June 16, 2019

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Today the Church celebrates the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity. We acknowledge God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: one God, three Divine Persons in perfect unity. St. Augustine, one of the most important theologians in the history of the Church and our Diocesan patron, wrote a treatise on the Trinity. During his writing, he struggled to understand. One night he had a dream in which he came across a boy playing by the ocean. The boy had dug a hole on the beach and was running to the water, scooping up water, and rushing back to deposit the water in the hole he had dug. When Augustine asked him what he was doing, the boy replied “I am moving the ocean into this hole.” Augustine told him that the ocean was far too big to possibly fit into the hole. The boy smiled at Augustine and said “So also the Trinity is too vast for your comprehension,” and then vanished. Augustine never stopped seeking a greater understanding of God’s nature, yet he also held in profound reverence that truth that God is ultimately mysterious.

To help us grow in our understanding of the Trinity, I would like to propose a few resources. If you have not already done so, I encourage you to go to www.st-pius.formed.org and set up a personal (free) account, so you can access the many catechetical and spiritual resources offered there. Watch the video under the “Opening the Word” category for Trinity Sunday, June 16, 2019. Look at the Echo series on the Creed. Listen to the audio talk by Peter Kreeft entitled “Because God is Real”. There are countless other topics addressed in the formed.org platform, and I hope you will take advantage of this great resource. As I said last week, the upper room where the Apostles received the Holy Spirit is a place of prayer and reflection. This upper room must be part of our lives. I offer these resources as a way to find that upper room!

Finally, a spiritual note. The life of the Trinity is one of perfect unity and love. The love shared by the three Divine Persons is never exclusive or selfish. Rather, it is poured out in the act of creation and offered to every part of creation. Thus we speak about Divine adoption, by which Jesus invites us into the inner life of the Trinity. Our ultimate destiny, Heaven, means being perfectly united with God for all eternity. In Heaven, we will be brought into the very inner life of the Trinity, we will share in Divine life. Already here on earth we share in this Divine life by virtue of our baptism. We are reminded each time we make the Sign of the Cross that we were baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. We have been claimed, marked, set aside. The revealed identity of God marks each of us and in this revelation we pray, we act, we have a purpose. On this Trinity Sunday, we are invited to remember our true identity and our true destiny. Our lives are directed to the God who is love itself, to the God whose love is constantly poured out, to the God who calls us into union in the Heavenly kingdom.

Peace,