A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint John. Our lord said to his disciples, I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now. When he comes, however, being the spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth. He will not speak on his own, but will speak only what he hears and will announce to you the things that are to come. In doing this, he will give glory to me because he will have received from me what he will announce to you.
All that the father has belongs to me. That is why I said that while he will announce to you, he will have from me. And this is the gospel, the good news of the lord. Lord god, we worship you a trinity of persons but one eternal god. This is the prayer of the post communion of this mass on the feast of the blessed trinity.
One god and three persons. The name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen. My remarks will be briefer than usual this morning that is compared with Castro. And my senior Gato will have a few words to say on the cardinal's campaign in the pews.
Now the feast of the blessed trinity be brings to mind in a very forceful way exactly what the church wants it to do. That is to remind us of the blessed trinity. And as you all know, this is where we separate violently. In a way, at least from the from the perception of Jewish people and Muslims because they cannot reconcile the Christian doctrine of the trinity with the oneness of god. Now remember, their emphasis on the great truth that god is one, that's perfectly legitimate and cannot be exaggerated.
God is one. One. And yet, by revelation, that's all that's how we know it. We know that there's a trinity of nature in god. Three persons, one nature.
This is the philosophical language we've used to try to make make reasonable what up on the surface appears to be absurdity. It's the same problem with the personality and the natures of Christ, except it's a sort of reversed. Now when we think of the trinity as good, plain, god fearing, and god living Catholics, I think, at least, think of thinking of myself as I hope being one of them, is the sign of the cross. The sign of the cross. I made the mistake of opening up the New Catholic Encyclopedia, and as usual, nothing is recent.
I found, first of all, that the sign of the cross goes back at least to the second century. That's in the year January and so. That it has a long and extremely admirable history in the in Catholicism, in Christianity of the West, and of the East because our our Orthodox brethren make a great deal of the sign of the cross, indeed, more than we do. Now the point is I want to emphasize that the sign of the cross is a very old symbol as a matter of private devotion. It goes back at least to the second century.
And it and as a small sign, that is making a sign of the cross like that on your forehead or some part of the anatomy, that that became part of the devotion in the very early days of the church. And that the large sign of the cross, that comes in about the fourth century. Now that's pretty early. When you think that the cross was the gallows, the electric chair, the guillotine, It was not a very beautiful symbol to begin with. Crucifixion was terrible, and it was not only execution, but it was the most despised way of treating a human being.
Now the cross has become a terrific symbol in all of Christianity, all of it, in one way or the other. Now I'm talking about the sign of the cross. We begin our Christian life with it. We end with it. One of the first things happened when I was ordained.
I got my faculties from the Baltimore diocese, and the first one of the first things in there was that by the simple sign of the cross to a dying person, you can give a plenary indulgence if they have the necessary conditions, meaning sorrow for sin. And most people are very sorry for sin when they're dying. Believe me, that's not a problem. The sign of the cross means a great deal. I wanna emphasize, what it means has been has been and is very different.
It can signify all kinds of things. But my plea with you this morning is that when you make that sign of the cross, it has meaning. That it isn't this kind of a business or this. That it has meaning, that it's not an empty gesture, that you're doing some thinking up here about it. Not so long ago, I heard this, and that's all I can say.
I heard it. That in that in a certain monastery of monks, I think Cistercians, because they're the only ones who have this kind of time, because that's what they're doing in their monastery, worshiping god. That's their business, period. Anyway, that it takes them minutes to make the sign of the cross. Minutes.
Not just a minute, but minutes because they're thinking of what they're doing. I never come down 4495 going west, especially in the evening when it's getting a little dark. When I come up to that hill and feel I'm like I'm getting home when I see Holy Cross Hospital and that glowing cross on the side of the building facing 495 when you're going west. That's meaningful. That has meaning or should have.
We use the sign of the cross. All of us do. But do we think what we're doing, that our life began with the sign of the cross, that we live with Jesus at the sign of the cross, and that we die with the sign of the cross from his priests? That the cross means giving grace. It reminds us of the of of our redemption.
It reminds us of the trinity. It reminds us of forgiveness of sins, that we are sinners. It reminds us of both of those things, but above all, that we are saved. This is something we don't really realize, that we have a savior Jesus Christ who suffered and died for me, not because I was a saint, but because I was not a saint. And that goes for all of us.
This is this is a truth that we don't grasp. I wanna tell you that since I heard that about that monks in the monastery taking minutes to make the sign of the cross, I checked myself on this business because we make all kinds of signs of the cross when we're saying the divine office, during the mass, during our prayers. I never begin anything without the sign of the cross, especially when I go into swimming. That's one of my earliest recollections. So if you said, never go into the water without making the sign of the cross.
I've never failed to do it because I know I was not born to be a fish. And so that's my message. Very simple to you, good people. Okay. You see, the trouble with our Catholicism, it's not active enough in our daily lives.
It's not realistic enough. We get lost in as I've said many times, religion can be a great hindrance and obstacle to worship. We get lost in forms, in rituals, in formulas. We can become very thoughtless. And something which is very common like the sign of the cross can be commonplace ordinary, and we do it without a thought.
I've seen this plenty of times, and you too I've been guilty of it, But we shouldn't be guilty of it. We should recollect ourselves prayer before and after meals. Do we do that in our homes? I never will forget going up to New York just a long time ago, and I was the guest of a distinguished Irishman, a magnificent man in height and everything. He had that beautiful white hair with that very ruddy complexion of some Irish get as they get older.
He was a magnificent looking man, and he took us down to a very, very prestigious restaurant in Coney Island. And in the in that whole restaurant dining room, that man stood up and blessed the table with the sign of the cross. Boy, it was spectacular. I never have forgotten that. And so I asked you to make the sign of the cross a prayer.
Give it some thought. Give it some time. What are you doing with your hands when you go from your head to your breast and your shoulders? I don't care whether you go left to right or right to left. That means whether you're east or west.
Could care less. The point is make it a prayer. It's a magnificent gesture. It's a summation of the suma of Aquinas. In the name of the father, and of the son, and holy spirit.
Amen.