaluated as a time of getting to know one another and of a sharing a plan. The course of preparation for marriage is marked in this perspective, also making use of the simple but intense testimony of Christian spouses. And pointing here also on the essential: the Bible, to be rediscovered together, in a conscious way; prayer, in its liturgical dimension, but also in “domestic prayer,” to be lived in the family, the Sacraments, the sacramental life, Confession, ... in which the Lord comes to dwell with the engaged couple and prepares them to truly receive one another “with the grace of Christ”; and fraternity with the poor, with the needy, who stir us to sobriety and sharing. Engaged couples that work on this grow and all this leads to preparing a lovely celebration of Marriage in a different way, not in a worldly but in a Christian way! We think of these words of God that we heard when he spoke to his people as the fiancé to his fiancée: “I will make you my bride for ever, I will make you my bride in justice and in law, in love and in benevolence. I will make you my bride in fidelity and you will know the Lord” (Hosea 2:21-22). May every engaged couple think of this and say to one another: “I will make you my bride, I will make you my husband.” To wait for that moment; it is a moment, it is a course that goes slowly ahead, but it is a course of maturation. The stages of the course must not be burnt. Maturation is done like this, step by step.

The time of engagement can truly become a time of initiation, to what? To surprise! -- to the surprise of spiritual gifts with which the Lord, through the Church, enriches the horizon of the new family that prepares to live in his blessing. Now I invite you to pray to the Holy Family of Nazareth: Jesus, Joseph and Mary. Pray that the family will undertake this course of preparation; pray for engaged couples. Let us pray all together to Our Lady a Hail Mary for all engaged couples, that they may understand the beauty of this course to Marriage. [Hail Mary ...] And to the engaged couples that are in the Square: “Have a good course of engagement!”

REFLECTION FOR PENTECOST SUNDAY

The coming of the Holy Spirit is a dramatic event in the New Testament. One moment the Apostles are alone in the Upper Room, then the Spirit descends and they are driven out into the streets to proclaim the Risen Lord Jesus. People from all over the world hear them as though they were speaking in those people’s languages. The division of people by language at the tower of Babel, where human beings thought they could get to heaven without God, is reversed, as the Holy Spirit unifies the languages of people brought together by the action of Jesus through the Spirit. As Peter tells them, “There is no other name (apart from Jesus) by which we can be saved.” The arrogance of Babel is replaced by the humility of those whose desire is to be saved through the Resurrection of the Lord.

The modern world really thinks it can be saved, achieve perfection, by its own effort, that we can, in fact, save ourselves. But la lunatic cannot heal himself, nor an insolvent pay his own way out of debt. We all need help from outside; and that is what salvation means. We cannot save ourselves, as men thought at Babel; but we can be saved by God himself. Peter’s first sermon in Acts 2 makes this clear, for his message is simple: He is Risen! He is Lord! He has ascended! He will come again! Repent, believe and be baptised. This is the simple apostolic message which the Church has handed down faithfully through the ages, which by the work of the Holy Spirit, has been spread throughout the world for 20 centuries. It is our work still; to proclaim Jesus as Lord, the only source of salvation, the only source of true unity and peace, a peace “the world cannot give.”

On this celebration of Pentecost, let us take this message to heart. We are the bearers of the Good News, we are called by God to be his witnesses throughout the earth. Let us go forth from this Mass today and become just that. He is Risen! He is Lord! Let us carry this message to the world by both word and deed.

Fr. Phillip

POPE FRANCIS' GENERAL AUDIENCE 20 MAY 2015

"The Christian communities are called to offer support to the educational mission of families, and they do so first of all with the light of the Word of God."

Today, dear Brothers and Sisters, I wish to welcome you because I have seen so many families among you. Good morning to all the families! We continue to reflect on the family. Today we pause to reflect on an essential characteristic of the family, namely, its natural vocation to educate the children so that they grow in responsibility for themselves and for others. What we heard from the Apostle Paul at the beginning is so beautiful: “Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord. Fathers, do not exasperate your children, lest they become discouraged” (Colossians 3:20-21). This is a wise rule: the child is educated to listen to his parents and to obey his parents who must not command in a bad way, lest they discourage the children. The children, in fact, must grow without being discouraged, step by step. If you parents say to the children: “Let’s go up that flight of steps” and you take them by the hand and step by step you make them go up, things will go well. But if you say: ”Go up! – ‘But I can’t” – “Go!” this is called exasperating the children, asking the children to do what they are not capable of doing. Therefore, the relation between parents and children must be one of wisdom, of very great balance. Children, obey your parents, this pleases God. And you, parents, do not exasperate your children, asking them to do things they cannot do. And this must be done so that the children grow in responsibility for themselves and for others.

