Sunday, June 15, 2014

The Most Holy Trinity - Sunday, June 15, 2014

I was in the sacristy one Saturday evening before Mass when the organist walked in and wanted to make sure that we both knew what we were doing.  I told him we were not doing anything out of the ordinary, and it reminded him of a line a priest had said to him once under similar circumstances.  “We are celebrating the great Paschal Mystery in which bread and wine become the very Body and Blood of Christ our Lord.  In other words, just the ordinary.”
The organist’s comment reminded me that every celebration of the Eucharist is a great mystery of faith in which we receive all the glory of heaven.  That thought strikes me now especially as we have completed the Easter season and returned to “Ordinary Time.”  We generally use the word “ordinary” to refer to that which is normal, commonplace and run-of-the-mill.  But the liturgy we celebrate is never ordinary in that sense.  Our term of “Ordinary Time” refers to the word “ordinal.”  If we remember our math classes – and I admit that I would not have remembered had I not re-learned the term in liturgy classes – ordinal numbers are those which put things in order.  So the ordinal numbers are first, second, third and so forth.  Ordinary Time refers to the fact that we are in that part of the year in which we measure the passage of time by numbering the weeks.  So in the Church’s liturgy, we are now beginning the Eleventh Week of Ordinary Time, with green vestments and a little less solemnity than we had during the Easter season.
Normally those weeks of Ordinary Time begin with the corresponding Sunday in Ordinary Time.  But to show that this time is not “ordinary” in the sense of being commonplace, we begin with a series of special feasts.  Immediately after Pentecost each year, we explore some of the important mysteries of our faith by celebrating a series of what are called “Solemnities of the Lord in Ordinary Time.”  We begin with today’s Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity.  This solemnity allows us to reflect upon God’s gift of the insight into His true nature as One God, with no division, yet as three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  On a side note, many priests consider this to be a difficult Sunday on which to give a homily, and so I felt a little guilty when I arranged for our newly ordained Deacon Zach Galiyas to give his first official homily on Trinity Sunday.
Next Sunday is the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, commonly known by its old Latin name of Corpus Christi.  We enter into the mystery of our salvation and come to share in the life of the Blessed Trinity by receiving the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist.  Again, we celebrate this great gift so often that we can take it for granted, so we have this feast to remind us of its importance.
Corpus Christi was originally scheduled for the Thursday after Trinity Sunday, but the bishops had the choice of making it a Holy Day of Obligation or moving it to the following Sunday.  The Friday after Corpus Christi, this year June 27, is the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.  That is not a Holy Day, but it ties the other celebrations together by uniting us in the love of the Heart of Christ, and thus it is given to us as the third of the three Solemnities of the Lord in Ordinary Time. Father H