Homily of H.E. Mons. Claudio Gatti of June 3, 2007

1st reading: Prov 8:22-31; Psalm 8; 2nd reading: Rom 5:1-5; Gospel 16:12-15

We welcome sister rain, as St. Francis would have called it, even if it is a little noisy. Today, feast of the Holy Trinity, I invite you not to chase after theological speculations and not to ask questions that we do not know how to answer, but to immerse our gaze in the Trinitarian mystery, to taste and contemplate it with a spirit of faith, love and total abandonment to God.

By its nature, the Trinitarian mystery is incomprehensible: man is too limited with respect to God to understand life or existence. So let us place ourselves before God, One and Triune, to worship, contemplate and pray to him. I ask you to do this only.

God is a father and He invited and taught us, when we turn to him, to emphasize His paternity with the name of Dad; it is an affectionate term, which brings us much closer than the noun of Father, where reverence, respect and detachment are contained. The term "Dad" instead, makes the filial relationship shine, makes us understand the closeness of God to man, the desire of God to become part of the life of each of his children.

God showed in so many ways and Paul teaches us: "In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe" (Heb 1:1-2).

God is a Dad and wants us to go to him and understand, as far as possible, the mystery, in order to taste and live it. He is the greatest protagonist in the Church history and has made interventions so that his children could better understand this reality.

We remember that John, in the prologue of his Gospel, says: "No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known" (John 1:18). With this expression we want to highlight that man, as long as he lives on Earth, in no way can see God, so God shows through mediations. In fact, in the Old Testament the Holy Spirit showed in the form of a burning bush, a cloud or a dove. God continued to show in the New Testament and Daddy God showed to Marisa through a flower or a star.

Instead, when the whole Holy Trinity, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit showed to Marisa, it was revealed in the form of the person of Christ. Today during the apparition you listened to the Mother of the Eucharist talking about the three Jesus and those who recently attended this place probably wondered what this expression meant. The first time I attended a manifestation of the Holy Trinity, I listened carefully to Marisa’s report. First a divine person appeared under the guise of Jesus and Marisa had the intuition that He was God the Father; soon after, from the Father, a second Jesus came out, the same as the first, but distinct because he had the stigmata. This is a way to make equality and diversity understood. Finally, another Jesus came out, God the Holy Spirit who had the appearance of Jesus but holding a dove to indicate both equality with the Father and the Son, but also to indicate distinction.

More than this, man cannot perceive or understand, but we must live this mystery and we are called to have a relationship with the First Person, the Second Person and the Third Person of the Most Holy Trinity.

Over the centuries a conception of God has been handed down, unfortunately still common nowadays, as a distant being, detached from us, sometimes severe and even inflexible. Instead, in this thaumaturgic place God was showing with such exciting and moving paternity that encompasses and infinitely surpasses that of all men in the whole human history. God wants us to live the relationship with Him not in fear or in terror, but with a love that must be confidential and free, in such a way that by turning to Daddy God we are what we are and we really say what we have in our hearts and souls by showing that freedom enjoyed by children and not servants.

What relationship can we have with the second person? We can invoke Jesus: God the Brother, because, even if He is God, He is, in common with us, son of God. Jesus has the divine nature, He is omnipotent and He has all the attributes of divinity, but He has, in common with us, the filial relationship towards God the Father. Jesus is His son according to nature, but equal to the Father and therefore He is God and before Him every knee must bend. But He, by His free choice, raised us to the dignity of sons, as John reminds us; for this, we are really sons of God and therefore sons of the Father and brothers of Christ. So we have a relationship with Jesus where we see Him as the firstborn, the elder brother who is helping and supporting us, taking us away from evil and immersing us in the light and in the leading and sanctifying action of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is the host of our soul, He is the friend, the spouse of our soul, He is the one who gives us the gifts for which we can progressively increase the likeness towards God. This similarity begins at the moment of baptism and improves, increases and progresses as we receive the other sacraments. He increases, within us, the splendor and presence of the sanctifying grace. The more we cherish in our soul the grace, the more we have gifts from God and the more the Father sees in us the face of the Son and loves us with a unique love, unrepeatable and distinct for every man.

God does not love us in a generic way, in a universal way, but in a personal way. The Lord knows every man and His thought, His action, His power coexist simultaneously for each of his children and makes no difference. God loves every man in a personal and different way. He fully loves each of us, relates to and meets our needs, necessities and diversity of each man and each being.

This is why today, on the recurrence of the feast of the Holy Trinity, I invite you to have an attitude of contemplation, as the Mother of the Eucharist did more than ten years ago, when the Holy Trinity showed. She said: "Children, I will not be coming for a few days because I wish you not to get detached from the contemplation of the mystery of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit". Our Lady, the Mother of God has taken a step backward, so we could immerse in the mystery of the Trinitarian relationship and in such a way that nothing and no one, even Our lady, would distract us or create even a minimal obstacle to our journey towards God. Here is Mary’s motherly function, she never draws attention to herself, but leads, by the hand, every child towards God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.

Let us invoke daddy God, God the Brother, God the Friend and Spouse of our soul. The Lord is not a stranger to our life, but it is us who, unfortunately, detach from Him. We have not yet properly understood that the stronger the relationship with God, the more qualified, stronger and binding is the relationship with the people of our family, the circle of relatives, the group of friends and acquaintances. If we want to give stability, unity, solidarity to our family, we must increasingly intensify our union with God, so as to be able to limit misunderstandings, conflicts and struggles, and enhance the joy of being together.

The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit do not need us, because they have been alone since eternity, but we cannot understand this reality. The creation of angels, men and natural realities has a beginning, while God has always been there. We cannot think of an eternity that sees only the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, it escapes us and, in fact, we find it difficult to keep the thought of it, but the love of God is so uncontainable and powerful that He wanted to pour it out of Himself by creating angels and men. Since God is love, He needs, He wants to love, so He wanted to go beyond the divine reality to the point of creating men. In this way God wanted to expand His bursting love in a powerful and wonderful way even outside of Himself, pouring it out on other beings.

We meet God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit in the Eucharistic celebration and we pass from a Trinitarian mystery to a Eucharistic mystery. In the Eucharist there are present not only the Christ, but also the Father and the Holy Spirit, because where the Son is, there are also the Father and the Holy Spirit. At the time of Communion, each of us becomes a living tabernacle, moreover, during those minutes, when the Eucharistic species are present within us, we also have the Heaven within ourselves. Whoever has Communion and receives God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, should be the object of reverence and respect from the others who do not receive it, because at that moment he has the Heaven within him. The heaven is not a place but a condition: to be before God, in His presence; therefore when we receive the Eucharist, we have the anticipation of Heaven within us, we live in advance what we will live in Heaven. When we will be in Heaven, we will enjoy the beatific vision of God, instead on Earth we are limited to enjoy His real presence in the Eucharist. For this reason we suffer, God and Our Lady suffer when man receives the Eucharist unworthily and in sin or worse, when the Eucharist is made the object of contempt, disrespect and is offended in so many ways. All this is diabolical, but we are called to repair evil and to live in total and complete goodness, and all this for the glory of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.