Holy Trinity

Pr 8:22-31; Rom 5:1-5; Jn 16:12-15 (year C)

The children's identity card is faith in a God who creates, makes Covenant, is close, redeems, allows flourishing in any event or age.

Thus on the journey we take we no longer rely on the outside, and we stop underestimating ourselves.

In fact, Scripture testifies that the Lord proceeds with his people and manifests himself in history, but he is not bound to a particular territory or heights, but to woman and man.

The Eternal One is "God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob" (Mt 22:32; Mk 12:26; Lk 20:37; cf. Ex 3:6).

He is "the One who will be" [Ex 3:14 Hebrew text] i.e.: in the unfolding of events people have an essential experience of the Living One as Deliverer, and Bridegroom [cf. Hosea's fluctuating affective story].

But in the fullness of his heart, only Jesus manifests this - still in the First Covenant confused with a sullen lawgiver, notary, judge who intervenes to cut or distinguish, then waits for the reckoning.

The Almighty dreams of imparting life and creating Family, not dividing pristine friends from impure enemies, or capable and incapable.

Such becomes the intimate expression of the authentic woman and man; a cipher of the identity of the Church, which is not pronounced in the least.

In short, specific to sons and daughters is adherence to a Living One who transmits and brightens life, compromises and saves, enables all growth, recovers - creates a harmonious dynamism of opposites.

The First Reading highlights the Father's Project, which unfolds its being while being assisted by the delightful figure of Wisdom.

Creation reflects the purpose of divine love, which manifests itself in the enchantment of a joyful walk with us. He desires to remain on earth, unconditionally.

The joy of the Creator Father is just this: delighting like an Artist bursting with joy over his work. He is happy to be on the globe, especially among the sons of man (vv. 30-31).

His Bliss? Our own; of every creature, who loves to flourish despite conflict.

This is precisely - if the son, though unsteady, does not feel himself to be the fruit of chance, rather he seizes the moments of confusion in life as if they were those of a building site [because the Designer knows where to go].

Disorder, piled-up materials, havoc, unseen at every turn; but we are not lost: within the soul there remains a guiding image, the Dream and prototype of an unfolding intimate and cosmic harmony.

It evolves in our wandering. He allows trial and error, indeed He makes use of them.

It is a Design that recovers all scattered things and interrupted paths, creating understandings, unthinkable varieties; hence diverse essences.

Not only with skill, but by Ideal Wisdom. And at the same time incomparable Novelty: of one who does not repeat, but rather brings into being.

It is the miracle of life, always new - indeed, riding on our attempts and mistakes!

The Father is exuberant, not a totem that does not accept decomposed energies. He does not express himself by enacting laws like a sovereign.

He creates unprecedented symphonic polychromes, other essences - multifaceted - as would a parent who rejoices in his rich offspring, in the different works of his intimates (in the most diverse fields) manifested in a thousand facets.

The key to everything - the accompanying Horizon, correlating stages and redefining itself - is the Creator's. His is the guiding Project.

The 'unique' summit and exemplary Action - the Work - is a historically configured event: the Word-event and Person of the Son.

The Second Reading makes it clear that the Eternal Father did not consider his activity concluded, granting mere input to being and essences - then abandoning reality and men, and retiring up there into heaven.

By Grace, in Faith we are partakers of God, we have direct access to His independent action, to Himself (Rom 5:2).

Not even our radical incompleteness is cause for rancour, for He who did not create us angelic - but dreamy, yes.

Nor would we be able to scratch it and make it impure, as if it were someone at hand whom we can pollute by reaching out to him of our own accord - pulling ourselves up with our genius, by dint of muscle or scaffolding.

The Person, Word and Event of Jesus tell of a Kingdom in which there is no fear of holiness being endangered by the incompleteness of creatures and contact with the world.

There is only one problem that cuts through the Dialogue with the Most High (v.3): believing [devoutly] that our boasting is of the 'obvious' kind.

In front of our peers we glory in achievements, roles, titles and successes. It also happens in the path of religious perfection.

But the Lord is not like an athletic trainer who delights in the quickest of his players - while he inflicts humiliation, travails, benches and punishments on the unfit and unwieldy.

The Son proclaims the authentic Face of the Father: only unreserved understanding - undeserved, because the perfect Work is solely of Christ the man; our 'accomplice'.

He thus removes dishonour and the sense of inadequacy.

In this way, the exclusive prominence of woman and man, and the motor of solid growth, is His unreserved Love. The only reliable reality - unambiguous of duplicity or hysterical dissociation.

Often in the face of the show society even some religious people become complacent about their achievements.

In the presence of the Eternal, they display their own merits - like a struggling merchant, who displays all the best in his shop window.

Faith-Hope (Heb 11:1; Rom 5:4), on the other hand, places one in the right position with the brethren, and before the Lord. Without alibi.

We learn transparently and finally that the obsession with being admired from the outside - and the pleasure of approval at any cost - are by no means 'the' Way.

In fact, the true Scia - the genuine Work - is solely of the Son, who, having fully corresponded to the initiative of God the Father, Justifies.

Nothing can undermine us.

The world we do not see has transmutative capabilities.

Of course, the inner Friend does not 'make us righteous' by dressing us outwardly and in a timely manner, but in an existential process, which shifts the balance (vv.3-4).

The Lord works within through experience. He also does this by besieging the "other" us-ourselves that we have cast aside.

Thus modifying the shrunken heart and improving us with its passionate Friendship, re-proposed in new life opportunities.

As Paul testified, Salvation is not a vicarious and dated mechanism.

