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MONDAY OF THE FIFTH WEEK OF EASTER JOHN 14:21-26 Friends, we see in our Gospel reading that the Holy Spirit’s principal sign is love. The night before he died, Jesus told his friends the deepest truths. He spoke of himself, his Father, and the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the love that connects the Father and the Son. From all eternity, he is breathed back and forth between the Father and the Son, and hence he is nothing but love. When therefore he comes to dwell in you and me, he turns us to the path of love. “On...

Wednesday of the Fourth Week of Easter John 12:44-50 Friends, in today’s Gospel Jesus identifies himself with the Father and so hints at the reality of the Trinity. The Trinity is just another way of saying that God is love. But this has to imply that there is a play, within the unity of God, of lover, beloved, and shared love. This is precisely what we mean when we speak of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This love is so white-hot, so intense, that it spills over into creation. In the case of human beings, this communication...

Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Easter John 10:22-30 Friends, in today’s Gospel Jesus declared that "the Father and I are one." Jesus appeared two thousand years ago and announced that he had been sent by the Father. There was a strange "something more" regarding Jesus, for he spoke and acted in the very person of God. The first Christians had to come to grips with this strange duality: somehow Jesus was Son of God, both sent and divine. He was other than the Father, but somehow at the same level as the Father. Things got more complicated when the...

I explore one of the final Meccan surahs from the Koran, and explain how Mohammed and his anti-Christ religion differs from true religion and the Holy Spirit.

Is Jesus God? By Philip Cottraux In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not (John 1:1,10). It’s one thing to believe Jesus is the Messiah. Or the Son of God. But God? While firmly settled by Christians long ago, many still grapple with it. Muslims and Jehovah’s Witnesses are fine with labeling Jesus a prophet, but consider equating Him with the Almighty blasphemy, pointing out that nowhere in the four gospels did He demand...

MANILA, Philippines – President Rodrigo Duterte mocked the Christian doctrine of the Holy Trinity, calling it “silly” on Saturday, December 29. In a speech in Kidapawan City, Cotabato, the President attacked the doctrine of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit as he once again went into a tirade against priests and the Catholic Church. "You’re already praying at one God, then you’re going to pray at these cursed saints. There’s only one God. There’s only one God, period. You cannot divide God into 3, that’s silly,” said the President. Before attacking the Holy Trinity doctrine,...

WE HAVE NOT, as yet, reached the Feast of the divine Memorial; not until the morrow shall we have it in all its splendor. But this evening at first Vespers, the Church will begin her acclamations to the Eternal Priest, and although the Sovereign Pontiffs have not ordained that a Vigil, properly so called, shall precede the Feast of Corpus Christi, yet have they granted indulgences to a voluntary fast practiced on this its eve. Let us now resume the history of the Church’s worship of the great mystery. We have already seen how the unity of the Church...

THE HISTORY OF THE BLESSED EUCHARIST is one with that of the Church herself: the liturgical usages, which have varied in the celebration of the most august of all the Sacraments, have followed the great social phases of the Christian world. This was a necessity; for the Eucharist is the vital center here below, whither everything in the Church converges; it is the inner bond which unites together that society of which Christ is the head, the society whereby he is to reign over the nations, which are to be his inheritance. Union with Peter, the Vicar of Christ,...

HAVING, BY HIS DIVINE LIGHT, added fresh appreciation towards the sovereign mystery of the august Trinity, the Holy Ghost next leads the Church to contemplate that other marvel, which concentrates in itself all the works of the Incarnate Word, and leads us, even in this present life, to union with God. The mystery of the Holy Eucharist is going to be brought before us in all its magnificence; it behooves us, therefore, to prepare the eyes of our soul for the worthy reception of the light which is so soon to dawn upon us. As during the whole year,...

One and One and One Are One - A Homily for Trinity Sunday Msgr. Charles Pope • May 26, 2018 • There is an old spiritual that says, “My God is so high you can’t get over Him. He’s so low you can’t get under Him. He’s so wide you can’t get around Him. You must come in, by and through the Lamb.”It’s not a bad way of saying that God is “other.” He is beyond what human words can describe, beyond what human thoughts can conjure. On the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity we do well to...

