Have you Noticed?

(Trinity Sunday: Deuteronomy 4:32-40; Romans 8:14-17; Matthew 28:16-20)

How many times have you thought of the Blessed Trinity in the last week? Let’s suppose you attended a Sunday Mass, recited the Rosary three times, and prayed Morning Prayer or Evening Prayer from the breviary once.

That adds up to a minimum of twenty-five times that you either heard or read or said the names of Father, Son and Spirit together. But the question is: did you think of them? Were you attentive or, to use a La Salette expression, were you praying well? Were you actually paying homage to the Most Holy Trinity?

Perhaps it is because of our tendency to distraction that the Church offers us each year a solemnity in which we may consciously worship God in all his trinitarian magnificence and glory.

The revelation of God’s inner mystery took centuries. First came creation. “He spoke, and it was made; he commanded, and it stood forth” as we read in the Responsorial. After choosing a people, he freed them from slavery, as Moses in the first reading reminds them. Finally he sent his Son, who sent us the Spirit.

Without using trinitarian language, the message of Our Lady of La Salette evokes the Father who rescued his people but whose commandments were now being ignored. Her crucifix shows the Son who redeemed and reconciled his people; they now refused him the respect and worship he deserved. Mary’s tears are her way of saying, “How could you forget?”

Might the Spirit be the source of the light of which she was made, or the inspiration behind her words? Be that as it may, Father, Son and Spirit are all reflected in her tenderness and beauty.

One might be tempted to see another trinitarian dimension in the apparition. La Salette is one and three. It a single event; but its three phases give rise to the distinct images of the Weeping Mother, the Conversation, and the Assumption.

In the second reading, St. Paul tells us we have received a “Spirit of adoption,” and we are “heirs with Christ.” Let us therefore notice what we are saying when we pray, “Glory to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; to God who is, who was, and who is to come” (Gospel Acclamation).

Wayne Vanasse, and Fr. René Butler, M.S.