WEDNESDAY REFLECTION
Mid-week Reflection
2nd June 2021
When I retired one of my friends, to console me, said, “At least you will never have the task of preaching on Trinity Sunday.” I thought of that on Sunday when I celebrated Mass and spoke of the Doctrine at Turnbull Hall, the Eucharistic heart of Glasgow University. As Churchill did not say, “Some consolation! Some task! When you were a child and your mother told you not to touch an electrical socket, her words were enough for you. You didn’t need to understand about the flow of electricity. You didn’t need to touch and get a shock to prove that what she said was true. St Athanasius tells us that the faith of the Church, that which we have to believe as Catholics, is revealed by the Lord, proclaimed by the Apostles and guarded by the Fathers of the Church.
Really, that should be enough for us. Not to accept that is not to be a Catholic. We can know something about the Trinity. Something about the economy of salvation. That is, works performed by the Trinity outside itself. Extrinsic to its very being. That part of divine revelation that deals with God’s creation and management of the world. Not just creation…but also redemption. Not just the universe but also salvation. There is another aspect of the Trinity that we can come to appreciate and understand. That is God’s essential Being throughout eternity. As He was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. The exterior work of the Trinity gives us an insight, a taste if you like, of the inner life of Father, Son and Holy Ghost. That which essential; that which permanently imbues and pervades Father, Son and Holy Ghost. In other words, what is of the essence or eternal being of the Trinity.
Artists and poets have captured the exterior work by understanding the beauty of creation. Scientists and philosophers have increased our understanding about the marvels of creation. But no one has succeeded in knowing where or from whom they came from. For believers; for Catholics; for us……..the work and the “how” of creation, leads all the way back to God Himself.
Monsignor Monaghan
