Day before:The Most Holy Trinity Solemnity
May 29th, 2010
“Holy Father, Holy Son, Holy Spirit, three we name thee;
while in essence only one undivided God we claim thee;
and adoring bend the knee, while we own the mystery.”
From the hymn: ‘Holy God, we praise thy name’
The Association of the Holy Family was founded in Bordeaux on Trinity Sunday, 1820, by a young priest, Pierre Bienvenu Noailles. It is appropriate that the ‘launch’ day for the revised version of our website is Trinity Sunday – an opportune time to re-visit the story of our beginnings. Crossing another threshold to tell our story once again in the context of a new moment in the history of our Holy Family Association can be a challenging moment.
The Founder loved to contemplate the three members of the Holy Family – Jesus, Mary and Joseph – as the ‘gentle image of the Trinity’. The Trinity, too, is the powerful symbol and expression of communion. Following the example of the early Christians who ‘had but one heart and one soul’, Fr. Noailles stressed the importance of ‘communion’ among all the members.
We live in a world created by God the Father, redeemed by the love of the Son, vivified by the love of the Spirit. At the beginning of every celebration of the Eucharist we are greeted in the name of the Trinity: “The grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.” All the great prayers of the Mass are prayed to the Father in the Spirit, through Christ…
The life of the Trinity is freely offered to all the baptised. All Christians are baptised ‘in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit’. We all need to rediscover Baptism, the foundation of the Christian life in Christ, communion with the Father through Christ in the Spirit. Baptism begins a lifetime journey of communion and discipleship. On the day of our Baptism we got everything we’re ever going to get – it’s the gateway to all the treasures God wants to give us through Jesus Christ, in the Church.
Prayer
“Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now and every shall be, world without end.” Amen
The prayer for each day has been prepared by various members of the Holy Family Association. All who visit our website are remembered in prayer. If you would like us to pray for a particular need, simply complete and submit the form on the right hand side of this page. You may wish to leave a comment in the space below.
Just a Thought
How the Holy Family prayer: A Reflection by Pope Benedict XVI
“I would like to invite you to reflect on the place of prayer in the life of the Holy Family of Nazareth. The home of Nazareth, in fact, is a school of prayer where we learn to listen, to ponder and to penetrate the profound meaning of the manifestation of the Son of God, drawing our example from Mary, Joseph and Jesus.
Pope Paul VI during his visit to Nazareth said “we come to understand the need for a spiritual discipline, if we wish to follow the teaching of the Gospel and become disciples of Christ.” And he added: “First, it teaches us silence. Oh! That there would be reborn in us the esteem for silence, that wonderful and indispensable atmosphere of the spirit: while we are deafened by so many noises, sounds and clamorous voices in the frantic and tumultuous times of modern life. Oh! Silence of Nazareth, teach us to be resolute in good thoughts, intent upon the interior life, ready to listen well to the secret inspirations of God and the exhortations of the true masters.”
We can glean several insights on the Holy Family’s prayer and relationship with God from the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ childhood. We may begin with the Presentation of Jesus in the temple. St. Luke tells us that Mary and Joseph, “when the time came for their purification according to the Law of Moses, brought the child up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord”(2:22). Like every observant Jewish family, Jesus’ parents go up to the temple to consecrate the firstborn son to God and to offer sacrifice. Moved by fidelity to the law’s prescriptions, they set off from Bethlehem and go up to Jerusalem with Jesus, who is now forty days old. Instead of a one-year-old lamb, they present the offering of simple families; that is two young pigeons. The Holy Family’s pilgrimage is one of faith, of the offering of gifts, a symbol of prayer, and of encounter with the Lord, whom Mary and Joseph already see in the son Jesus.”