The Mystery dwells, meets us and passes through us as protagonists, and despite our whims expresses itself in a saved life.

Faith in God the Son is to be aware that Love can register partial failures, not defeat and ultimate annihilation.

Of course there are falls - either because of precariousness or because it is not immediate to understand the logic of the Crucified One: here is the Action of the Spirit.

Today's Gospel appeals to the mysterious, unknown sense of total self-giving. 

It is reborn by yielding: it is not easy to carry that "burden" [Jn 16:12 alludes to the Cross] nor to grasp its implications and imagine its paradoxical Fruitfulness.

The Development that flows from the superabundance and intensity of the Father-Son relationship is the empathy, the bearing, the action of the Spirit.

It is an impulse and a gesture that erupts within and precisely intuits the fertility of Gratuity.

It is the Spirit that internalises this not only very strange, but absurd proposal: that of triumph in loss, and even of Life from death.

We experience it in action: in the moments when its impetus produces inexplicable recoveries that "give glory to God" (v.14) - that is, they renew relationships and put people who do not even have self-esteem back on their feet.

But the Spirit suggested that the soul is reactivated by welcoming, rather than fighting anxieties, fears, indecisions, bitterness, fears of growing.

Only in this way is the Plan of Salvation realised.

Stepping out of the shadow of others, the opportunist becomes righteous, the doubter more secure, the unhappy person resumes hope; all can live happily.

Are the old ideas and old constructions creaking? It is perhaps time to move beyond fashions or past fads and artificial horizons - which only generate common ideas, concerns, and patterns.

Unlike the listening-and-transcending aroused by the unfettered Unveiling of Faith, beliefs refractory to the Exodus need doctrinal compactness: codes, customs, fixed cultural and social locations - otherwise they crumble.

But their construct settles for adequate schemes. That distorts us from valued or comfortable ways.

In the dynamics of the adventure of Faith, that is, in the Revelation of the accepted, tender and inclusive eccentric Love, accepted Diversity becomes an impulse for enrichment and a matrix for development.

The Love that does not betray and does not abandon - the only boast (not its own production) - makes the Newness of God practicable, the impossible Dream that no philosophy can tame.

Social identification is no longer involved. In us there is more.

He himself is "He who will be": let the ballasts go, the Best is yet to come. Reason for no longer running away from great Desires.

Dear Brothers and Sisters, 

After the Easter Season that ended last Sunday with Pentecost, the Liturgy has returned to "Ordinary Time". This does not mean, however, that Christians must be less any committed: indeed, having entered divine life through the sacraments, we are called daily to be open to the action of divine Grace, to progress in love of God and of neighbour. This Sunday of the Most Holy Trinity, in a certain sense sums up God's revelation which was brought about through the Paschal Mysteries: Christ's death and Resurrection, his Ascension to the right hand of the Father and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The human mind and language are inadequate to explain the relationship that exists between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; yet the Fathers of the Church sought to illustrate the mystery of the Triune God by living it with deep faith in their own lives. 

The divine Trinity takes up his abode in us on the day of our Baptism: "I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit". Every time we sign ourselves with the sign of the Cross we remember God's name in which we were baptized. With regard to the sign of the Cross a theologian, Romano Guardini, remarked: "We do it before praying so that... we may put ourselves spiritually in order; focus thoughts, heart and will on God; after praying, so that what God has given us may remain within us.... It embraces the whole being, body and soul... and everything is consecrated in the name of the Triune God" (Lo spirito della liturgia. I santi segni, Brescia, 2000, pp. 125-126). 

The sign of the Cross and the name of the living God therefore contain the proclamation that generates faith and inspires prayer. And just as in the Gospel Jesus promises the Apostles that: "When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth" (Jn 16: 13), so it happens in the Sunday Liturgy, from week to week, when priests dispense the bread of the Word and of the Eucharist. The Holy Curé d'Ars also reminded his faithful of this. "Who welcomed your soul", he asked, "at the beginning of your life? The priest. Who feeds your soul and gives it strength for its journey? The priest. Who will prepare it to appear before God, bathing it one last time in the blood of Jesus Christ? The priest, always the priest" (Letter inaugurating the Year for Priests). 

Dear friends, let us make our own the prayer of St Hilary of Poitiers: "Keep uncontaminated this upright faith that is in me and, until my last breath, grant me likewise this voice of my conscience, that I may be ever faithful to what I professed in my regeneration when I was baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit" (De Trinitate, XII, 57, CCL 62/A, 627). Invoking the Blessed Virgin Mary, the first creature to be fully inhabited by the Blessed Trinity, let us ask her protection and help to make good progress on our earthly pilgrimage.

[Pope Benedict, Angelus, 30 May 2010]

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

1. On her pilgrimage to full communion of love with God, the Church appears as "a people made one with the unity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit". St Cyprian's marvellous definition (De Orat. Dom. 23; cf. Lumen gentium, n. 4) takes us into the mystery of the Church, which has been made a community of salvation by the presence of God the Trinity. Like the ancient People of God, she is guided on her new Exodus by the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, symbols of God's constant presence. In this perspective, let us contemplate the glory of the Trinity which makes the Church one, holy, catholic and apostolic. 

2. First of all the Chuch is one. The baptized, in fact, are mysteriously united to Christ and form his Mystical Body by the power of the Holy Spirit. As the Second Vatican Council says:  "The highest exemplar and source of this mystery is the unity, in the Trinity of Persons, of one God, the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit" (Unitatis redintegratio, n. 2). Although in the past this unity has suffered the painful trial of many divisions, the Church's inexhaustible Trinitarian source spurs her to live ever more deeply that koinonia, or communion, which was resplendent in the first community of Jerusalem (Acts 2: 42; 4: 32).