It would seem to be an obvious observation, yet even in our times, difficulties are not lacking. It is difficult for parents to educate their children when they see them only in the evening, when they return home tired from work – those who have the good fortune of having work! It is even more difficult for separated parents, who are weighed down by their condition: poor souls, they have had difficulties, they have separated  and so often the child is taken as hostage and the father speaks badly to him of his mother and the mother speaks badly to him of the father, and so much harm is done. But I say to separated parents: never, never, never take the child as hostage! You have separated because of many difficulties and motives, life has given you this trial, but the children must not bear the weight of this separation, they must not be used as hostages against the other spouse. They must grow hearing the mother speak well of the father, even though they are not together, and the father speaking well of the mother. For separated parents this is very important and very difficult, but they can do it.

However, above all, is the question: how to educate? What tradition do we have today to transmit to our children?

“Critical” intellectuals of all kinds have silenced parents in a thousand ways, to defend the young generations from harm -- real or imagined -- of family education. Among other things, the family has been accused of authoritarianism, favoritism, conformism, and of emotional repression that generates conflicts.

In fact, a rupture has been opened between the family and society, between the family and school; today the educational pact has been broken. And thus, the educational alliance of society with the family has entered into crisis because reciprocal trust has been undermined. The symptoms are many. For instance, relations between parents and teachers in the school have been damaged. At times there are tensions and mutual mistrust and the consequences naturally fall on the children. On the other hand, the so-called “experts” have multiplied, who have taken the role of parents even in the most intimate aspects of education. On emotional life, on personality and on development, on rights and duties the “experts” know everything: objectives, motivations, techniques. And parents must only listen, learn and adapt themselves. Deprived of their role, they often become excessively apprehensive and possessive in dealing with their children, to the point of not correcting them ever: “You can’t correct your child.” They tend increasingly to entrust them to the “experts,” even for the most delicate and personal aspects of their life, putting themselves in the corner, and thus parents today run the risk of excluding themselves from the life of their children. And this is very grave! Today there are cases of this type. I don’t say it happens always, but there are cases. The schoolteacher reprimands the child and writes a note to the parents. I remember a personal anecdote. Once when I was in the fourth year of elementary school I said a bad word to the teacher and the teacher, a good woman, had my mother called. She came the next day, they spoke together and then I was called. And, in front of the teacher, my mother explained to me that what I had done was a bad thing, which I must not do, but my mother did so with such gentleness and she asked me in front of her to ask the teacher for forgiveness. I did so and then I was happy because I said: the story ended well. However, that was the first chapter! When I returned home, the second chapter began ... Imagine if today the teacher does something of the sort, the next day the two parents or one of the two reprimands her, because the “experts” say that children must not be reprimanded like that. Things have changed! For this reason parents must not exclude themselves from the education of their children.

Evidently this approach is not good: it isn’t harmonious, it isn’t dialogic, and instead of fostering collaboration between the family and the other educational agencies, the school, it opposes them.

How have we arrived at this point? There is no doubt that parents, or better, certain educational models of the past had some limitations, there’s no doubt. However, it is also true that there are mistakes that only parents are allowed to make, because they can compensate for them in a way that is impossible for anyone else. On the other hand, we know it well, life has become stingy of time to talk, to reflect, to deal with one another. Many parents are “kidnapped” by work – father and mother must work – and by other preoccupations, hampered by the new needs of the children and the complexity of present-day life – which is like this, we must accept it as it is – and they feel paralyzed out of feart of making a mistake. However, the problem is not only to speak. In fact, a superficial “dialogism” does not lead to a true encounter of the mind and of the heart. Rather, we should ask ourselves: do we try to understand “where” the children really are in their journey? Do we know where their heart really is? And, above all: do we want to know it? Are we convinced that, in reality, they don’t expect something else?

The Christian communities are called to offer support to the educational mission of families, and they do so first of all with the light of the Word of God. The Apostle Paul reminds us of the reciprocity of duties between parents and children: “Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord. Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged” (Colossians 3:20-21). At the base of everything is love, what God gives us, “it is not arrogant or rude, does not insist on its own way, is not irritable or resentful, ... bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Corinthians 13:5-6). Even in the best families it is necessary to endure one another, and so much patience is needed to endure one another! But life is like this. Life is not made in a laboratory, it is made in reality. Jesus himself went through family education. In this case also, the grace of the life of Christ leads to fulfillment what is inscribed in human nature. How many wonderful examples we have of Christian parents full of human wisdom! They show that a good family education is the spinal cord of humanism. Their social radiation is the resource that makes it possible to compensate for the lacunae, the wounds, the voids of paternity and maternity that touch less fortunate children. This radiation can do genuine miracles. And these miracles happen every day in the Church.

I hope that the Lord will give Christian families the faith, the freedom and the courage necessary for their mission. If family education rediscovers the pride of its leadership, many things will change for the better, for hesitant parents and for disappointed children. It is time that fathers and mothers return from their exile – because they have exiled themselves from the education of their children --, and reassume fully their educational role. We hope that the Lord will give parents this grace: not to exile themselves from the education of their children. And only love, tenderness and patience can do this.

