Today, on the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, hundreds of friends gathered at the Cathedral of St. Pau to celebrate the Mass of Thanksgiving for Fr. Brian Fischer. For me, this celebration was the culmination of weeks of the Lord shouting at me of His great love.
God’s love is always being poured out upon us, but there are times when through his grace, we are able to feel that love in a way that is palpable. For weeks now my spiritual reading, both from St. Francis de Sales’ “Treatise on the Love of God,” and Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa’s “Life in Christ,” has been unveiling the depth, beauty, and might of the love of the inner life of the Trinity. God has been preparing me for this feast day. The words of both St. Francis and of Fr. Cantalamessa were echoed today in Fr. Brian Fischer’s first homily. Consistently God is speaking, revealing that the love with which the Father loves the Son, the love that is the Holy Spirit, is the same love with which he loves us. We are his very own and he loves us with his very self.
There is a power in that love that redeems and transforms. It is a love that heals and restores. In this past week I have had the incomprehensibly great honor of bearing witness to, and being an instrument in, God’s work of healing and restoration. I have seen how his love is never content with leaving us only partially healed. When Jesus healed the blind man, he did not stop when the blind man was able to see indistinctly but pressed on until his sight was perfect. (Mark 8:22-25) Jesus does the same for us, continuing the good work he begins in us until the day of completion. (Phil 1:6) I have believed this to be true throughout my life, but in these last days I have seen the truth of God’ ongoing, continuous redemption unfolding in the lives of those I love.
In my own life too, God’s love has been so evident that my heart nearly explodes from the immense joy of it. Last night, at my hour of adoration, I was pouring out a litany of gratitude to the Lord for the wonderous ways He has revealed to me his great love. He has allowed me to see his work in his people, he has filled my life with brothers and sisters who genuinely love me so well, he has equipped me to teach and to proclaim his goodness and given me the privilege of seeing that teaching be well received. In the midst of this litany, I was struck by the truth that though I see the growing darkness of this world, and though I have experienced deep sorrow in my own heart, none of that overshadows or is an impediment to the glory of God’s great love. I was awestruck. With this truth in mind, and only ten minutes left of my prayer time, I picked up, “Life in Christ,” and read, “The third expression that Paul uses about God’s love in his Letter to the Romans is existential. It takes us back to “this” life and to the suffering which is its most striking aspect. The tone of the discourse is once again inspired and filled with deep emotion.” Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa references Romans 8:37-39 where Paul speaks of the truth that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Reflecting on that passage Cantalamessa says, “Here St. Paul teaches us how to apply to our everyday life the light of God’s love contemplated so far. The perils and enemies against God’s love that he lists are those he actually experienced himself in his own life: distress, persecution, the sword. He mentally reviews them and discovers in amazement that none of them is powerful enough to withstand the thought of God’s love.” (Life in Christ, p. 17) These words were an echo of my own prayer, uttered just moments beforehand and I felt, through them, a deep confirmation of the might of God’s love at work in my life.
God’s love, his might and his goodness, therefore, were at the forefront of my mind as I entered Mass today on this Solemn feast day. The Holy Trinity, One God in Three Persons, is by his very nature Love and he has swept us up in that love. He has made us his own. The glorious weight of this truth was manifest once again as Fr. Brian Fischer, himself a son of God redeemed in love, spoke the words of consecration, and held aloft the Bread of Life. Here, in this holy priest and in this Holy Eucharist, Christ is present to his people. And here, once again, his love is made known. May we let that love rest in us and may we, in turn, rest in it. Amen.
Prose for the sake of Poetry 