Pope Francis speaks to the crowd on June 12, 2022 gathered in St. Peter’s Square in Rome for the recitation of the Angelus on Trinity Sunday. / Vatican Media
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jun 12, 2022 / 07:47 am (CNA).
Speaking on Trinity Sunday, Pope Francis said that celebrating the Trinity is “not so much a theological exercise, but a revolution in our way of life.”
“God, in whom each person lives for the other in a continual relationship, in continual rapport, not for himself, provokes us to live with others and for others,” he said.
In his address prior to the recitation of the Angelus, Pope Francis reflected on Sunday’s Gospel reading, from the 16th chapter of John. In the reading, Jesus is speaking to the apostles about the coming of the Holy Spirit. “I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now. But when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth,” the Lord says.
Jesus tells the apostles, “Everything that the Father has is mine; for this reason I told you that he will take from what is mine and declare it to you.”
“We notice that the Holy Spirit speaks, but not of himself: He announces Jesus and reveals the Father,” Pope Francis said to thousands of pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square June 12.
“And we also notice that the Father, who possesses everything because he is the origin of all things, gives to the Son everything he possesses: He keeps nothing for himself and he gives himself fully to the Son,” he said.
Pope Francis added that “the Holy Spirit speaks not of himself; he speaks about Jesus, he speaks about others. And the Father does not give himself, he gives the Son. It is open generosity, one open to the other.”
The Holy Father then invited the crowd to do a self-examination.
“When we speak, we always want to say something good about ourselves, and often, we only speak about ourselves and what we do,” he said. “How often!”
Giving examples, Pope Francis said that people often say “I have done this and that” and “I had this problem.”
“We always speak like this,” he said.
He added, “How different this is from the Holy Spirit, who speaks by announcing others, and the Father the Son! And, how jealous we are of what we possess. How hard it is for us to share what we possess with others, even those who lack the basic necessities! It is easy to talk about it, but difficult to practice it.”
He encouraged the crowd to question whether “our life reflects the God we believe in.”
Leading the crowd in self-examination, the pope asked, “do I, who profess faith in God the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, truly believe that I need others in order to live, I need to give myself to others, I need to serve others? Do I affirm this in words, or do I affirm it with my life?”
The one, triune God must be manifested in deeds, not words, he said.
“God, who is the author of life, is transmitted not so much through books as through witness of life,” Pope Francis said. “He, who, as the evangelist John writes, ‘is love’ (1 Jn 4:16), reveals himself through love.”
Pope Francis encouraged the crowd to think about “good, generous, gentle” people they have met and reflect on their way of thinking and their actions.
By doing this, “we can have a small reflection of God-Love,” he said. “And what does it mean to love? Not only to wish them well and to be good to them, but first and foremost, at the root, to welcome others, to be open to others, to make room for others, to make space (for) others. This is what it means to love, at the root.”
To better understand the Trinity, the Holy Father encouraged the crowd to consider each name of the three persons of the Trinity, “which we pronounce every time we make the sign of the cross: Each name contains the presence of the other.”
“The Father, for example, would not be such without the Son; likewise, the Son cannot be considered alone, but always as the Son of the Father. And the Holy Spirit, in turn, is the Spirit of the Father and the Son,” he said.
“In short,” Pope Francis added, “the Trinity teaches us that one can never be without the other. We are not islands, we are in the world to live in God’s image: open, in need of others, and in need of helping others.”
After praying the Angelus at noon, Pope Francis called for a round of applause for the recent beatification of Sister Paschalis Jahn and nine sister martyrs of the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Elizabeth, who were killed at the end of World War II by Red Army soldiers.
The nuns were beatified Saturday in Wroclaw, Poland.
Although the women knew the danger they were putting themselves in by attending to the sick and elderly, Pope Francis said, they did it anyway because of their Christian faith.
“May their example of faith to Christ help us all, especially Christians who are persecuted in various parts of the world, to bear witness to the Gospel courageously,” he said of the new blessed.
Pope Francis also spoke about the “great regret” he felt for having to postpone his scheduled trip in early July to the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan due to issues he is having with his leg.
“I truly feel great sorrow for having had to postpone this trip, which means so much to me,” he said. “I apologize for this. Let us pray together that, with the help of God and medical attention, I will be able to be with you as soon as possible. Let us be hopeful!”
Speaking of World Day against Child Labor, Pope Francis called for all to work to “eliminate this scourge “so that no child is deprived of his or her fundamental rights and forced or coerced to work.”
The Holy Father also said that the Ukrainian people remain “vivid in my heart,” speaking of the Russian-Ukrainian war.