Ecumenical dialogue draws light from this perspective, since all Christians are aware of the Trinitarian foundations of communion:  we stress "the God-givenness of the koinonia and its Trinitarian character. The point of departure is the baptismal initiation into the Trinitarian koinonia by faith, through Christ in his Spirit. The Spirit-given means to sustain this koinonia are the Word, ministry, sacraments, charisms" (Perspectives on Koinonia, Report from the third quinquennium, 1985-89, of the Catholic-Pentecostal dialogue, n. 31). In this regard the Council reminds all the faithful that "the closer their union with the Father, the Word and the Spirit, the more deeply and easily will they be able to grow in mutual brotherly love" (Unitatis redintegratio, n. 7). 

3. The Church is also holy. In biblical language, even before being an expression of the moral and existential holiness of the faithful, the concept of "holy" refers to the consecration wrought by God through the election and the grace offered to his people. It is the divine presence, then, which "sanctifies" the community of believers "in the truth" (Jn 17: 17, 19). 

The loftiest sign of this presence is constituted by the liturgy, which is the epiphany of the consecration of God's People. In it there is the Eucharistic presence of the Body and Blood of the Lord, but also "our "Eucharist', that is to say, our giving God thanks, our praise of him for having redeemed us by his death and made us sharers in immortal life through his Resurrection. This worship, given therefore to the Trinity of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, above all accompanies and permeates the celebration of the Eucharistic liturgy. But it must fill our churches also" and the life of the Church (Dominicae Cenae, n. 3). And precisely, "if we continue to love one another and to join in praising the Most Holy Trinity ... we will be faithful to the deepest vocation of the Church and will share in a foretaste of the liturgy of perfect glory" (Lumen gentium, n. 51). 

4. The Church is catholic, sent to proclaim Christ to the whole world in the hope that all leaders of the peoples will gather with the people of the God of Abraham (cf. Ps 47: 9; Mt 28: 19). As the Second Vatican Council says:  "The Church on earth is by her very nature missionary since, according to the plan of the Father, she has her origin in the mission of the Son and the Holy Spirit. 

This plan flows from "fountain-like love', the love of God the Father. As the principle without principle from whom the Son is generated and from whom the Holy Spirit proceeds through the Son, God in his great and merciful kindness freely creates us and graciously calls us to share in his life and glory. He generously pours out, and never ceases to pour out, his divine goodness, so that he who is Creator of all things might at last become "all in all' (1 Cor 15: 28), thus simultaneously assuring his own glory and our happiness" (Ad gentes, n. 2).

5. Lastly, the Church is apostolic. In accordance with Christ's command, his Apostles must go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe all that he has commanded them (cf. Mt 28: 19-20). This mission is extended to the whole Church, which through the Word is made living, luminous and effective by the Holy Spirit and the sacraments, and thus "fulfils God's plan, to which Christ lovingly and obediently submitted for the glory of the Father who sent him in order that the whole human race might become one People of God, form one Body of Christ, and be built up into one Temple of the Holy Spirit" (Ad gentes, n. 7). 

The one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church is the People of God, the Body of Christ and the Temple of the Holy Spirit. These three biblical images point to the Trinitarian dimension of the Church. In this dimension are found all disciples of Christ, who are called to live it ever more deeply and in an ever more intense communion. Ecumenism itself finds its solid foundation in this reference to the Trinity, because the Spirit "binds the faithful to Christ, the mediator of all salvific gifts, and who through him gives them access to the Father, whom they may invoke as "Abba, Father', in the same Spirit" (Lutheran-Roman Catholic Joint Commission, Church and Justification, n. 64). In the Church, then, we find a magnificent epiphany of Trinitarian glory. Let us therefore accept the invitation which St Ambrose extends to us:  "Rise, you who were lying fast asleep.... Rise and hurry to the Church:  here is the Father, here is the Son, here is the Holy Spirit" (In Lucam, VII).

[Pope John Paul II, General Audience, 14 June 2000]

Today, the Feast of the Holy Trinity, the Gospel of St John gives us part of the long farewell discourse pronounced by Jesus shortly before his Passion. In this discourse, he explains to the disciples the deepest truths about himself, and thus he outlines the relationship between Jesus, the Father and the Holy Spirit. Jesus knows that the fulfillment of the Father’s plan is approaching and will be completed with his death and resurrection. Because of this he wants to assure his followers that he won’t abandon them, because his mission will be prolonged by the Holy Spirit. It will be the Holy Spirit who continues the mission of Jesus, that is, guide the Church forward.

Jesus reveals what this mission is. In the first place, the Spirit guides us to understand the many things that Jesus himself still had to say (cf. Jn 16:12). This doesn’t refer to new or special doctrines, but to a full understanding of all that the Son has heard from the Father and has made known to the disciples (cf. v. 15). The Spirit guides us in new existential situations with a gaze fixed on Jesus and at the same time, open to events and to the future. He helps us to walk in history, firmly rooted in the Gospel and with dynamic fidelity to our traditions and customs.

But the mystery of the Trinity also speaks to us of ourselves, of our relationship with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. In fact, through baptism, the Holy Spirit has placed us in the heart and the very life of God, who is a communion of love. God is a “family” of three Persons who love each other so much as to form a single whole. This “divine family” is not closed in on itself, but is open. It communicates itself in creation and in history and has entered into the world of men to call everyone to form part of it. The trinitarian horizon of communion surrounds all of us and stimulates us to live in love and fraternal sharing, certain that where there is love, there is God.

