St. Hilary (c. 310-367 A. D.), Bishop of Poiters, wrote about the Holy Trinity. God is one, but is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and because the Son became man, Jesus was able to free us from our sins by his death and resurrection.
Also, Jesus feeds us with God’s divine life in the Holy Eucharist – the source and summit of our Catholic Christian faith – which Christ instituted as the greatest of sacraments at the Last Supper.
Soon our second graders will make their final preparations for First Communion by going to confession and preparing with their family to receive Jesus in the Holy Eucharist. At the Last Supper Jesus said: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of truth, which the world cannot accept, because it neither sees nor knows it. But you know it, because it remains with you, and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you…
“Whoever has my commandments and observes them is the one who loves me. And whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him.
“…Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.” Cf. Jn. 14:15-24 This indwelling of the Holy Trinity begins at our Baptism, but it is fully realized on earth by our worthy reception of Holy Communion and Confirmation, the other sacraments of initiation into God’s divine life and one, holy, Catholic and apostolic church. The following is part of Bishop Hilary’s treatise on the Holy Trinity:
―We believe that the Word [of God – the Son] became flesh and that we receive his flesh in the Lord’s Supper. How then can we fail to believe that he really dwells within us? When he became man, he actually clothed himself in our flesh, uniting it to himself for ever. In the sacrament of his body he actually gives us his own flesh, which he has united to his divinity. This is why we are all one, because the Father is in Christ, and Christ is in us. He is in us through his flesh and we are in him. With him we form a unity which is in God.
―The manner of our indwelling in him through the sacrament of his body and blood is evident from the Lord’s own words: This world will see me no longer but you shall see me. Because I live you shall live also, for I am in my Father, you are in me, and I am in you. If it had been a question of a mere unity of will, why should he have given us this explanation of the steps by which it is achieved? He is in the Father by reason of his divine nature, we are in him by reason of his human birth, and he is in us through the mystery of the sacraments.
―This, surely, is what he wished us to believe; this is how he wanted us to understand the perfect unity that is achieved through our Mediator, who lives in the Father while we live in him, and who, while living in the Father, lives also in us. This is how we attain to unity with the Father. Christ is in very truth in the Father by his eternal generation; we are in very truth in Christ, and he likewise is in us.
―Christ himself bore witness to the reality of this unity when he said: He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me and I in him. No one will be in Christ unless Christ himself has been in him; Christ will take to himself only the flesh of those who have received his flesh.
―He had already explained the mystery of this perfect unity when he said: As the living Father sent me and
I draw life from the Father, so he who eats my flesh will draw life from me. We draw life from his flesh just as he draws life from the Father. Such comparisons aid understanding, since we can grasp a point more easily when we have an analogy. And the point is that Christ is the wellspring of our life. Since we who are in the flesh draw life from him in the same way as he draws life from the Father.‖
It is for good reason that our US Bishops are celebrating the National Eucharistic Revival with such gusto.
For more information about this revival go to https:// eucharisticrevival.org/.
Sunday, June 2 is the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi – Latin), and we will make that a special day.
Peace in Christ,
Fr. Thomas McCabe