REFLECTION ON THE SEVENTH SUNDAY OF EASTER

What does the Ascension of Jesus really mean to us? The Acts of the Apostles puts it thus: “This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” It seems clear enough in English, but it is a nightmare for new students of Greek to translate. In fact, the complexity of the Ascension is belied by its apparent simplicity, so that the language problem reflects the reality. Even the explanation given by Jesus, “I go to prepare a place for you…and I shall return for you,” or “I will come back to you, and your hearts will be filled with joy” only seem to go so far in explaining the mystery of the Ascension.

Perhaps the best place to begin is “…and a cloud took him from their sight.” This is at least an image to which modern people can relate. We could be seeing someone off on a flight to Germany. There, on the apron, stands a colossal Lufthansa A-380. As we watch, it taxis to the runway. It lifts off and in seemingly no time at all it is a speck against the sky; then it enters a cloud layer and we see it no more. The plane and our loved one inside seem just to have vanished. But we know that this is not the case; plane and loved one still exist as surely as if they were with us. And we know that, on the appointed return date, we will be there at the airport to welcome back our loved one as the great plane lands.

There is a lot of this in the Ascension. The Apostles are saddened because Jesus is leaving them, and because in their lifetime on earth, they will not see him again. When he returns, it will be at the end of time, at the end of all things. Until then, they will be on their own. Or will they?

First, there is his promise: “Know that I am with you until the end of the world.” Then there are his words in John: “Unless I go, the Advocate, that is, the Holy Spirit, cannot come” What a difference these two factors make! That Jesus’ message must spread throughout the world; that it is our task, our privilege, to participate in this; that the Holy Spirit will lead us, guide us, bring us to that goal; that in all this, through the presence of the Holy Spirit among us, Jesus is made present in our hearts, in our lives.

“I will come back to you, and your hearts will be full of joy.” That is the motivation for the Christian life in its fullest sense. We are not alone in the world; he is with us. And the world is not our final home; that will be in the place he has gone to prepare for us, a place beyond our wildest imaginings. In the meantime, filled with his Spirit, we are the privileged bearers of the Good News of Jesus Christ risen from the dead, to the whole world. Let us rejoice in that task, and carry it out to the very best of our abilities, knowing that wherever we go, whatever we do in his name, he will be with us.

REFLECTION ON THE FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER

The story in today’s first reading from the Acts of the Apostles is a familiar one. The eunuch in the chariot is clearly a high and important official of the Queen (Kandake) of Ethiopia. This is revealed not only by the fact that he is riding in a chariot, but also because he is reading, meaning that he had his own servant steering it. From the fact that he is reading the prophet Isaiah, we can also tell that he is a convert to Judaism. The story also gives us to understand that he is returning to his native land, having made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, probably to participate in the Passover that has just passed. He is reading the oracle in Isaiah 53 about the Suffering Servant of God, of the Servant’s death on our behalf. He is perplexed by it. The Spirit sends Philip to enlighten him. This Philip does before disappearing from the eunuch’s sight.

The incident is one of several in Acts in which the disciples are seen to be sharing in the powers of the Lord Jesus, of doing the same things he did, from healing to mysterious appearances and disappearances. The story of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch is strongly reminiscent of the disciples on the road to Emmaus. There, Jesus joins them as they are perplexed over the prophecies about the Messiah, of how they had hoped that Jesus was that Messiah, and of their disappointment when he had come to such an apparently sticky end. He explains to them the true meaning of the messianic prophecies. At the inn, when he prays the blessing over the bread at supper and breaks it, they “recognise him in the breaking of the bread,” but in that moment he vanishes from their sight.

In the incident of the eunuch, Philip explains the meaning of the oracle in Isaiah, so that the eunuch understands that Jesus is the promised Messiah, the Suffering Servant of which he was reading at the very moment in which he met Philip. As a consequence he is baptised by Philip. As the hearts of the disciples on the road to Emmaus burned within them, so the eunuch goes on his way rejoicing. And at the very moment in which the eunuch recognises the crucified Jesus as Lord and Saviour, Philip vanishes from his sight, carried away by the Holy Spirit. We could say that “he recognised the Lord Jesus in the breaking of the Word.”

We, too, are brought to faith by such moments of conviction in the real presence of the Risen Lord. It could be is a verse, a phrase of Scripture. It could be a special moment in which we received the Eucharist, or were inspired by a word from a holy person. There are many other moments in which, in a flash, we might see and recognise the living Lord. And how often, in the moment in which we recognise him, he seems to vanish from our sight. But those moments are also moments in which our faith is inspired and strengthened, so that our hearts, too, burn within us, so that we, too, can go on our way rejoicing. In life as we know it, we may never be continuously aware of his abiding presence. But we have his promise: “I am with you until the end of time.” Let us praise him for those brief glimpses of his glory which strengthen and inspire our faith, then, and let us ask him earnestly to bring us at last to that place where we will experience for ever, as the blind hymn writer Fanny Crosby put it, “our wonder, our rapture when Jesus we see.”

Fr. Phillip