White Double of the First Class ON THE DAY OF PENTECOST, the Holy Apostles received, as we have seen, the grace of the Holy Ghost. In accordance with the injunction of their divine Master, they will soon start on their mission of teaching all nations and baptizing men in the name of the Holy Trinity It was but right, then, that the solemnity which is intended to honor the mystery of One God in Three Persons should immediately follow that of Pentecost, with which it has a mysterious connection. And yet it was not till after many centuries that...

May 27, 2018 The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity Reading 1 Dt 4:32-34, 39-40 Moses said to the people:"Ask now of the days of old, before your time,ever since God created man upon the earth;ask from one end of the sky to the other:Did anything so great ever happen before?Was it ever heard of?Did a people ever hear the voice of Godspeaking from the midst of fire, as you did, and live?Or did any god venture to go and take a nation for himselffrom the midst of another nation,by testings, by signs and wonders, by war,with strong hand...

Loving the Spirit Holy Spirit may be harder to relate to as a person, but we can know him through his fruits and works Msgr. Charles Pope Question: I have difficulty relating to the Holy Spirit. Is the Spirit a person? Are there any suggestions that you can make? — Name, location withheld Answer: Many do struggle to relate to the Holy Spirit as a person for two reasons. First, the images of Father and Son speak to our human experience of personhood. A father or a son is person whom we can see and relate to. But in English,...

Now, John Fa of the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust in Trinity, Jersey, says Neanderthals eventually bit the dust because they were unable to adapt their hunting to small animals like rabbits. Fa and his colleagues counted up the skeletons of animals found in three excavation sites in Spain and southern France. Up until 30,000 years ago, the remains of large animals such as deer were abundant in caves. But around that time, coinciding with the disappearance of Neanderthals, rabbit remains became more prevalent. The authors postulate that humans were more successful at switching to catching and eating rabbits. It's not...

We are in a time of the first ever mass conversions of Muslims,” Father Mitch Pacwa SJ told me in a phone interview. “God is doing a mighty work among them.” Pacwa said that mass conversions are happening even in very fundamentalist countries. There is rapidly growing number of conversions especially on the edges of the Muslim world in the western and southern parts of Africa, he said. “Africa is now growing predominantly Christian despite crackdowns,” Pacwa said. Some of the noteworthy countries he mentioned include Iran, reported to have 3 million Christians, and Indonesia with reports of 2 million...

Donors have pulled back and incoming students have decided to go elsewhere in response to the firestorm that erupted from a professor’s racially-charged Facebook posts, Trinity College’s president said Monday. Joanne Berger-Sweeney said 16 incoming students have withdrawn and past donors have chosen not to contribute to the school this year, resulting in about a $200,000 loss in donations. Both groups specifically cited the national uproar surrounding Professor Johnny Eric Williams’ posts, she said.

It was on this date in 1945 that, for good or ill, the "nuclear age" began, with the explosion of the first experimental atomic bomb, code-named Trinity, in the western desert near Alamogordo, New Mexico. Trinity, with a yield equivalent to 20 kilotons of TNT, was the first spherical implosion bomb, developed at Los Alamos under the auspices of the Manhattan Project during World War II. The weapon designers were so confident of the success of the simpler gun-barrel configuration that the device of that type dropped on Hiroshima only three weeks later had never been tested. The subsequent Nagasaki...

HARTFORD, Conn. (WTNH)– Trinity College in Hartford is closed in response to a threat Wednesday afternoon. The college tweeted out that due to threats received, the Trinity College campus, at 300 Summit Street, is now closed until further notice. College officials also tweeted that campus buildings were only card ID access only. The nature of the threat is unknown at this time.

One and One and One Are One - A Homily for Trinity Sunday Msgr. Charles Pope • June 10, 2017 • There is an old spiritual that says, “My God is so high you can’t get over Him. He’s so low you can’t get under Him. He’s so wide you can’t get around Him. You must come in, by and through the Lamb.”It’s not a bad way of saying that God is “other.” He is beyond what human words can describe, beyond what human thoughts can conjure. On the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity we do well to...

June 11, 2017 The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity Reading 1 Ex 34:4b-6, 8-9Early in the morning Moses went up Mount Sinaias the LORD had commanded him,taking along the two stone tablets. Having come down in a cloud, the LORD stood with Moses thereand proclaimed his name, "LORD."Thus the LORD passed before him and cried out,"The LORD, the LORD, a merciful and gracious God,slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity."Moses at once bowed down to the ground in worship.Then he said, "If I find favor with you, O Lord,do come along in our company.This is indeed...