Our being created in the image and likeness of God-Communion calls us to understand ourselves as beings-in-relationship and to live interpersonal relations in solidarity and mutual love.

Such relationships play out, above all, in the sphere of our ecclesial communities, so that the image of the Church as icon of the Trinity is ever clearer. But also in every social relationship, from the family to friendships, to the work environment: they are all concrete occasions offered to us in order to build relationships that are increasingly humanly rich, capable of reciprocal respect and disinterested love.

The Feast of the Most Holy Trinity invites us to commit ourselves in daily events to being leaven of communion, consolation and mercy. In this mission, we are sustained by the strength that the Holy Spirit gives us: he takes care of the flesh of humanity, wounded by injustice, oppression, hate and avarice.

The Virgin Mary, in her humility, welcomed the Father’s will and conceived the Son by the Holy Spirit. May she, Mirror of the Trinity, help us to strengthen our faith in the trinitarian mystery and to translate it in to action with choices and attitudes of love and unity.

[Pope Francis, Angelus, 22 May 2016]

Pentecost Sunday (Year C)  [8 June 2025]

May God bless us and the Virgin protect us! On the feast of Pentecost, like Mary and the apostles, let us prepare our hearts to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit who transforms us into fire and light of love. Today, the first reading and the responsorial psalm are common to years A, B, and C, while the second reading and the Gospel are different each year.

*First reading from the Acts of the Apostles (2:1-11)

Jerusalem is not only the city where Jesus instituted the Eucharist, died and rose again, but it is also the city where the Spirit was poured out upon humanity. It was the year of Jesus' death, but the people in the city had probably never heard of his death, let alone his resurrection, so the feast of Pentecost was like any other for them. The Jewish Pentecost was very important because it was the feast of the giving of the Law, one of the three feasts of the year for which people went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and the list of all the nationalities present on that occasion proves its great interest. For the disciples of Jesus, who had seen, heard and touched him after his resurrection, nothing was the same as before, even if they did not expect what was about to happen. Luke helps us to understand what is happening by choosing his words carefully and evoking at least these three texts from the Old Testament: the gift of the Law at Sinai, a prophecy of Joel, and the episode of the Tower of Babel. First of all, Sinai. The tongues of fire and the sound like a mighty wind recall what happened at Sinai when God gave the tablets of the Law to Moses (Exodus 19:16-19).  Following this line, Luke helps us understand that Pentecost was not simply a traditional pilgrimage, but a new Sinai, where God gave his Law to teach the people how to live in the Covenant. At Pentecost, He gave His own Spirit, and from then on, His Law, the only true path to freedom and happiness, was no longer written on stone tablets but in the hearts of men, as Ezekiel had prophesied (Ezekiel 11:19-20; 36:26-27). The prophet Joel: Luke certainly wanted to evoke a word of Joel: 'I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, says God' (Joel 3:1), that is, on all humanity. For Luke, those devout Jews from all nations under heaven, as he calls them, are a symbol of the whole of humanity, for whom Joel's prophecy is finally fulfilled, and this means that the long-awaited 'Day of the Lord' has come. The Tower of Babel is an event that can be summarised in two acts: Act 1: Men, who speak the same language and the same words, decide to build an immense tower between the earth and the sky. Act 2: God stops them and scatters them across the earth, confusing their languages, and from that moment on they no longer understand each other. What is the meaning of this story? God certainly does not want to stifle man's potential, and if He intervenes, He does so to spare humanity the false path of single-minded thinking and a human project that excludes God. It is as if He were saying: you are seeking unity, which is a good thing, but you are going about it the wrong way, because unity in love does not come through standardisation, but through diversity. And this is the message of Pentecost: at Babel, humanity learns diversity; at Pentecost, it learns unity in diversity, 'conviviality' (as Don Tonino Bello writes), because all nations hear the proclamation, each in its own language, of the one message: 'Magnalia Dei, the great works of God' (Acts 2:11).

*Responsorial Psalm (103 (104), 1.24, 29-30, 31.34)

