This joyful season of post resurrection is a gold mine for those interested in growing spiritually. This coming Sunday we celebrate the Most Blessed Trinity. How sad I was when I heard a young priest complain that he couldn’t give a homily on this mystery. It is the central mystery of our faith. Not only that but we have probably all experienced a relationship with the three divine Persons who are our One God.
When we were very little children, first introduced to God we were most likely beginning a relationship with God the Father, mirrored in the adults who so lovingly cared for all our needs. When we went to school and widened our interactions with friends of our own age, and when we prepared for the Sacraments of Reconciliation and Eucharist, we became acquainted with the human, visible Jesus, who shared our experiences and left a tangible image in the Gospels and a real Presence in the Eucharist. As we matured in prayer we became aware of a presence of God within us as the gift of the Risen Christ, the Holy Spirit.
For many of us this unfortunately took place unconsciously, or not at all because of sad deficiencies in our early environment. We can all make up what has perhaps been lacking. We can be conscious in our prayer life. In our times at the Liturgy or in Eucharistic Adoration we can focus on Jesus. Also in the Gospels, in recitation of the Rosary, we walk with the Jesus of Galilee and who on the cross came to understand our suffering.
In his teaching for the feast of Pentecost, our Holy Father Francis, whether it was in his prepared talk or spontaneous said something very important. He said that the Church in not an NGO. Though some aid must be organized and financed, the essence of love of neighbor is “hands on”. It is the person right in front of us whom we are called to serve. In dealing with the poor, we often find that the “poor” are not attractive. They are not always the cute little children in the third-world photos. They are often the annoying or boring neighbor, the crotchety old relative, the “far-away” patient suffering from dementia. As we adjust to whatever they need from us, we are touching the suffering Body of Christ. It is often very difficult, so we must also give due time and effort to prayer, because only in this contact do we gain the wisdom and strength to serve Him in His Body.
As we reflect on our own circumstances we may think we are excused from the call to charity and evangelization. We cannot go to Africa or even to the streets of our slums. As I thought I had this excuse, I remembered our own Sister Edilia. She spent each day sitting at the entrance to the Bloomingdale department store in Manhattan with a little basket to collect donations for our Congregation. It was only when age and illness caused authorities to withdraw her from this service that we realized what a ministry she was exercising. Her hospital room was overfilled with flowers from the employees of the store who had daily gained grace from her greeting, smile, and promise of prayer. We will never know how many family concerns were entrusted to her loving heart, but we do see what true “evangelization” is. In this Year of Faith, we are all called to “go out from ourselves and our comfortable spirituality” to the people whom God will send us. If we become tuned to this they will come because Jesus will entrust His brothers and sisters to us. We can all answer the call of our Holy Father to serve.
