June 2, 2026
Summary of the Morrow’s Meditation
We will meditate to-morrow upon the worship due to the Most Holy Trinity, and we will consider two acts of this worship. The first is a frequent thought, full of reverence and of love, directed towards the three divine Persons; the second is the practice of fervent prayers in their honor. We will then make the resolution: 1st, often, with reverence and love, to recall to ourselves the remembrance of the three divine Persons, and never to permit ourselves in their presence to think of or do anything which is not holy; 2d, to offer, as our homage to these three adorable Persons, all our actions and all our troubles, willing only to live, to act, and to suffer for them. Our spiritual nosegay shall be the aspiration of St. Francis Xavier, which we will frequently repeat to ourselves day and night: “O Most Holy Trinity!”
Meditation for the Morning
Let us raise ourselves above all earthly thoughts; let us penetrate, with pious trembling, into the very depths of God; into that unity of nature and that trinity of persons which the angels never weary of adoring and of blessing in their sacred canticle: “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Hosts!” Let us repeat that canticle of heaven with the reverence of the seraphim, who veil their faces with their wings, because they dare not fix their eyes on so lofty a majesty; and, as nothing created can approach to what the adorable Trinity merits, let us offer to it the beatitude which it enjoys in itself, in beholding its greatness to be perfectly known by the Father, praised not less perfectly by the Son, and worthily loved by the Holy Ghost.
FIRST POINT
We Owe it to the three Divine Persons to Think of them Frequently with Reverence and Love
Let us suppose that there is a man whom several great personages, moved by a wholly gratuitous and completely disinterested affection, would do the distinguished honor of accompanying everywhere and always. If this man were wanting in deference to such honorable companions; if he did not show them either respect or love; if he did not even pay any attention to them, or thought of them carelessly and with indifference, would he not be guilty of a strange want of reverence? Now, the Christian is much more reprehensible who does not frequently recall to remembrance, with reverence and love, the three divine Persons. He knows that these three adorable Persons are with him night and day, abroad and at home; that always and everywhere they keep him company; how guilty, then, would he be if he took no account of their august presence, if he hardly ever spoke to them or gave them any evidence of his reverence and love for them? If he had but a little faith, it would be the delight of his heart to look upon himself as being in the society of the good Father who created him, who preserves him and folds him to His bosom with more than maternal love (Acts xvii. 28); in the society of the beloved Son who redeemed him at the cost of so much suffering, who never ceases to pray for him in heaven and in the tabernacles, in union with the Holy Spirit, who has such good will towards him, and who occupies Himself ceaselessly with his salvation. Such society as this formed the happiness of the anchorites and the hermits. Living apart from the world, they never felt themselves less alone than when they were alone; and far from this seeming isolation giving them either ennui or sadness, they found a paradise in the most savage desert, and heaven in the meanest cell, because, always remembering that they were in the society of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, they knew how to speak to them, to hearken to them, to enjoy them, and to love them. It was the same with St. Francis Xavier; in the midst of his immense labors, the remembrance of the Trinity was his strength, his hope, and his consolation; it was everything to his heart; and the cry of love: O Most Holy Trinity! was so often upon his lips, that even the heathen acquired the habit of pronouncing it, because, they said, they were words uttered by the man of God. Oh, if, like these saints, we never forget that a Christian is never alone, that he has always with him four persons, the three Persons of the Most Holy Trinity and the person of his angel guardian, how greatly would the recollection console us in our abandonments and our troubles, how it would strengthen us in our weaknesses, revive us in our languors, and render us victorious in temptations! The respect which is inseparable from it would maintain us in modesty, moderation, the horror of evil, and attention to the good performance of all things; it would enable us to suffer all things patiently, to do everything prudently. Let us ask pardon of the three holy Persons for having so greatly forgotten them, and so often thought of them without reverence and love.
SECOND POINT
We Owe to the three Divine Persons the Homage of Frequent and Fervent Prayer
The founder of St. Sulpice, M. Olier, understood this duty so well, that he ordered his priests to begin their morning and evening prayers with these words: “Blessed be now and forever throughout all ages the holy and indivisible Trinity,” as well as every day to adore, to thank, and to invoke the three divine Persons; to offer their deeds to the Father, their thoughts and their words to the Son, the affections of their heart to the Holy Ghost; to renounce all confidence in themselves, in order to trust in the strength of the Father; their own intelligence, in order to unite it to the wisdom of the Son; their inclinations, in order to enter into the desires after holiness with which the Divine Spirit inspires docile hearts; lastly, to give themselves to the Father, that He might be the perfection of their souls; to the Son, that He might be their light; to the Holy Spirit, that He might direct all their movements. In the same way, Holy Church begins, continues, and terminates the divine sacrifice by an invocation to the august Trinity, to which alone she makes profession to offer it. “Receive this offering, O Holy Trinity; accept, O Holy Trinity, the homage of my dependence” (Prayer Placeat at Mass). She has nothing more frequently on her lips than those beautiful words: “Glory be to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.” She repeats them in a thousand different ways, at the end of all her hymns, of all her psalms, of all her canticles; and she grants an indulgence of a hundred days for each time that they are uttered piously, with a plenary indulgence for each month that they have been recited three times a day. It is saying sufficiently to all Christian hearts how great is her desire that they should often address to the Most Holy Trinity this exclamation of love and of praise, this sigh of a zeal which burns to see the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost known, blessed, glorified, and served by the whole earth; this canticle of heaven and of eternity which St. John heard in his sublime ecstasy: “To Him that sitteth upon the Throne, and to the Lamb, benediction, honor, glory, and power forever and ever” (Apoc. v. 13). Oh, what indocile disciples has the Church found in us! Let us sigh over the past and resolve to do better for the future.
Resolutions and spiritual nosegay as above.