This psalm has 36 verses of praise and wonder at the works of God, a beautiful poem. It is proposed for the feast of Pentecost because Luke, in the book of the Acts of the Apostles, recounts that on the morning of Pentecost, the apostles, filled with the Holy Spirit, began to proclaim in all languages the 'great works of God' of creation. All civilisations have poems about the beauty of nature. In particular, a poem written by the famous pharaoh Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV) was found in Egypt in the tomb of a pharaoh, a hymn to the Sun God. Amenhotep IV lived around 1350 BC, at a time when the Jews were probably in Egypt and may have known this poem. There are similarities in style and vocabulary between the pharaoh's poem and Psalm 103/104, but what is interesting is to note the differences marked by God's revelation to the people of the Covenant. First difference: God alone is God, an essential difference for the faith of Israel: God is the only God, there are no others, and the sun is not a god. The account of creation in the book of Genesis puts the sun and moon in their place: they are not gods, but luminaries, themselves simple creatures. Several verses show God as the only Lord of creation using royal language: God presents himself as a magnificent, majestic and victorious king. Second peculiarity: Creation is all good, and here there is an echo of Genesis, which repeats tirelessly: 'And God saw that it was good'. This psalm evokes all the elements of creation with the same wonder: 'I rejoice in the Lord', and the psalmist adds (in a verse not read this Sunday): 'I will sing to the Lord as long as I live, I will sing praise to my God while I have my breath'. However, evil is not ignored: the end of the psalm mentions it and invokes its disappearance, since it was already understood in the Old Testament that evil does not come from God, because all creation is good and one day God will remove all evil from the earth: the victorious King will eliminate everything that hinders human happiness. Third peculiarity: Creation is continuous, not an act of the past, as if God had thrown the earth and man into space once and for all, but a perennial relationship between the Creator and his creatures. When we say in the Creed: "I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth," we are not only affirming our faith in an initial act, but we are recognising that we are in a necessary relationship with him, and this psalm reiterates this by speaking of God's constant action: "All wait for you... You hide your face, they are dismayed... You take away their breath, they die and return to their dust. You send forth your spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the earth." Another peculiarity: Man is the culmination of creation. According to the Jewish faith, man is at the summit of creation, the king of creation, and for this reason he is filled with the breath of God. And this is precisely what we celebrate at Pentecost: the Spirit of God who is in us vibrates and resonates with man and with all creation, and the psalmist sings: 'Let God rejoice in his works! I rejoice in the Lord." In conclusion, creation makes sense in the light of the Covenant: In Israel, every reflection on creation is placed in the perspective of the Covenant, since Israel first experienced liberation by God and only afterwards meditated on creation in the light of this fundamental experience. There are visible traces of this in the psalm: First of all, the name of God used is always the famous tetragrammaton YHWH, which we translate as Lord, the name of the God of the Covenant, revealed to Moses. Furthermore, in the expression, 'Lord, my God, how great you are', the possessive is a reference to the Covenant, since God's plan in the Covenant was precisely this: 'You shall be my people, and I will be your God'. This promise is fulfilled in the gift of the Spirit to all flesh, as the prophet Joel proclaims, and every person is invited to receive the gift of the Spirit to become a true child of God.

*Second Reading from the Letter of Saint Paul the Apostle to the Romans (8:8–17)

 The main difficulty in this text lies in the word 'flesh', which in St Paul's vocabulary does not have the same meaning as in our vocabulary, where the two components of the human being, body and soul, are often contrasted, with the risk of misinterpreting what Paul means when he speaks of flesh and Spirit. What he calls 'flesh' is not what we call body, and what he calls 'Spirit' does not correspond to what we call soul; indeed, he specifies several times that it is the Spirit of God, 'the Spirit of Christ'. He does not contrast two words, 'flesh' and 'Spirit', but two expressions: 'living according to the flesh' and 'living according to the Spirit', that is, choosing between two ways of living, or rather deciding whom to follow and what course of action to take. Here we return to the theme of the two paths that every Jew, like St Paul, knows well: choosing between two paths, between two possible attitudes in the face of difficulties or trials: trust in God or distrust; the certainty of never feeling abandoned by God or the doubt and suspicion that God does not really seek our good; fidelity to his commandments because we trust him, or disobedience because we consider ourselves capable of autonomous decisions. The history of Israel in the Bible (think of Massah and Meribah in the Book of Exodus) presents numerous examples of mistrust in the face of life's trials, especially in the desert, where the people faced many trials, including hunger and thirst. When the people suspected that God had abandoned them, they put God and Moses on trial. Even Adam, faced with the limits placed on his desires, suspected and disobeyed the Lord. The temptation of Adam and Eve in Eden is repeated in our lives every day: it is the constant problem of trust and distrust, the so-called 'original' sin in the sense that it is at the root of all human disasters. Opposed to suspicion and rebellion against God is Christ's attitude of trust and submission because he knows that God's will is only good. Especially in the face of the challenges of pain in all its forms and death, there are two opposing attitudes that Paul calls 'living according to the flesh' or 'living according to the Spirit'. For him, living according to the flesh means behaving like slaves who do not trust and obey out of obligation or fear of punishment. "Living according to the Spirit," on the other hand, means "behaving like children," that is, weaving relationships of trust and tenderness which, following Christ's example, lead to life. Living under the influence of the flesh (i.e., in an attitude of distrust and disobedience towards God) leads to death, while living through the Spirit is to put to death the works of sin. In other words, the attitude of a slave is destructive, while the attitude of a child is the way to peace and happiness. The Spirit of God, who dwells in us through baptism, enables us to call God 'Abba-Father', and on the day when all humanity recognises God as Father, the divine plan will be fulfilled, and we will all enter into his glory together. A few verses later, Paul notes that creation eagerly awaits the revelation of the children of God. Finally, today's text reminds us that since we are children of God, we are also heirs of God, co-heirs with Christ, on condition that we suffer with him in order to be with him in glory. This text can be read in two ways: the slave imagines a God who sets conditions on inheritance; instead, the son considers God as Father even and above all in suffering. Suffering is inevitable, as it was for Christ, but lived with him and like him, it becomes a path to resurrection, and then 'on condition that we suffer with him' means: on condition that we are with him, that we remain united to him at all times, even in inevitable suffering.

