SS. Trinity, Corpus Domini, Sacred Heart

of Mother Anna Maria Cánopi

With the solemnity of Pentecost, the wind of the Spirit bursts into the Church, breaking in the hearts of the apostles the chains of fear that still held them prisoners. The new time truly begins: a time of mission and a time of adoration in spirit and truth; time of commitment in history to build the "civilization of love" while waiting for the Lord's return in glory. Christ, in fact, will come at the end of time to put an end to history and bring fulfillment to his glorious kingdom. Then, together with redeemed humanity there will be new heavens and a new earth, and God will be all in all. The liturgy of the Church reflects well this "novelty", this dynamism introduced by Easter and the descent of the Spirit. In fact, the resumption of Ordinary Time is marked by the succession of three great solemnities whose dominant theme is that of Love: the solemnity of the SS. Trinity, that of the Body and Blood of Christ and that of the Sacred Heart. The mystery of Christ celebrated in these celebrations presents itself as three rays of the one divine Love that radiates into history and elevates it to eternity; at the same time, it is also like a triple response of man to the love of God, a response interwoven with gratitude, adoration and praise.

O blessed Trinity: praise, glory and thanksgiving to You!

The feast of the SS. Trinity, which is celebrated on the first Sunday after Pentecost, does not commemorate a historical event in the plan of salvation, but contemplates a truth, the fundamental truth of our faith, in which the Christian mystery is summarized and from which our whole life as a baptized.
In reality, from Advent to Pentecost, the Liturgy did nothing other than put us in contact with the three divine Persons. In every time of the year, in fact, all the praise and liturgical prayer are addressed to the One and Triune God, to the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit. And, in an eminent way, every Eucharistic celebration is not only a renewal of the Paschal mystery, but an act of worship of the Blessed Sacrament. Trinity.
It might therefore even seem superfluous to dedicate a particular celebration to it. But, as Pascal says, "the heart has its reasons that reason does not know." And what arises from the spiritual need of the community of believers always has profound reasons for existing, it is always the fruit of those intuitions that capture essential aspects of life in the spirit.
The need to solemnly honor the SS. Trinity, already felt in the Church of the first centuries, is, essentially, the need to say our thanks to God with greater prominence and intensity, as for a name day party, showing up dressed to the nines, with a beautiful bouquet of roses. The Church is, in fact, always a young Bride who knows how to arrive at these outbursts of grateful love towards the Groom. It seeks within itself a word, a gesture that goes simultaneously to all Three divine Persons, that reaches them in the most intimate of their essence and their bliss: in their unity; and since she has the Holy Trinity within herself (cf. John 14,23:XNUMX), what she finds there is precisely the expression of the ecstatic love that the three divine Persons exchange. She therefore exclaims: O blessed Trinity!
Amazement, joy, admiration: a thank you that is immersed in the adoring silence towards the Trinity sung by a medieval author as "friend of silence".
There is perhaps no more contemplative liturgy than that which the Church has composed to celebrate the feast of the SS. Trinity. All the texts of the Mass, the antiphons and hymns of the Liturgy of the Hours, are in the end a single invocation repeated in all tones and enriched with the entire range of feelings of a contemplative soul. In them there is an attempt to formulate a discourse around the mystery being celebrated, but they are immediately overwhelmed by its immensity and fall silent in front of the ineffable. What, in fact, do we know about the SS. Trinity, if not something of what she has done for us?
Baptism has made us consecrated temples, inhabited by the SS. Trinity: he gave us back, even more luminously, the interior resemblance with it, that resemblance in which we were created (Gen 1,26).
Our whole life is therefore configured to God, who is Triune and One: we too are in a relationship of love. We carry within ourselves the mystery of the SS. Trinity, we live it even without being able to fully understand and express it. Placed at the beginning of the resumption of the ordinary journey, the solemn celebration of the SS. Trinity therefore disposes us to welcome every day of the year as a mystery and a gift of love from the Father, the Son and the Spirit, and to live it in the yes and thanks of filial and spousal love.