“Let the passage of time not temper our grief and concern for that suffering population,” he said. “Please, let us not grow accustomed to this tragic situation! Let us always keep it in our hearts. Let us pray and strive for peace.”
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Pope Leo and everyone else just need to relax. It was an accident. If you doubt that, you’re an anti-Semite.
If you doubt such sarcasm is antisemitic, you’re antisemitic.
WOW, 🤯 that was blunt!!! It’s possible to love the Jews but condemn the State of Israel! And many Jews do it!
Tony W. Arn’t you open to a dissenting opinion?
Because we know that shrapnel never causes collateral damage…
I can assure you that I am not an antisemite and having a missile strike a Catholic church full of innocent people is not acceptable. What kind of people have we become when we can shrug off this type of collateral damage as “an accident.”
Shrapnel does not a missile make.
How many churches were damaged by the allies during WW2? War is heck.
So Netanyahu called Pope Leo, eh?
Would it be too much trouble to let us know what Netanyahu said to him?
Yes, bineyman, it’s reported that a call was made but then tells us nothing of substance. A waste of precious ink.
I wonder why Leo XIV doesn’t ask Netanyahu to send his foreign minister to Castelgondolfo for a meeting with the leader of Hamas to end the ighting? Leo should invite the leader of Hamas.
“Fragments of a projectile”? Looks like a direct hit. The Church is completely destroyed. Well they’ve been itching to get rid of it since the war started. Never mind, There’s probably somebody sheltering there who might say something rude about Tel Aviv in the future. Prevention is better than cure, eh? Come to think of it, there’s probably people in Tierra del Fuego or Timbuctu who might also say rude things. Perhaps they need a few bombs too. Words are so hard to bear. Oh dear.
Yes, it was a direct hit from an explosive (i.e. shrapnel-filled) tank shell.
Israel is employing its usual diabolical sophistry (“the unaimed shrapnel did it!”) to excuse itself.
Diabolical?
If the problem that developed in Nigeria is because of a direct deliberate withholding of intelligence by Israelis, noticing it as it becomes apparent would not be from “hating Israel” or from being a “hate Israel firster”. If the US also has been withholding it doesn’t mean reacting against that is being hateful of the US.
I am skeptical of Israel’s explanation of the attack being an “accident”. They gave the same excuse, when they deliberately and intentionally attacked the USS Liberty and killed our sailors.
Why does the American media give so little coverage to these all
too frequent “mistakes” by the Israeli military forces”?
The Judophobia is strong in this comment section.
Pius XII did say we were all spiritual Semites, but he rejected Zionism, and Tel Aviv’s jurisdiction over Jerusalem, which remain the Church’s positions to this day. The Church began diplomatic relations with Tel Aviv a few decades ago (as did the Palestinians), but only as recognition of a political situation on the ground, not as a Jewish state per se. Catholics (unlike certain evangelical groups) ought to keep to the Church’s official, constant position on this issue; it’s based on faith, not politics. The Church has supported a two state solution (outside Jerusalem) ever since it became an option. The continuation of the war in Gaza for years after Gaza’s foray outside itself was defeated, has only one purpose – to make a two state solution impossible. But a just war does not entitle even an aggrieved party to annihilate another nation by ethnic cleansing.
But the main question the Christian West should be asking is: what about our sacred places? What about the Christians in Palestine? That should be the focus of our tears and anger.
I do not particularly care to embrace the political positions of any pontiff, as they are far outside the realm of his infallibility and are frequently outside the realm of good sense.
(Incidentally, you are thinking of Pius XI, not XII, as the pontiff of “spiritually we are all Semites”.)
In a word, “the Church’s” (really “the Vatican’s”) position on Zionism and the two-state solution and jurisdiction over Jerusalem is not authoritative for Catholics and enjoys all the sense of the Vatican’s position on the United Nations. A two-state solution was feasible eighty years ago and was rejected by the Arabs. The idea that it will work now is pure geopolitical folly. Israel has a better historical claim to Judea and Samaria than it does to the Mediterranean coast, and any Palestinian state would unquestionably be either a state sponsor of terror or ineffective in stopping it.
You parrot the common blood libel of “ethnic cleansing” (and it is blood libel), blissfully ignorant of the requirements of urban warfare and apparently of the large Arab Israeli population.
The war in Gaza is to destroy one of the most notorious terror organizations in the world. It is every bit as jest as the Allied crusade against Nazism or Japanese militarism.
It is furthermore fallacious to claim that the war in Gaza has or will make a two-state solution impossible. Hamas made it impossible by showing what a Palestinian state would do.
