POPE URGES FAMILIES TO REFLECT THE LIFE OF THE HOLY TRINITY

(June 12, 2006): Pope Benedict XVI, on Trinity Sunday, exhorted all families to reflect the "community of love and life" of the Most Holy Trinity. Before praying the weekly Sunday Angelus at midday with thousands of faithful gathered in St. Peter's Square, the Pope reflected on the "ineffable mystery of God one and triune." The Holy Father said the family is analogous to the Trinity and "is called to be a community of love and life, in which differences must come together to become a 'parable of communion.'" Guided by the Holy Spirit, believers can know "the intimacy of God himself, discovering that he is not infinite solitude, but communion of light and love, life given and received in an eternal dialogue between the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit -- lover, beloved and love," the Pontiff said, quoting St. Augustine. Recalling the promise of Jesus -- "If a man loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him" (John 14:23) -- the Pope said that to encounter Christ and enter into friendship with him means to receive "the very Trinitarian communion in one's own soul." "For him who has faith, the whole universe speaks of God one and triune," the Holy Father said. "All beings are ordered according to a harmonic dynamism, which we can analogically call 'love.' But only in the human person, free and rational, this dynamism becomes spiritual, a responsible love, as response to God and one's neighbour in a sincere gift of self." And it is "in this love" that "the human being finds his truth and happiness," the Pontiff said.
After reciting the Angelus prayer, the Pope invited all in Rome "to take part in great numbers" in the Corpus Christi procession this week. The liturgical ceremonies surrounding Thursday's feast of the Body of Christ express "the faith and love of the Christian community for its Lord present in the Eucharist," the Pope said. The Pope who is the bishop of Rome will celebrate an evening Mass of the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, in the Basilica of St. John Lateran, the cathedral of the bishop of Rome. After mass there will be a solemn procession with the blessed sacrament from the Basilica of St. John Lateran to St. Mary Major's Square, where the Pope will impart the Eucharistic blessing.
The Vicariate of Rome announced that for two days preceding the celebration, 40 uninterrupted hours of Eucharistic adoration will be held in the Basilica of St. Mary Major