“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
