Trinity Sunday (2026)

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

Today the Church celebrates the feast of the Blessed Trinity. It’s the ineffable mystery of God’s intimate life. It’s the central truth of our faith and the source of all gifts and graces. The Catechism of the Catholic Church places it at the top of the hierarchy of truths in which we are invited to believe. The liturgy of the Mass invites us to a loving union with each of the three divine persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This feast was established for the Latin Church by Pope John XXII to be celebrated on the Sunday after the coming of the Holy Spirit, which is the last of the mysteries of our salvation.

Today is a good day to say many times, savoring it, Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. There’s an ancient prayer to the Blessed Trinity called the Trisagium Angelicum, which has Tibi laus, tibi gloria, tibi gratiarum actio. To you be praise, to you be glory, to you be thanksgiving, world without end, O Blessed Trinity.

Having completed the commemoration of the mysteries of salvation, from Christ’s birth in Bethlehem to the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the liturgy now invites us to contemplate the central mystery of our faith, the Blessed Trinity. The mystery of God’s own inner life and the fountain of all gifts and graces.

In his infinitely wise providence, God gradually revealed to mankind his inmost being. That is, as he is in himself, and not just as the cause of created things. In the Old Testament he makes known above all his oneness, and his complete transcendence from the world as its creator and Lord. We learn that God, unlike the world, is uncreated. That he is not limited in space, he is immense. He is not limited in time, he is eternal. His power knows no limits, he is omnipotent.

The book of Deuteronomy says, “Know therefore this day, and lay it to your heart, that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other” (Deut. 4:39). The Old Testament proclaims above all the greatness of Yahweh, the one God, creator and Lord of the universe. But he is also revealed as the shepherd who seeks his flock, who looks after his own indulgently and tenderly, who forgives and forgets the frequent infidelities of the chosen people.

At the same time, we get glimpses of the paternity of God the Father, of the incarnation of God the Son, whose advent is foretold by the prophets, and of the action of the Holy Spirit, who vivifies all things. But it is Christ who reveals to us in all its fullness the inner workings of the Trinitarian mystery and calls us to participate in it.

We’re told in St. Matthew, “No one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Matt. 11:27). In St. John it is he who speaks to us of the coexistence of the Holy Spirit with the Father, and who sends him to the Church to sanctify it until the end of time. He it is who reveals to us the perfect oneness of the life of the three divine persons.

The mystery of the Trinity is the starting point of all revealed truth. The fountain from which proceeds supernatural life and the goal to which we are headed. We are children of the Father, brothers and co-heirs with the Son, and continually sanctified by the Holy Spirit. To make us ever more and more resemble Christ. Accordingly, we deepen in the understanding of our divine filiation and become living temples of the Blessed Trinity.

Since it is the central mystery of the Church’s faith, the Blessed Trinity is continually invoked in the liturgy. We were baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. In their name also are our sins forgiven. We begin and end many prayers by invoking the Father, through Jesus Christ, in the unity of the Holy Spirit. Often during the day, we say the prayer, Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.

“God is my Father,” we’re told in The Forge. “If you meditate on it, you will never let go of this consoling thought. Jesus is my dear friend, another thrilling discovery, who loves me with all the divine madness of his heart. The Holy Spirit is my consoler, who guides my every step along the road. Consider this often. You are God’s, and God is yours” (The Forge, 2).

The divine life in which we are called to participate is extraordinarily bounteous. The Father eternally engenders the Son, and the Father and the Son together breathe forth the Holy Spirit. This generation of the Son, and the spiration of the Holy Spirit is not something that took place at a particular moment in time and gave rise once and for all to the three divine persons. These processions, rather, as theologians call them, are eternal.

In the case of human generation, a father begets a son, but thereafter both father and son continue to exist independently of the act of begetting. Even if one of them later dies. The man who is father is not just father. Both before and after begetting he is man. In God, by contrast, the essence of the Father consists in giving life to the Son. This is what determines him as a divine person, really distinct from the others.

One author says, among human beings the son who is begotten has a separate existence from his father, but the essence of the only begotten Son of God consists precisely in being Son. It is through him, making ourselves like him by the constant impulse of the Holy Spirit, that we obtain and grow in the awareness of our divine filiation.

“For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of sonship. When we cry, ‘Abba, Father!’ it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God. And if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ” (Rom. 8:14–17).

Among men, paternity and filiation are circumstances that fall short of defining the subject completely. But in God, paternity, filiation, and spiration constitute the entire being of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. From the moment man is first called to participate in the divine life through the grace of baptism, he is destined to participate in it ever more and more. Along this path he must journey continually.

From the Holy Spirit we constantly receive impulses, motions, and inspirations to encourage us to travel faster along the way that leads to God, and to revolve in an ever tighter orbit around Our Lord. Our heart now needs to distinguish and adore each one of the divine persons. The soul is, as it were, making a discovery in the supernatural life. Like a little child opening his eyes to the world about him.

The soul spends time lovingly with the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and readily submits to the work of the life-giving Paraclete, who gives himself to us without the slightest merit on our part, bestowing on us his gifts and the supernatural virtues. “We have run like the deer, longing for flowing streams, thirsting, our lips parched and dry” (cf. Ps. 42:1–2). We want to drink at the source of living water. All day long, without doing anything strange, we move in this abundant, clear spring of fresh waters that leap up to eternal life.

“Words are not needed,” we’re told in Friends of God, “because the tongue cannot express this wonder. The intellect grows calm, one does not reason, one looks. And the soul breaks out once more into song. A new song, because it feels and knows it is under the loving gaze of God all day long” (Friends of God, 307).

