“Trinity” by Andrei Rublev. PUBLIC DOMAIN
Source & Summit: Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity
(The faithful) taking part in the Eucharistic sacrifice, which is the source and summit of the whole Christian life, offer the Divine Victim to God, and themselves along with it.
-The Second Vatican Council fathers in Lumen Gentium, #11
Source & Summit is a feature of The Western Kentucky Catholic online, celebrating the National Eucharistic Revival: Year of Parish Revival. Intended to help Catholics of our parishes to probe the riches of our liturgical year and celebrate the liturgy well, the column will always start with the Bible readings for the Mass of the Day to help us reflect on, and help to “unpack” and expand our experiences at liturgy into the domestic church (the home) and the workplace.
Sunday reflections will be based on the Lord’s Day, the Liturgy, the Eucharist, and, occasionally, community.
Sunday, May 26, 2024
Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/052624.cfm
Dt 4:32-34, 39-40
Ps 33:4-5, 6, 9, 18-19, 20, 22
Rom 8:14-17
Mt 28:16-20
Trinity Sunday is one of the few liturgical observances that celebrates a religious reality or doctrine rather than an event. Though the New Testament contains only two explicit Trinitarian texts (Mt. 28:19 and 2 Cor. 13:13), the triune experience of God is rooted there. In Jesus, the early disciples encountered the divine, yet not the transcendent “I AM,” and they knew Jesus’ spiritual presence even after the Ascension. Despite this religious experience, the formal doctrine did not develop until the early fourth century, when Church leaders refuted the teachings of Arius, who denied Jesus’ full divinity, and later those who denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit. The early conciliar debates about the nature of God produced the Nicene-Constantinople Creed, still used today.
Eastern Christianity has never celebrated this feast because every Sunday honors the Trinity. In the West, the eighth-century monk Alcuin composed a private votive Mass to honor the Trinity, later approved for all Germany in the 11th century. In 920 a feast of the Holy Trinity was instituted by a Belgian bishop. The feast gradually spread, taken up especially by Benedictines and Cistercians. St. Thomas of Canterbury introduced it to England in 1162; by 1260 it had spread to France. In 1334 Pope John XXII officially recognized the feast day and placed it on the universal calendar for the Sunday after Pentecost.
This feast’s significance today looks less in debates about God’s substance and the technical meaning of the word “person” than in the communal nature of God and humanity as made in God’s image. God-as-Triune forever reminds us that to be is to be-in-relationship, and unity and diversity dance forever balanced in a mutual love that is the very essence of God.
Rublev’s famous icon of the Trinity wonderfully illustrates this communal nature of God – God’s being is community! The link between Trinity and the Eucharist is also evident. The three are gathered around the table, with Jesus and the cup of his self-offering in the center. Just as the brown and blue of his clothing symbolizes his earthly humanity and heavenly divinity, so too does the Eucharist unite earth and heaven. The three have left an open space at the Eucharistic table—and the wedding feast of heaven—for each one of us. On this Trinity Sunday, let us join the three at the table, welcoming the Father as the source of creation, Jesus as our Bread of Life, and the Spirit who transforms us into members of Christ’s Body still on earth!
-Sr. Cheryl Clemons, OSU
Sr. Cheryl is an Ursuline Sister of Mount Saint Joseph.
To learn more about the Diocese of Owensboro’s celebration of the National Eucharistic Revival, visit https://owensborodiocese.org/eucharistic-revival/.
