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God is not individual,
but community.
God is love,
which is relationship;
God is the Loving
and the Beloved.
Source of All Being,
God is Eternal Mystery.
Living Word,
God is Loving Presence.
Spirit of Life,
God is Unfolding.
-- Steve Garnaas-Holmes,
Unfolding Light
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Today we celebrate Trinity Sunday - the Divine Mystery of "three Persons in one God". Many theologians have written on the doctrine of the Holy Trinity trying to explain our understanding of God, how God relates to us and how we relate to God. As a relational entity, originally explained as Father, Son and Holy Ghost, God is now becoming known as Intelligence, Love, and Wisdom; Lover, Beloved and Love Between Them. Any writing however that tries to explain who, what, where, when and how of God is reaching with highly formative yet educated guesses to make sense of the unknowable and unnamable.
John O'Donohue, poet and storyteller, looks at the mystery of the Trinity through poetic images - the flow of a river, a dream of the divine, dance, music, between-ness. He speaks of God as the "secret music of the heart and the universe ... the primal music and dance of all that is. Once you get a taste of God, nothing else tastes the same. That's what it's about - coming fully alive to the dream of the Divine within you."
Richard Rohr puts it this way, "If we want to go to the mature, mystical, and non-dual levels of spirituality, we must first deal with the often faulty, inadequate, and even toxic images of God that most people are dealing with before they have authentic God experience. Trinity reveals that God is the Divine Flow under, around, and through all things-much more a verb than a noun; relationship itself rather than an old man sitting on a throne."
Let us embrace this Divine Flow, this Trinity-experience connecting and empowering us to live fully in God's unfolding love story through, with and in all of creation. As a centering prayer, I offer this reflection on Rublev's Holy Trinity (above picture) by Steve Garnaas-Holmes, Methodist pastor.
Mother, Son and Holy Spirit
you gaze at each other
with such tender love
Feminine grace
strength of resolve
gentle welcome
Not creating right now nor saving
being here together
a sabbath moment of rest in the day
The chalice of your laps
the oneness of your three
you are all there is
The space enwombs you
the empty place among you
opens to me
This love
this beauty
this being here
I am the fourth
I enter
I become one of you
God is mystery and the Trinity is also mystery. As such, we must let go of thoughts and beliefs about Trinity and have a "God experience" to immerse oneself in the relational dance of Love (God), Love in Action (Jesus, the Christ) and the Truth of Love (Holy Spirit).
Blessings of the Holy Trinity/Holy Mystery,
Rev Rosa
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SUNDAY LITURGY VIRTUALLY from the comfort of your home at 10:00am EDT |
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ALL ARE WELCOME
WOULD LOVE FOR YOU TO JOIN US
ZOOM LINK BELOW
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Solemnity of the Holy Trinity
May 30, 2021
Click here for Holy Spirit's Liturgy prayer guide
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Rev Rick Klaich, OSB has been a member of the Holy Spirit family for the past 7 years, serving the community as associate priest in various liturgical, educational, sacramental and pastoral ways. More than this though, Rick has been a dear and loving friend and brother to each of us. With bittersweet tears and grateful hearts, we now bless him and celebrate his next endeavor, as he follows the call of God to invest his time, gifts and energy into developing the formation programs for the Benedictine's of Holy Wisdom, ECC of which he is a solemnly professed member. We will miss him deeply in the daily life of Holy Spirit Community, but fret we won't, because Rick is nearby and promises to visit and preside at Liturgy as needed, answer "yes" to backyard BBQ invites and still meetup with Rosa for marathon conversations at Starbucks!
Join Rick this Sunday as he leads us in prayer for Trinity Sunday ... how appropriate to be celebrating the loving relationship of God on this day!
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PREPARE YOUR PERSONAL ALTAR |
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Although we are not gathering together at the same table, we are a Eucharistic people, and as such, we invite you to create a sacred space for yourself and family exactly where you are.
