A Dare

I dare you: spend five minutes before the Blessed Sacrament–in silence–and I bet you won't walk away the same.  Just as you can't eat just one chip, so you can't take just one look.  Often converts to our Catholic faith say they were converted by the Real Presence in the Eucharist, meaning, they knew God was truly present.  They somehow wander into a church and fall in love with God in the Eucharist.  Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament lead to my "yes" to my vocation as a religious.  The Catholic belief in the Real Presence is also the most controversial of all doctrines of the Catholic faith.  When a Catholic Church is desecrated it is done by harming the Blessed Sacrament for they know He is our real Treasure.  This Sunday we celebrate "Corpus Christi" which is a feast celebrating Christ's Real Presence with us in the Eucharist; His promise at Ascension to never leave us.  So take my dare, or are you too scared it will change you?

Communion in the Trinity

God's very being is love. By sending his only Son and the Spirit of Love in the fullness of time, God has revealed his innermost secret: God himself is an eternal exchange of love, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and he has destined us to share in that exchange. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, [CCC], par. 221)

The mystery of the Trinity is the central tenant of our faith, but trying to wrap your mind around how God can be one-in-three and three-in-one is a good way to get a headache. 

We are made in the image and likeness of God, and we can get a small glimpse of the communion and unity that exists in the Godhead by observing human life.  The sacrament of marriage has an awesome power: two people become one.  In total love and self-giving to the the other, their love actually takes on flesh and becomes another person in the form of a child.  In a small way, family life mirrors the Trinity where the love and self-giving between the Father and the Son is so real as to become another Person, the Holy Spirit.

Religious are also called to incarnate the union in community that is the Holy Trinity.  Religious living together in community are bonded together in love and unity, a true family gathered together in the Lord's name.  Made up of individuals, the community has one heart and a common goal, to fulfill God's will as laid out for them in a particular charism.

In creating man and woman in his own image and likeness, God created them for communion. God the Creator, who revealed  himself as Love, as Trinity, as communion, called them to enter into intimate relationship with himself and into interpersonal communion, in the universal fraternity of all men and women.
This is our highest vocation: to enter into communion with God and with our brothers and sisters.
(Fraternal Life in Community, 9)

Come Holy Spirit

The Spirit is the source of holiness, a spiritual light, and he offers his own light to every mind to help it in its search for truth. By nature the Spirit is beyond the reach of our mind, but we can know him by his goodness. The power of the Spirit fills the whole universe, but he gives himself only to those who are worthy, acting in each according to the measure of his faith.

The Spirit raises our hearts to heaven, guides the steps of the weak, and brings to perfection those who are making progress.  He enlightens those who have been cleansed from every stain of sin and makes them spiritual by communion with himself.

Through the Spirit we become citizens of heaven, we are admitted to the company of the angels, we enter into eternal happiness, and abide in God. through the Spirit we acquire a likeness to God; indeed, we attain what is beyond our most sublime aspirations—we become God.

—From St. Basil the Great