Some years it’s difficult to transition from Easter to ordinary time. Our hearts get so used to celebrating, that it’s hard for them to slow down the pace and find excitement in normalcy. It’s nice, then, that the Church gives us some feast days after Pentecost, so we can ease our way back into ordinary liturgies with ordinary vestments and ordinary altar flowers.
We are blessed to celebrate one of those feast days today—Holy Trinity Sunday. Blessed John Paul II explained its significance during his Angelus for the solemnity in 2003:
This Sunday which follows Pentecost we celebrate the Solemnity of the Blessed Trinity. The Triune nature of God is the principal mystery of the Catholic faith. With it, we come to the end of the journey of revelation which Jesus fulfilled through his Incarnation, Passion, Death and Resurrection. From the summit of the "holy mountain" which is Christ, we contemplate the first and last horizon of the universe and of history: the Love of God, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
God is not solitude, but perfect communion. From God being communion derives the vocation of all humanity to form the one great family in which the various races and cultures meet one another and are reciprocally enriched (cf. Acts 17: 26).
Today we celebrate this “perfect communion,” this union of the Trinity which is ceaselessly praised in our liturgy and in our prayers. When we make the sign of the Cross, when we repeat the Glory Be, and when we profess the Apostles’ Creed—we glorify the Trinity, the central mystery of the Catholic faith. As Blessed John Paul II once exclaimed:
Finally the Immaculate Virgin, preserved free from all stain of original sin, when the course of her earthly life was finished, was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory, and exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things, so that she might be the more fully conformed to her Son, the Lord of lords and conqueror of sin and death (CCC, 966).
What should we envision when we think of Mary, “Queen over all things?” One might look to the book of Revelation for help: “And a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars” (12:1). Mary said “yes” to the will of God, and for her part in the history of salvation she was fully honored and glorified in heaven. She became our Queen, our Mother in Heaven, our Guardian in all things, and our Star of the New Evangelization.
While meditating on the crowning of Our Lady Queen of Heaven, say one Our Father, 10 Hail Mary’s, and a Glory Be.
It is the end of Mary’s month of May, and we have now come to the end of our Rosary. Conclude by reciting the Hail Holy Queen and by making a Sign of the Cross:
Hail, Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, our life, our sweetness, and our hope. To you we cry, poor banished children of Eve. To you we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears. Turn then, O most gracious advocate, your eyes of mercy toward us, and after this our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of your womb, Jesus. O clement! O loving! O sweet Virgin Mary!
Pray for us, O Holy Mother of God. That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