Prepare your ''altar in the world'' by placing a favorite cloth or fabric down where you will have your bit of bread, cracker, grape juice or wine.
Light a candle, include a holy card or inspirational quote, add a
comfort stone or spiritual figurine or momento.
We gather together as one Body of Christ,
enfolded in God’s love, and call upon the Holy
Spirit to bless our food and drink
which we are to receive.
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ZOOM MEETING LINK FOR
Holy Spirit LITURGY
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Meditations on the Mystery of the Trinity
by Fr. Richard Rohr, Franciscan priest, adapted from his talk on The Shape of God: Deepening the Mystery of the Trinity
First: Reality is Radically Relational
One reason so many theologians are interested in the Trinity now is that we're finding both physics (especially quantum physics) and cosmology are at a level of development where human science, our understanding of the atom and our understanding of galaxies, is affirming and confirming our use of the old Trinitarian language-but with a whole new level of appreciation. Reality is radically relational, and the power is in the relationships themselves! No good Christians would have denied the Trinitarian Mystery, but until our generation none were prepared to see that the shape of God is the shape of the whole universe!
Great science, which we once considered an "enemy" of religion, is now helping us see that we're standing in the middle of awesome Mystery, and the only response before that Mystery is immense humility. Astrophysicists are much more comfortable with darkness, emptiness, non-explainability (dark matter, black holes), and living with hypotheses than most Christians I know. Who could have imagined this?
Second: The Delight of Three
Our Franciscan Saint Bonaventure, who wrote a lot about the Trinity, was influenced by a lesser-known figure called Richard of Saint Victor. Richard said, "For God to be good, God can be one. For God to be loving, God has to be two because love is always a relationship." But his real breakthrough was saying that "For God to be supreme joy and happiness, God has to be three." Lovers do not know full happiness until they both delight in the same thing, like new parents with the ecstasy of their first child.
When I was first becoming "known," people wanted to get close to me and be my friend or have a special relationship with me. I asked myself how I would choose between all these friends and I realized that the people I really found joy in were not always people who loved me nearly as much as people who loved what I loved. That helped me understand what I think Richard of St. Victor was trying to teach. The Holy Spirit is the shared love of the Father and the Son, and shared love is always happiness and joy. The Holy Spirit is whatever the Father and the Son are excited about; She is that excitement-about everything in creation!
Third: A Participatory VerbIn our attempts to explain the Trinitarian Mystery in the past we overemphasized the individual qualities of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but not so much the relationships between them. That is where all the power is! That is where all the meaning is!
The Mystery of God as Trinity invites us into a dynamism, a flow, a relationship, a waterwheel of love. The Mystery says God is a verb much more than a noun. God as Trinity invites us into a participatory experience. Some of our Christian mystics went so far as to say that all of creation is being taken back into this flow of eternal life, almost as if we are a "Fourth Person" of the Eternal Flow of God or, as Jesus put it, "so that where I am you also may be" (John 14:3).
Fourth: Interbeing: The Weakness of God
Paul says, "God's weakness is stronger than human strength" (1 Corinthians 1:25). That awesome line gives us a key into the Mystery of Trinity. I would describe human strength as self-sufficiency or autonomy. God's weakness I would describe as Interbeing.
Human strength admires holding on. The Mystery of the Trinity is about each One letting go into the Other. Human strength admires personal independence. God's Mystery is total mutual dependence. We like control. God loves vulnerability. We admire needing no one. The Trinity is total intercommunion with all things and all Being. We are practiced at hiding and protecting ourselves. God seems to be in some kind of total disclosure for the sake of the other.
Our strength, we think, is in asserting and protecting our boundaries. God is into dissolving boundaries between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, yet finding them in that very outpouring! Take the rest of your life to begin to unpackage such a total turnaround of Reality.
