Let's Spend Some Time With the Truths of Our Faith This Sunday

Now that we're fully summer, maybe we get to ease up a bit on our work and daily chores. OK, so the domestic chores never really ease up, but maybe we don't tackle big projects right now, or maybe we just approach each task with a more "summery" disposition.

Yes, I know we're just emerging from a year or more of Mess. But it does seem that things are lightening up a bit, doesn't it? On our recent vacation week, we did see some masks, but for the most part it was people's actual faces. I was curious how that would seem - the actual face of a person - after months and months of us all looking like we're ready to rob a bank. But it was no big deal. Oh, right, a nose and a mouth. Yeah, I remember them.

Whatever the state of the Mess where you are, summer's here. We get to ease up, one way or the other. So with a relaxed, eased-up summery feeling, it might be a good time to spend some time with the Truths of our Faith, don't you think? What's that, you're heading for the beach today? That's OK. But maybe you grab a half hour before, or a half hour after with some truth or truth that you know, or one you learned recently. Even 15 minutes will do if the half hour's too much. 

One truth alone can make a big difference in your spiritual life. And isn't Sunday the perfect time to let that truth sink in, take it into the Interior Life of your soul, and let it direct your thoughts, words, and actions from now on? 

If I'm being too vague here, maybe Father Garrigou-Lagrange can help out:

“The most elementary truths of the Christian Faith, such as those expressed in the Our Father, are, we find, the most profound truths when we have meditated upon them long and lovingly; when, through the years, we have lived with them, while carrying our cross, and they have become the object of almost continuous contemplation. To be led to the heights of sanctity, it would be enough for a soul to live intensely but one of these truths of our Faith. One of the most important of these truths is that of the special presence of God in the souls of the just, according to the words of Our Lord: If any one love Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and will make Our abode with him. (Jn. XIV:23) By these words and by the promise of His Holy Spirit, Christ taught us that the most fundamental vocation of every baptized soul is to live in fellowship with the very Persons of the Blessed Trinity. Hence, according to St. Thomas’ frequently repeated words, the Christian life even here on earth is, in a sense, eternal life begun…The grace of Baptism makes us truly partakers of the divine nature even as it subsists in the bosom of the Trinity. God has so loved us in His Son as to will to make us share in the very principle of His intimate life, the principle of the immediate vision He has of Himself, which He communicates to the Word and to the Holy Ghost. Thus the just enter into the family of God and into the life-cycle of the Trinity. Living faith, enlightened by the Gift of Wisdom, assimilates them to the light of the Word; infused charity assimilates them to the Holy Spirit. In them the Father begets His Word; in them the Father and the Son breathe the Personal Love that unites Them. In each of them the Trinity dwells, whole and entire, as in a living temple; here below It dwells as in a darkened temple, but in Heaven in a light that knows no shadow and in an unchanging love.

“The servant of God, (Sister) Elizabeth of the Trinity, was one of those enlightened and heroic souls able to cling to one of these great truths, which are both the simplest and the most important, and, beneath the appearance of an ordinary life, to find therein the secret of a very close union with God. This mystery of the indwelling of the Blessed Trinity in the depths of her soul was the great reality of her interior life. As she herself said: ‘The Trinity! There is our dwelling, our ‘home’, the father’s house that we must never leave…It seems to me that I have found my heaven on earth, for heaven is God and God is in my soul. On the day I understood that, everything became clear to me.” (Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P.)

There, that's better. Father explains how and why even one truth of our Christian faith can impact our lives. Maybe his clearer, more detailed expression and his gentle urging will motivate us to spend time with the Truths of Our Faith this Sunday.

Happy Sunday!