*From the Gospel according to John (14:15-16, 23b-26)

 This well-known Gospel passage takes on new meaning today thanks to the other biblical texts proposed for the feast of Pentecost. For example, we are tempted to think of the Holy Spirit in terms of inspiration, ideas, discernment, intelligence, but for the feast of the gift of the Spirit, today's Gospel speaks only of love. Jesus says here that the Spirit of God is something else entirely: it is Love, Love personified. This means that on the morning of Pentecost in Jerusalem, when the disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit, it was love itself, which is God, that filled them. In the same way, we too, baptised and confirmed, know that our capacity to love is inhabited by the love of God himself. The responsorial psalm 103/104 reminds us of this when it proclaims: You send forth your Spirit, and we, created in the image of God, are called to resemble him more and more, constantly moulded by him in his image. The Spirit is the potter who works his clay, and every vessel becomes more and more refined in the hands of the craftsman. We are the clay in God's hands, so our likeness to Him is refined more and more as we allow ourselves to be transformed by the Spirit of Love. In the second reading, St. Paul speaks of our relationship with God, summarising it in one sentence: we are no longer slaves, but children of God, while in the Gospel, Jesus links our relationship with God to our relationship with our brothers and sisters: "If you love me, you will keep my commandments" (Jn 14:15), and we know well what his commandment is: 'that you love one another as I have loved you' (Jn 13:34).  If Jesus is referring to the gesture of washing feet, that is, to a decisive attitude of service, we can translate "if you love me, you will keep my commandments" as "if you love me, you will serve one another". God's love and love for our brothers and sisters are inseparable, so inseparable that it is by the quality of our service to our neighbour that the quality of our love for God is judged and therefore "if you do not serve your brothers and sisters, do not claim to love me!"  A little further on, Jesus takes up a similar expression and develops it: "If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him" (Jn 14:23). This does not mean that the Father in heaven does not love us if we do not serve our brothers and sisters, because there are no conditions or blackmail in him. On the contrary, the characteristic of mercy is precisely to bend down even more towards the poor, as we are all poor, at least in terms of love and service to others. Love is learned by practising it, but what the Lord is telling us here is something we know well: the ability to love is an art, and every art is learned by practising it. The Father's love is boundless, infinite, but our capacity to receive it is limited and grows as we practise it. We can therefore translate this as follows: 'If anyone loves me, he will put himself at the service of others and little by little, his heart will expand; the love of God will fill him more and more, and he will be able to serve others even better... and so on to infinity," that is, in unlimited progress. Let us conclude by returning to the term "Paraclete," which can be translated as comforter and defender. Yes, we need a defender, but not before God, and St. Paul makes this clear in the second reading: The Spirit you have received does not make you slaves, people who are still afraid, but rather the Spirit who makes you children (cf. Rom 8:15).  We are therefore no longer afraid of God and we do not need a lawyer before Him. But then why does Jesus say that he will pray to the Father, and he will give us another defender, to remain with us forever? Yes, we need an advocate, who defends us from ourselves, from our reluctance to serve others, from our lack of trust in God's power, who constantly defends the cause of others against our selfishness because, in doing so, he actually defends us, since true happiness consists in allowing ourselves to be moulded every day by God in his image, overcoming all selfish resistance.

+Giovanni D'Ercole

God bless us and may the Virgin protect us! For the feast of the Ascension, the first reading and the psalm are common to years A, B, C, while the second reading and the gospel change 

*First Reading from the Acts of the Apostles (1:1-11)

These first verses of the Acts of the Apostles recall the conclusion of Luke's gospel, also addressed to a certain Theophilus, and it is interesting to note that one begins where the other ends, that is, with the account of Jesus' Ascension, even though the two narratives do not match perfectly as we can see when reading the texts of Year C. The gospel narrates the mission and preaching of Jesus, the Acts of the Apostles focuses on the missionary activity of the apostles, hence the title. Luke's gospel begins and ends in Jerusalem, the heart of the Jewish world and of the First Covenant; Acts begins in Jerusalem, because the New Covenant continues the First, but ends in Rome, the crossroads of all the world's roads, and the New Covenant goes beyond the borders of Israel. For Luke it is clear that this expansion is the fruit of the Holy Spirit, the inspirer of the apostles since Pentecost, so much so that Acts is often called 'the gospel of the Spirit'. Jesus, after his baptism, prepared himself for his mission with forty days of desert, so he prepares the Church for this new missionary phase by appearing to the apostles for forty days and "speaking of the things concerning the kingdom of God". In fact, "while he was at table with them", thus during a last supper, he gives the apostles some instructions that can be summarised as: an order, a promise and a sending on mission.

The order: do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the fulfilment of the Father's promise that must be fulfilled in Jerusalem since all the preaching of the prophets, especially Isaiah, attributes to Jerusalem a central role in God's plan (cf. Is 60:1-3; 62:1-2). The promise: "John baptised with water, you on the other hand will be baptised in the Holy Spirit not many days from now". This too was known to the apostles, who remembered the prophecy of Joel: "I will pour out my spirit on every creature" (Joel 3:1), and the prophecies of Zechariah: (Zechariah 13:1; 12:10), and of Ezekiel: "I will pour out cleansing water on you and you will be purified... I will put a new spirit in you... I will put my spirit in you" (Ezek 36:25-27). When the apostles ask "whether this is the time when he will rebuild the kingdom for Israel", they show that they have understood that "the Day of the Lord" has dawned and God's plan now demands man's cooperation: with Christ, in fact, the promised Saviour has come, now it is up to human freedom to accept him, and for this the apostles' announcement is necessary. Hence the responsible mission of the apostles who receive the Holy Spirit: "You will receive the power of the Holy Spirit who will come upon you, and you will be my witnesses... to the ends of the earth". The plan that the book of Acts follows is in fact this: first the proclamation in Jerusalem, then throughout Judea and Samaria, and finally it must spread to the ends of the earth. Just as on Easter morning two men in shining garments aroused the women saying: "Why do you seek the Living One among the dead? He is not here, he is risen", so, on Ascension Day, "two men in white robes" do the same to the apostles: "Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing into the sky? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven" (1:11). Jesus will return, we are certain of it, and we proclaim it in every Eucharist when we say 'In blessed hope of the coming of Jesus Christ our Saviour'. Finally, a cloud removes Jesus from human sight: his carnal presence ceases to usher in the spiritual one. A visible sign of this presence of God is the cloud already present at the Red Sea passage (Ex 13:21) and at the Transfiguration (Lk 9:34).