The Blessed Trinity dwells in the Christian soul as in a temple. St. Paul explains that “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Rom. 5:5). There, in the inner recesses of the soul, says St. Catherine of Siena, we learn to be intimate with God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. “You, O Eternal Trinity, are a deep ocean, into which the more I penetrate, the more I discover. And the more I discover, the more I seek you.”

My God, Blessed Trinity. Draw from my poor being what most contributes to your glory, and do with me what you wish, both now and in eternity. May I no longer place between us any voluntary hindrance to your transforming action. Second by second, with a forever actual intention, I desire to offer you all that I am and all that I have. Make my poor life an intimate union with the Word incarnate, an unceasing sacrifice of glory to the Blessed Trinity.

My God, how I wish to glorify you. If only in exchange for my complete immolation or for any other condition, it were in my power to enkindle the hearts of all your creatures and the whole of creation in the flames of your love, how I would desire to do so. May at least my poor heart belong to you completely. May I keep nothing for myself nor for creatures. Not even a single heartbeat. May I have a burning love for all mankind. But only with you, through you, and for you.

I desire above all to love you with the heart of St. Joseph, with the immaculate heart of Mary, with the adorable heart of Jesus, and finally to submerge myself in that infinite ocean, that abyss of fire that consumes the Father and the Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit, and love you with your own infinite love.

O eternal Father, beginning and end of all things. Through the immaculate heart of Mary, I offer you Jesus your Word incarnate. And through him, with him, and in him, I want to repeat ceaselessly this cry that rises from the bottom of my soul: Father, glorify continually your Son, so that your Son may glorify you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, forever and ever.

O Jesus, who said, “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Matt. 11:27). Show us the Father, and we shall be satisfied.

Sister Elizabeth of the Trinity ends this prayer saying, “And you, O Spirit of love, teach us all things. And form Jesus with Mary in us until we become perfectly one in the bosom of the Father.”

Because of this great truth—we are children of God—we can spend our life giving thanks for this immense gift. We’re told in St. John, “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God; who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:12–13).

God the Father “destined us in love to be his sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will” (Eph. 1:5). God has made us his children. We will never completely understand nor value enough this incredible gift. Child of God! “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God. Beloved, we are God’s children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be” (1 John 3:1–2).

When we say, “I am a child of God,” we’re not using a metaphor or a pious phrase. We are children in the same way as human generation gives rise to fatherhood and sonship. Those who have been begotten by God are really his children. The Second Vatican Council states that this incomparable truth is carried out in baptism, in which, thanks to the passion and resurrection of Christ, there takes place a new birth into a new life, which did not previously exist. A new creature has emerged, by which the newly baptized person is called and really is a child of God.

The Council of Nicaea said divine sonship reaches its ultimate perfection in God the Son. Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, born of the Father before the beginning of time. Begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father. To highlight the essential difference between our sonship and the eternal sonship of the Son, ours is called adoptive.

Here below, the word adoption has a specific meaning. The new father has not given life to his son, although he sets out to educate him, supports him with his work, looks after his affairs, gives him his name, his rights of inheritance, and other privileges his natural children would have enjoyed. This might lead some people to have a somewhat confused idea about the true reality of our divine sonship. It must be understood that we are children of God, because God’s life is present in our souls in the state of grace.

It will help us in today’s prayer to consider that God is more our father than he whom in this life we call father, because he has given us our natural life. To refer to a Christian as a child of God is not a mere figure of speech, which brings to mind the fatherly protection or watchfulness that God exercises over him. Rather, it must be understood in the strictest sense, with the same meaning in which it is said that so-and-so is a son of such-and-such.

Through the act of conception, a new person comes into existence. Just as an animal gives birth to an animal of the same species, a human being gives birth to another human being, similar to the parents. Often enough there’s quite a similarity, and people are pleased to see that this or that child takes after his father, in his features, his behavior, his looks, his speech, and so on. Well, the Christian born of God is his son in the most real sense, so that he must be like his Father in heaven.

His condition as a son actually consists in his participation in the same nature as God. Here the words of St. Peter find their true meaning, “participants in the divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:4). Which is more than just an analogy, more than a likeness or a relationship. It implies, rather, an elevation and a transformation of human nature into a nature that is proper to a divine being.

There was a kid in a kindergarten school one time who was being prepared for First Holy Communion. The teacher was explaining the sacraments and explained how in baptism and in all the other sacraments we get grace and are lifted up onto a new supernatural level. That’s what grace does. Therefore we can lead a supernatural life. We’re called to lead a life on a whole new plane, with a supernatural goal.

The kid was amazed; he had never heard such wonderful things before. He had seen movies of Batman and Batwoman, and Spider-Man and Spider-Woman, and Superman and Superwoman. Now he hears that he is called to lead a supernatural life, that this business of baptism raises us up onto this new level. He decided that he should go home and baptize his pet dog, Rufus. He went home and got Rufus and brought him to the washroom, filled a cup with water, poured it over the head of Rufus, and said, “Now Rufus, I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Now Rufus, you should be able to perform a supernatural action, an action above your nature. Talk to me, Rufus. Talk to me.” The story ended with Rufus beginning to talk rather clumsily, saying, “You’ll have to be patient with me while I learn to talk, because this is a whole new ball game for me.”

The Christian enters into a higher supernatural world, which is above his original nature, the world of God. This sense of our divine filiation and being participants in the divine nature is something incredible, something huge. It guides our relationship with God, and also with others. The Second Vatican Council said, “The Son came, sent by the Father, who chose us in him before the foundation of the world and destined us to be adopted sons, for it pleased him to restore all things in himself.”

Let us turn to Our Lady, daughter of God the Father, mother of God the Son, spouse of God the Holy Spirit. Mary, may you take us by the hand and lead us to be better children of God each day of our life.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My immaculate Mother, St. Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

EW