Fifth: Boundless Boundary: A Waterwheel of LoveA Threefold God totally lets go of any boundaries for the sake of the Other, and then receives them back from Another. It is a nonstop waterwheel of Love. Each accepts that He is fully accepted by the Other, and then passes on that total acceptance. Thus "God is Love." It's the same spiritual journey for all of us, and it takes most of our life to accept that we are accepted-and to accept everyone else. Most can't do this easily because internally there is so much self-accusation (self-flagellation in many cases). Most are so convinced that they are not the body of Christ, that they are unworthy, that we are not in radical union with God.
The good news is that the question of union has already been resolved once and for all. We cannot create our union with God from our side. It is objectively already given to us by the Holy Spirit who dwells within us (Romans 8:9-and all over the place!). Once we know we are that grounded, founded, and home free, we can also stop defending ourselves and move beyond our self-protectiveness, too.
Sixth: Just As I-AM-ness, Without One Plea
Niels Bohr, the Danish physicist who was a major contributor to quantum physics and nuclear fission, said the universe is "not only stranger than we think, but stranger than we can think." Our supposed logic has to break down before we can comprehend the nature of the universe and the bare beginnings of the nature of God.
I think the doctrine of the Trinity is saying the same thing. There is something that can only be known experientially, and that is why we teach contemplative prayer and quiet. Of all the religious rituals and practices I know of, nothing will lead us to that place of nakedness and vulnerability more than forms of solitude and silence, where our ego identity falls away, where our explanations don't mean anything, where our superiority doesn't matter and we have to sit there in our naked "who-ness." If God wants to get through to us, and the Trinity experience wants to come alive in us, that's when God has the best chance. God is not only stranger than we think, but stranger than the logical mind can think. Perhaps much of the weakness of the first 2000 years of reflection on the Trinity, and many of our doctrines and dogmas, is that we've tried to do it with a logical mind instead of with prayer.
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SOCIAL JUSTICE MINISTRY
Working for a just society is an active
expression of living compassion.
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Celebrate LGBTQ+ Pride Month at Newton Pride Flag Raising Ceremony
on Tuesday, June 1 at 6:00 p.m. at City Hall.
We will be honoring LGBTQ+ healthcare workers from Newton-Wellesley Hospital and the cofounders of Sunbow Zine (an amazing virtual platform that brings together art, writing, climate justice, culture and identity in a space by and for young women and LGBTQ+ artists).
(The photo is from the 2019 pre-pandemic Pride ceremony.)
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Are you seeking a spiritual community to grow and deepen your faith with in Christ?
WE SEE THE FACE OF GOD IN YOU
AND HONOR THE DIVINE LIGHT
SHINING THROUGH YOU
Contact our pastor and schedule
a time to visit by phone or video call
ALL ARE WELCOME
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Holy Spirit Catholic Community ECC
Rev. Rosa M. Buffone, Pastor
617-256-6308
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The Sacraments of Marriage, Reconciliation and Anointing, are available upon request.
Contact us about Funerals and grave side services.
Baptism preparation is required for parents when children to be baptized are below age seven; for those over age seven, our community supports the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults.
Our priests are happy to meet with you individually, and confidentially, to discuss any spiritual or pastoral concerns you may have. Due to Covid-19, following is precautions is required and in-person visits will be considered on an individual basis.
Pic below, Rev Rick Klaich, OSB praying with the Labyrinth on the grounds of our sister ECC parish, Mary Magdalene Church, in Rochester, NY during a visit a few years back.
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Holy Spirit Catholic Community is a member parish of Ecumenical Catholic Communion, ECC.
"We serve the poor, the outcast, the sick, the disabled, the old, the young, the old and the imprisoned. We offer a refuge in Christ for those who suffer prejudice because of race, color, culture, philosophy, gender, sexual orientation, or educational deprivation. We do as Christ commanded, “Love one another as I have loved you.”
We profess our faith in Christ in the living Catholic Tradition handed to us from the Apostles through many generations. And we stand open to a dialogue with those of other religious identities and faith traditions. " ECC Constitution Preamble
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