NOTE: The events between the Resurrection and Ascension cannot be reconstructed exactly. In Luke's texts (Gospel and Acts) the narration is essentially identical: Jesus leaves Bethany and takes the disciples to the Mount of Olives recommending that they not leave Jerusalem until they have received the Holy Spirit. The only difference concerns the duration: in the gospel it appears that the Ascension takes place on the evening of Easter itself, whereas in Acts it is made clear that forty days elapse between Easter and Ascension - hence the feast forty days later. In the other gospels little is found about the Ascension: Matthew does not speak of it at all, reporting only the apparition to the women and the sending to Galilee (Matthew 28:18-20). John narrates several apparitions, but omits the Ascension. Mark mentions the Ascension briefly at the end (Mk 16:19). The differences show that the gospels do not aim at a precise geographical account but at emphasising theological aspects: Matthew insists on Galilee, Luke on Jerusalem. In fact, it is in Jerusalem that Jesus had ordered to wait for the Spirit: "Behold, I send upon you him whom my Father has promised; but you remain in the city until you are clothed with power from on high" (Lk 24:49).

*Responsorial Psalm (46 (47),2-3,6-7,8-9)

In this psalm Israel sings and acclaims God not only as its king, but as king of the whole earth. Before the exile in Babylon, no king of Israel had imagined that God could be the Lord of the whole universe, and therefore the psalm dates from a late period in Israel's history. God is the king of Israel and therefore in Israel the king did not hold all power because the true king was God himself. The king could not dispose of the law as he pleased and, like everyone else, had to submit to the Torah, i.e. the rules that God had given to Moses on Sinai. On the contrary, according to the book of Deuteronomy, he had to read the entire Law every day and, even sitting on the throne, he was (in principle) no more than an executor of God's orders, transmitted to him by the prophets. In the Books of Kings, kings sought the advice of the prophet in charge before embarking on a military campaign or, in the case of David, before starting the building of the Temple, so that the prophets freely intervened in the lives of kings, strongly criticising their actions. Such a conception of God's sovereignty was even an obstacle to the establishment of monarchy, as was the case when the prophet Samuel, in the time of the Judges, reacted strongly towards the tribal leaders who demanded a king to be like all other nations. To desire to be like other peoples, when one is God's chosen people and in covenant with Him, was something blasphemous, and if Samuel gave in to the pressure, he did not fail to warn of the ruin they were bringing upon themselves. When he anointed the first king, Saul, he took care to point out that he became the custodian of God's heritage because the people remained God's people, not the king's, and the king himself was only a servant of God. During the years of the monarchy, the prophets were charged with reminding the kings of this essential truth. One understands then that in honour of God, this psalm uses the vocabulary that was elsewhere reserved for kings. Even 'terrible' is an expression typical of court jargon and should be understood as follows: the king (God) does not frighten his subjects, but reassures them, and so the enemies are warned that 'our king' will be invincible. The God king of the universe, "the great king over all the earth" (v. 3), acclaimed in every verse of the psalm is precisely the God of Sinai, the "Lord" and in this feast all peoples participate: "All peoples clap your hands, acclaim God with shouts of joy!" so that the universal dimension profoundly pervades the psalm to the point of saying "God reigns over the nations" (v. 9) recognising him as the only God of the entire universe.

NOTE: The real discovery of monotheism occurred only with the Babylonian exile: until then Israel was not monotheist in the full sense of the term, but monolatrist, i.e. it recognised as its own one God - the God of the Sinai Covenant - but admitted that the neighbouring peoples each had their own god, sovereign in their own land and defender in battle. This psalm was therefore probably composed after the return from exile, not in the throne room, but in the rebuilt Temple in Jerusalem, in a liturgical context evoking God's great plan for humanity, anticipating the day when God will finally be recognised as the Father of all good. We Christians make this psalm our own, and the expression "God ascends amid acclamations" seems well suited for today's celebration of Jesus' Ascension. In paying this splendid homage to Christ, King of the Universe, we anticipate the song that on the last day the children of God finally gathered together will intone: "All peoples, clap your hands! Acclaim God with shouts of joy".

*Second Reading from the Letter to the Hebrews (9:24-28 ; 10:19-23)     