Thank you Spiritual Semite for stating the facts of the matter with brevity and clarity. Hamas, by their shocking actions over many years now have clearly demonstrated with hideous clarity that the ‘2 state solution’ is an absolute impossibility. A lot of contributors to this thread need to ask themselves why it is that to this day no Arab state has taken in a single refugee from Gaza.
Good post, Mr. Cervantes, an excellent summary.
There is no ethnic cleansing taking place, and it’s inappropriate to make that false accusation. The Palestinians have consistently rejected a two state solution, so their situation is largely their own doing.
It almost never fails.
Let’s not call it a phobia, but what it is: hatred.
It’s a disorder I believe. Scapegoats provide a rationalization for our failures. It’s easier to blame others for life’s disappointments and our own weaknesses.
I had a family member who ended up like that. Everything wrong with the world became the fault of Jews and immigrants. It’s sad.
I really hope the pope will also urge the release of Israeli civilian hostages.
I stand corrected. Saying a two-state solution is impossible because of the regime in the smaller part of Palestine, Gaza, is Luke saying that a German star was forever impossible because of the Nazi regime. Hamas was defeated is conventional warfare a few weeks into the conflict. That it is still able to conduct guerilla warfare is no teaspn the ethnically cleanse Gaza. If you affirm this, then you affirm that the English would have been right to ethnically cleanse the Irish, who continued for many generations to conduct rather deadly guerilla campaigns against the occupation and its local allies. These campaigns repeatedly killed far more than the 400 civilians and 300 soldiers Hamas did three years ago, and which you seem to consider a kind of Year Zero.
The Catholic Church’s position on Zionism and Zionism’s jurisdiction over Jerusalem isn’t politics, as you claim. Catholicism can’t identify the OT people with a Mitteleuropan political movement based on secular nationalism. Nor would it identify the OT state with contemporary Orthodox Judaism. The only claim Tel Aviv can have is its might is right notion, which the Vatican accommodates with its support for a two-state solution. This solution is politics, yes, and leaves untouched the Church’s position on Zionism and jurisdiction over Jerusalem.
Your second paragraph is risible bunk. The Church has no authority whatever to declaim on a geopolitical solution to the Zionist question. If anything, she can only affirm the special relationship of the Jewish nation to its land.
Your first paragraph repeats again the malicious lie that Israel is interested in “ethnically cleansing” Gaza, then compounds this with the military nonsense that counterinsurgency must under my view necessitate or justify such “cleansing.” This is preposterous. Military operations can and do, however, often necessitate urban warfare to uproot an entrenched enemy. You ought to familiarize yourself with military history.
“Catholicism can’t identify the OT people with a Mitteleuropan political movement based on secular nationalism. Nor would it identify the OT state with contemporary Orthodox Judaism. ”
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I don’t think Israelis are over-concerned about what some Catholics may believe about this. Attempting to assimilate & placate the prevailing class is what doomed many German Jews. It was a fool’s errand. Jews have always been the perfect scapegoat & Israel has been the only place they can feel relatively safe. Even there they still have to watch their backs.
The discussion with the other writer only concerned Catholic views on the issue. We are allowed to have views and discuss them? Thanks there.
The Vatican is a sovereign state which recognise other states if it chooses.The Church can and must try to intervene in secular affairs when higher principles are seriously violated by civil societies. It always has.
Netanyahoo’s Deight at Trump’s proposal to deport Gaza’s population only confirmed what his policies on the ground are doing. Do you agree that the removal of Gaza’s population to other countries would be immoral?
I can’t tell who your question is addressed to Mr Cervantes, but I personally believe Gaza should be completely evacuated. It’s unsafe for human habitation. To keep civilians there in harm’s way is immoral. But every civilian death scores Hamas propaganda points so they have no incentive to encourage the people to leave.
It’s unlikely any people would consent to being ethnically cleansed. The bravery of the Palestinians is incredible.
Jews have survived a very long history of attempts to exterminate and “ethnically cleanse ” them. They’ve know the reality of those words. Not the political invention.
Gaza needs to be evacuated ASAP and the hostages released. But Hamas has no incentive to do that because their sources of revenue would dry up.
The incredibly brave Palestinians of Gaza don’t need to be ethnically cleansed.
To call the Palestinians “brave” is, in the main, a despicable misuse of the word. The true bravery lies with the Israeli people and their righteous war.
The voluntary emigration of Palestinians from Gaza is certainly not immoral and would be excellent politics.
If you seriously believe their exit would be voluntary, there’s little point discussing the issue. But do you believe the removal of Gaza’s population to other countries would be moral? Last chance to give a straight answer.