Gift and adoration

After making us understand with the solemn celebration of the SS. Trinity what is the mystery hidden in the heart of every man and what is the purpose of our earthly pilgrimage, in the solemnity of the Body and Blood of the Lord the Church gathers us to tell us where to draw the strength for the holy journey of faith towards the vision . In fact, the Church "lives from the Eucharist. Since, with Pentecost, the People of the New Covenant began their pilgrim journey towards their celestial homeland, the Divine Sacrament has continued to mark their days, filling them with confident hope" (Ecclesia de Eucharistia, n. 1) .
The Eucharist has already been solemnly celebrated on Holy Thursday, but in that liturgical context all the attention was placed on Jesus, on his "love to the end", on the total gift of himself that pushed him not only to offer his life, but also to become our daily bread which, precisely because it is a very simple and common food, runs the risk of being easily not appreciated and wasted by us... In today's celebration, however, the Church raises the consecrated host as its most precious treasure, surrounding it of every honor, and at the same time also celebrates itself as the mystical Body of Christ, that is, as the fruit of the Eucharist. The holy host is to be contemplated and eaten with faith, because, by communicating its vital energy to us, it transforms us into Christ. The Gospel according to Matthew opens with the revelation of the sweet name of Jesus announced in a dream by the Angel to Joseph: he will be Emmanuel, the "God-with-us", foretold by the prophet Isaiah, awaited and invoked with intense desire by generations and generations of "the Lord's poor", true seekers of God.
The last words that - again in the Gospel according to Matthew - Jesus addresses to "his" before the Ascension are a solemn delivery of the Name, as company for the journey through history: "Go... And behold, I am with you every day, until the end of the world." «I am with you»: I, Emmanuel, am with you in the bread of the Eucharist which I give you as support, medicine and bread of forgiveness...; with you in the poor, with you in those who are hungry and thirsty, with you in the person of foreigners and foreigners; with you in the prisoners and the sick, with you in all those who feel tired and oppressed by the many trials of life. The poor have become a living tabernacle: in them we honor the Lord and receive him.
This is the "invisible but real" presence of the Lord Jesus among us until the end of the world. We live the time of faith, the time of the Spirit which makes us Eucharistic. A pure gaze is needed to be able to recognize Jesus hidden under such humble appearances; it is necessary to keep the fire of his love for him burning in the heart in order to walk with him and participate - in silent sacrifice and humble service - in his mystery of passion and death, and be made participants in his resurrection. This fire is kept burning with worship. Aware of having her inestimable treasure in the Eucharist, the Church cannot and will never be able to give up surrounding her with the worship that is due to her.
Precisely so that men in a headlong rush after many other things that are fleeting can be stopped and placed before the essential, before He who is the Lord of time and history, it is necessary to continually remember and proclaim that the homage of time, completely free of charge, as well as the homage of all that is most beautiful in creation. Moreover, it is precisely in Eucharistic adoration that man also elevates himself to the greatest dignity.

Love until the end

The feast of the Sacred Heart returns to make us solemnly celebrate the love of God; it reveals to us that He has left nothing out to be close to us, to the point of wanting to become a visible and sensitive presence through the heart of Christ.
God also wanted to love us with a human heart, to form us in divine love and make us also capable of a love that is no longer within the narrow limits of time and conditioned by our nature wounded by sin, but is a free love, strong and faithful because it is nourished by the source of Eternal Love. Man is called to enter into communion of life with God, therefore to assume the dispositions of his Heart. This means leaving the narrow measure of human love to enter the infinite spaces of divine love; and entering the heart of God means nurturing in our hearts feelings of magnanimity and goodness towards everyone. In the excess of his love for us, He came to give us his only Son, the Son of his love for him whom we have crucified and pierced in the heart. But it was precisely from that Heart that salvation came for us. Aware of how much He loved us, how could we not want to love Him back?
How then can we make our love true and concrete? First of all by conforming ourselves to the very sacred Heart of Jesus. He declared himself humble, meek, disarmed, but true strength flows precisely from his humility and meekness; the strength to love freely. From Jesus we learn to love the Father and all our brothers with purity of heart.
However, when there is no humility in the heart, there is not even the ability to recognize oneself as loved by God. The mechanism of arrogance is grafted into the hardened heart which generates hatred and violence. A hardened heart does not open to welcome others, because it is not aware of its own poverty. We therefore need to pray a lot, so that our hardened hearts can break, reopen to grace and know the joy of the life of communion: communion in the family, in communities, with workmates, in all areas of associated life. For this to happen it is above all necessary to keep our gaze fixed on Jesus and let ourselves be penetrated by his gaze. The Heart of Christ is a good Heart that wants good and only good for all; in this good one finds refreshment, because those who have a good and disarmed heart are at peace and communicate peace.
Those who are humble and love do not worry about what is not worth it, they have no ambitions, they enjoy even the little and always blesses the Lord. Whoever is united with Jesus, conformed to Him, feels sweetness even when going through moments of difficulty; even when he must drink the bitter cup; he feels the weight of the cross is light, because it is a weight of love for the good of all.
The greatest proof of Jesus' love and of his compassionate Heart is given to us precisely at the hour of his crucifixion, in the moment in which he generates us to new life through the sacrifice of himself. The eternal Father, by sacrificing the Son, in a certain way breaks his heart and gives it to us, but he too suffers, because the Son is the heart of the Father, it is all of his love for him, his complacency !
The whole existence of Jesus, up to the culmination of his death on the cross, therefore also reveals to us the heart of the Father; therefore devotion to the Sacred Heart is a sign of piety towards Him who loves us. In this love there is also the heart of the mother, of Mary, in which the tenderness of the Father and the obedient love of the Son are expressed. She, who by the power of the Holy Spirit generated the Word, under the cross together with Him generates us too. And, wonderfully, now the Church, sharing in this love, also becomes a mother in the Spirit. She becomes it in her totality, as the mystical body of Christ, and in each of us, if we live united with her as living members of the one mystical body, nourished by the only inexhaustible source of faith and charity.