In the first part of this text, the author meditates on the mystery of Christ; in the second part, he draws the consequences for the life of faith with the intention of reassuring his readers, Christians of Jewish origin, who felt a certain nostalgia for ancient worship since in Christian practice there is no longer a temple, nor blood sacrifice, and wondered if this is really what God wants. The author goes through all the rituals and realities of the Jewish religion showing that they are now outdated. He deals especially with the Temple, called the sanctuary, and makes it clear that one must distinguish the true sanctuary in which God dwells - heaven itself - from the temple built by men, which is only a pale image of it. The Jews were rightly proud of the Temple in Jerusalem, but they did not forget that every human construction, by definition, remains weak, imperfect and destined to perish. Moreover, no one in Israel claimed that one could enclose the presence of God in a building, no matter how majestic. The first builder of the Temple, King Solomon, had already said this: "Would God dwell on earth? The heavens and the heaven of heavens cannot contain you; let alone this House that I have built!" (1 Kings 8:27).  For Christians, the true Temple - the place of encounter with God - is no longer a building, because the Incarnation of the Word has changed everything. The place of encounter between God and man is Christ, the God made man, and St John explains this when he narrates Jesus driving the money changers and animal sellers out of the Temple. To those who asked him: "What sign will you show us to do this?" (i.e. "in whose name are you making this revolution?) he replied: "Destroy this temple and in three days I will restore it". Only after the resurrection will the disciples understand that he was talking about his body (Jn 2:13-21). Here, in the Letter to the Hebrews, the same thing is affirmed: only by being grafted into Christ, nourished by his body, do we enter into the mystery of the God who "entered not into a sanctuary made by human hands, a figure of the true one, but into heaven" (Heb 9:24). This occurred with the death of Christ, making clear the centrality of the Cross in the Christian mystery, as confirmed by all New Testament authors. The author of the Letter to the Hebrews specifies later that the culmination of Christ's life-offering is his death, but his sacrifice embraces his entire existence, not just his Passion (cp10). In the passage we read today, the focus is on the sacrifice of the Passion, as opposed to that which the high priest offered each year on the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur). He entered alone into the Holy of Holies, pronounced the unspeakable name of God (YHVH), shed the blood of a bull for his own sins and that of a goat for those of the people, thus solemnly renewing the covenant, and when he left, the people knew that their sins were forgiven. That covenant had to be renewed every year, but the new covenant established with the Father is final in Christ crucified and risen. On the cross, the true face of God is revealed, who loves us to the uttermost, the Father of each one of us, for whom there is no longer any fear of God's judgement. When we proclaim in the Creed that Jesus will come to judge the living and the dead, we know that, in God, judgement means salvation, as we read here: "Christ, having offered himself once to take away the sin of many, will appear a second time, without any relation to sin to those who wait for him for their salvation" (Heb 9:28). This certainty of faith enables us to live our relationship with God in full serenity and thanksgiving. But it is important to bear witness to it, as this text exhorts us: "Let us continue without hesitation to profess our hope, for He who promised is faithful" (Heb 10:23). Jesus Christ is "the high priest of future goods" (Heb. 9:11).

*From the Gospel according to Saint Luke (24:46-53)

The synoptics, Matthew, Mark, and Luke differ in their account of the Lord's Ascension, 

Matthew places it on a mountain in Galilee, where Jesus had fixed his appointment with the apostles; Mark gives no geographical indication; Luke, on the contrary, places the event on the Mount of Olives towards Bethany. Thus he ends the gospel where it began, in Jerusalem: the holy city of the chosen people from which the revelation of the one God had radiated to the world; the city of the temple-sign of God's presence among men. But also the city of the fulfilment of salvation through Christ's death and resurrection, and the city of the gift of the Spirit. Finally, the city from which the final revelation is to radiate over the universe, and Luke makes Jesus' words ring in our ears: "Was it not necessary that Christ should suffer these things in order to enter into his glory?" (Lk 24:26). What is new here, in comparison to the three prophecies of his passion uttered by Jesus before the events and the two statements immediately after the resurrection and on the road to Emmaus, is the conclusion of the sentence, which takes the form of a missionary sending of the apostles: "Thus it is written: 'Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and in his name shall be preached to all nations repentance and forgiveness of sins, beginning at Jerusalem. Of this you are witnesses (Lk 24:46-49) For the first Christians it was difficult to explain which passage of Scripture had announced the sufferings of the Messiah and his resurrection on the third day; among the last prophets of the Old Testament the prophecies about the conversion of all nations, beginning with Jerusalem, were much more widespread, as we read in Jeremiah: "On that day they shall call Jerusalem the throne of the Lord; all nations shall flock there, to the name of the Lord, to Jerusalem" (3:17); and in the third Isaiah: "My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples" (56:7); "From moon to moon, from Sabbath to Sabbath, every creature shall come and bow down before me" (66:23). Zechariah then develops this theme: "On that day many nations will gather to the Lord and will be a people to me" (Za 2:15), "Many peoples and mighty nations will come to Jerusalem to seek the Lord of hosts" (8:22).Exegetes state that although these reflections are present in numerous psalms, it was above all the songs of the Servant in Deutero-Isaiah (Is 42; 49; 50; 52-53) that inspired the evangelists' meditation and clarified Jesus' expression "It was necessary that::" because in these four canticles emerges the figure of the suffering and glorified Messiah and the proclamation of good for all the nations: "I, the Lord," have called you with righteousness, I have taken you by the hand, I have formed you; I have made you a covenant of the people, a light of the nations" (Is 42:6);

"The righteous, my servant, will justify the multitudes" (Is 53:11). This conclusion of Luke's gospel thus takes on the tones of the liturgy: Jesus, the true High Priest, blesses his own and sends them out into the world, and the people worship and give thanks: "Lifting up his hands, he blessed them. And as he blessed them, he departed from them and was taken up into heaven. And they prostrated themselves before him; then they returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and stood in the temple praising God" (Lk 24:50-53). Luke's gospel closes by going back to its beginning, when Zechariah, a priest of the Old Covenant, had heard the announcement of God's salvation (Lk 1:5-19), and the last image that the disciples kept of the Master is a gesture of blessing. This explains why they return to Jerusalem with great joy. In this concluding image is enclosed the mystery of the light and joy of the Ascension, a departure that is not abandonment but the certainty of a different presence, invisible but even more powerful and effective.

+Giovanni D'Ercole