MAY 26, 2024 – TRINITY SUNDAY – ST. PHILIP NERI. & ST. AUGUSTINE, APOSTLE OF ENGLAND.

• St. Eleutherius (188). Martyr, Priest. (Traditional)
• St. Philip Neri (1595). Founder or Foundress, Patron or Patroness, Priest. Patron of and Apostle of Rome. (Current, Traditional)

TRINITY SUNDAY.

THE Holy Trinity is one only God in three Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, equal in all things and co-eternal. The Father gives being to the Son, and the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son: the most adorable, truly, of all mysteries, and likewise the most impenetrable! St. Anselm has endeavored to explain it from a single point of view only, and has accomplished this in a masterly yet necessarily insufficient manner.

The Father, he says, cannot exist a single instant without knowing Himself, because, in God, to know is to exist, even as to will is to act. This knowledge, personified, is “the Word,” His Son. The Son is, then, co-eternal with the Father. The Father and the Son cannot exist a single instant without loving each other; their mutual love is again personified, because in God to love is still to exist, God being love itself. This third Person, thus co-eternal with the other two Persons, is the Holy Ghost. But the inhabitants with God can alone understand these wonders, and they understand because they see them.

The free-thinker, surrounded by the mysteries of nature, and who is to himself a complete mystery, is not willing to admit of any in religion. “I only wish to believe,” he says, “what I understand!” The poor fool would not believe much were he taken at his word. He would neither believe in the food he takes, seeing that he could not explain how it imparts nourishment, nor in the light of the sun, since he does not apprehend how it brings him into relation with distant objects, nor even in his own arguments, since he does not comprehend how his mind evokes and gives them shape. 

Literally speaking, there exist no mysteries, there are only truths; but truth becomes a mystery to him who does not understand it. Writing is a mystery to one who knows not how to read; it ceases to be so to any one who has received instruction. According as we educate the soul and widen the measure of knowledge, mysteries begin to disappear in proportion; therefore is it that there are no mysteries in heaven, because the angels and the blessed behold with open gaze the objects whereof we now possess but the mysterious definition. To deserve to behold them one day in their heavenly company, one condition is requisite, namely, to adore them meanwhile with steadfast and perfect faith in the Word of God, which proposes them for our belief. In the realms of nature, a mystery is a truth not understood, which one believes withal because one sees it. In the sphere of religion, a mystery is a truth not understood, which one believes because God has revealed it.

REFLECTION: Wherefore rebel against the word of God? Is it not “as if the clay should rebel against the potter, and the work should say to the worker thereof, Thou understandest not?”

ST. PHILIP NERI. & ST. AUGUSTINE, APOSTLE OF ENGLAND.

PHILIP was one of the noble line of Saints raised up by God in the sixteenth century to console and bless His Church. After a childhood of angelic beauty, the Holy Spirit drew him away from Florence, the place of his birth, showed him the world, that he might freely renounce it, led him to Rome, modeled him in mind and heart and will, and then, as by a second Pentecost, came down in visible form and filled his soul with light and peace and joy. He would have gone to India, but God reserved him for Rome. There he went on simply from day to day, drawing souls to Jesus, exercising them in mortification and charity, and binding them together by cheerful devotions; thus, unconsciously to himself, under the hands of Mary, as he said, the Oratory grew up, and all Rome was pervaded and transformed by its spirit. His life was a continuous miracle, his habitual state an ecstasy. He read the hearts of men, foretold their future, knew their eternal destiny. His touch gave health of body; his very look calmed souls in trouble and drove away temptations. He was gay, genial, and irresistibly winning; neither insult nor wrong could dim the brightness of his joy. Philip lived in an atmosphere of sunshine and gladness which brightened all who came near him. “When I met him in the street,” says one, “he would pat my cheek and say, ‘Well, how is Don Pellegrino?’ and leave me so full of joy that I could not tell which way I was going.” Others said that when he playfully pulled their hair or their ears, their hearts would bound with joy. Marcio Altieri felt such overflowing gladness in his presence that he said Philip’s room was a paradise on earth. Fabrizio de Massimi would go in sadness or perplexity and stand at Philip’s door; he said it was enough to see him, to be near him. And long after his death, it was enough for many, when troubled, to go into his room, to find their hearts lightened and gladdened. He inspired a boundless confidence and love, and was the common refuge and consoler of all. A gentle jest would convey his rebukes and veil his miracles. The highest honors sought him out, but he put them from him. He died in his eightieth year, A.D. 1595, and bears the grand title of Apostle of Rome.

REFLECTION: Philip wished his children to serve God, like the first Christians, in gladness of heart. He said this was the true filial spirit; this expands the soul, giving it liberty and perfection in action, power over temptations, and fuller aid to perseverance.

WORD OF THE DAY

NUNC PRO TUNC. Now for then. Intending some future effect while performing a present action. This applies especially to the administration of the sacraments, whose effects take place over a lifetime, as in baptism; or at the hour of death, as in the anointing of the sick; or with varying graces to meet different needs, as in matrimony.

Modern Catholic Dictionary, Fr. John Hardon SJ (Get the real one at Eternal Life — don’t accept an abridged or edited version of this masterpiece!)

May, Month of the Immaculate Heart

Maria Magnificata. Short Meditations for May, the Month on Our Lady’s Life. 26th Day — Mary sees Jesus laid in the Sepulcher.

This article, MAY 26, 2024 – TRINITY SUNDAY – ST. PHILIP NERI. & ST. AUGUSTINE, APOSTLE OF ENGLAND. is a post from The Bellarmine Forum.
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