6/4/2023

We plan to give away copies of Bishop Robert Barron’s book, This Is My Body. We are doing this in conjunction with the Eucharistic Revival that is going on at this time. I want us to be a Eucharist-centered parish. It is the greatest prayer that we can offer. If you would like to help defray the cost of purchasing the book, please make a donation at the office. Thank you in advance.
This past Memorial Day I was in an auto accident. It happened on Route 2 in Iowa, a few miles before coming to Mt. Ayr. There were no injuries except on my forearm where my safety bag deployed. Thank God for safety bags, seat belts, and my health. Fortunately, my sister was making her way to Pella, IA about a half hour behind me, so she was able to take me back home.
Today on Trinity Sunday it is challenging to try to talk about such a giant mystery, one which no one totally understands. So we say things about the Trinity in hopes of communicating and maybe spurring us on to probe the depths of the mystery, to connect with them and get to know them. We do this because ultimately, our destiny is to be in union with the Trinity for eternity.
First, a presupposition. Everything that we know, we know from experience of the accidents of things, not from a knowledge of the substance or essence. In other words, we normally know from sensory experience rather than some mystical vision or intuition. That means in personal relationships, we know how people act, but not why; what they look like physically, but not spiritually. We know their bodies, not their souls. Even when people try to tell us why they do what they do, we cannot be sure they know the whole story themselves. The only essence or substance each of us can know for sure is that of oneself – each knows his/her own soul. What one knows of rocks, dogs, cats, cattle, and people is from how we observe them acting or what they are like physically. I try to put myself in their place and imagine why I would act that way, observe others and eventually get a better picture of what is going on. We only know by analogy, by inference and comparison with ourselves. But one can never know the essence of another person, just what they show/tell me and how they act.
The same is true with God. We don’t know the essence of God, not really. We observe our surroundings, say that God is the creator of all things, and then posit what we think God is like, observe how He acts, attribute human motivation to his actions, and try to make sense of what we observe. But we are making assumptions and guessing about a lot of this. Ultimately, we depend on our faith (faith = assumptions on which we base our actions) in how God has communicated with us as Creator (natural sciences study creation), Redeemer (Jesus Christ became man and redeemed us), and Sanctifying Spirit (the Holy Spirit works invisibly behind the scenes to make us holy). Without God’s revelation of Himself in Jesus, we would not have a clue of the Trinity, Three Persons in One God, or how they relate to one another.
This Trinity is at the heart of our religion. We baptize, bless, absolve, begin and end the Eucharist, etc. in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Three persons tells us WHO God is, ONE GOD tells us WHAT God is. If we choose to believe in what the Bible and Tradition teach, we can make more sense of the world; if not, we are left with rational speculations. It should be consoling that our belief says that at the heart of all reality, the Creator of all things is one whom we characterize as LOVE, a God who is three persons seeking to give themselves in love to one another and to us.
Enjoy the Feast of the Trinity!

Father Albert, O.S.B.