THE SOLEMNITY OF THE MOST HOLY TRINITY, MAY 31, 2026
- Maria Knox
- 12 hours ago
- 3 min read
Song Vinh Church. Stained glass. Jesus, God and Holy Spirit. Holy Trinity. Vietnam
Reading 2 2 Corinthians 13:11-13
Brothers and sisters, rejoice.
Mend your ways, encourage one another,
agree with one another, live in peace,
and the God of love and peace will be with you.
Greet one another with a holy kiss.
All the holy ones greet you.
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God
and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.
REFLECTION
We finished the season of Easter just last Sunday and now we have 3 huge feast days one after another: The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity (today); Corpus Christi (next Sunday); and the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (June 12).
Many parishes will have Corpus Christi processions next Sunday. The USCCB will consecrate the United States to the Sacred Heart of Jesus on June 11th ahead of its 250th anniversary of its independence.
While all these wonderful feasts and solemnities will be joyfully celebrated, we read the words of encouragement from St. Paul, and how the Corinthians should behave. We can draw from this how we should behave with each other.
But more fascinating is reading the very last chapter and verse of 2 Corinthians with the Trinitarian blessing St. Paul gives the readers. I think it is the only time he uses this blessing. And it is very similar to the one we often hear: "May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all."
The mystery of the Trinity is a very deep one. It's something hard to explain, and easy to fall in to a misunderstanding.
Pope Benedict XVI several times explained how the love that exists within the Holy Trinity overflows into love and forgiveness for man:
Today we contemplate the Most Holy Trinity as Jesus introduced us to it. He revealed to us that God is love "not in the oneness of a single Person, but in the Trinity of one substance" (Preface). He is the Creator and merciful Father; he is the Only-Begotten Son, eternal Wisdom incarnate, who died and rose for us; he is the Holy Spirit who moves all things, cosmos and history, toward their final, full recapitulation. Three Persons who are one God because the Father is love, the Son is love, the Spirit is love. God is wholly and only love, the purest, infinite and eternal love. He does not live in splendid solitude but rather is an inexhaustible source of life that is ceaselessly given and communicated (Pope Benedict XVI, 7 June 2009)
In his address to the people of San Marino, Pope Benedict told the people:
The temptation has crept in to believe that man’s true wealth is not faith, but personal and social power, his intellect, his culture and his capacity to manipulate scientific, technological and social reality. (Pope Benedict, 19 June 2011)
Pope Benedict XVI also tells us that openness to being in community won't make us lose our personality or our selves, but will enrich us and draw us closer to God:
Relationships between human beings throughout history cannot but be enriched by reference to this divine model. In particular, in the light of the revealed mystery of the Trinity, we understand that true openness does not mean loss of individual identity but profound interpenetration. This also emerges from the common human experiences of love and truth. Just as the sacramental love of spouses unites them spiritually in “one flesh” (Gen 2:24; Mt 19:5; Eph 5:31) and makes out of the two a real and relational unity, so in an analogous way truth unites spirits and causes them to think in unison, attracting them as a unity to itself. (Pope Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate)
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