Sorry for the delay in getting this out. We launched a new site called Divine Office at http://DivineOffice.org that contains audio Liturgy of the Hours. We hope you like it!

And this good news isn’t a matter of private redemption. Rather, something for all humanity, once for all. This reality contributes to the Church’s insistence that liturgical prayer is not private because it is always a celebration of the church. It is the whole Body of Christ who prays each time any of us does. This is especially true of Mass, all of the sacraments, and all liturgical prayer.

While personal and private prayer is a necessary aspect of all authentic Christian life, the individual Christian’s participation in the public prayer of the community is even more important. The public prayer of the church is powerful precisely in the reality that the people gathered for prayer (liturgy) are not the only ones present. In any liturgical prayer, the whole Mystical Body of Christ is present as well as all the choirs of angels. The church at prayer –liturgy, in a word, is indeed a celebration of the whole Heavenly Jerusalem!

The mystery of Christ is so unfathomably rich, that it cannot be exhausted in any single liturgical tradition. Even though the liturgy we pray around the world is one and the same, it is always set in a cultural context. In this way Christ reaches out to all people, while maintaining unity in love and charity. We are not isolated or alone, but united in love in the liturgy, always and everywhere!

Liturgy is a primary place where we humans meet God the Creator, we experience in Christ the love of God reveled, and we are given the Spirit of God’s love in which to live eternally. While liturgy is a foretaste of encounter with God –holy communion, we will only truly begin to understand the significance of the liturgy when we are participating in the heavenly liturgy –an experience that will bring us true joy and fulfillment.

This Blessed Trinity is not illogical, nor contradictory, unreasonable or oppositional to belief in one God. It is a mystery of depth, not incomprehensibility. Our faith convinces us that the Trinity of God the Father who made us out of love, and God the Son who came among us to save us out of love, and God the Holy Spirit who infuses us with love and who sustains us in the Church will be revealed to us at the very hour we are welcomed into Heaven. This everlasting dwelling place, the Kingdom of the Blessed Trinity, is our true home.

Our faith, as Christ so often emphasized, is of central importance to our lives. Our faith gives us the strongest, most certain assurance that the world of the supernatural is not an empty dream. Faith allows us to respond to God’s invitation to friendship. Faith allows us to be wrapped up in God’s arms, as it were, to allow ourselves to be loved by the God who lives among us and wants us close to the divine heart and live in the divine company.

Trinity faith is the story of tremendous, powerful, and life-changing love. In it, we are baptized and the promise of life is established. In it the words and deeds of God’s plan of loving goodness towards us is carried out in a three-fold manner: creating, redeeming, and sanctifying us. Just as in any relationship, we come to know another and ourselves more in actions than simply in words. So it is with God. God’s actions in word and deed tell us about God. In these actions three characteristics become more and more evident: unity, distinction and relationship.

Ever deepening understanding of the Trinity means paying attention to the action of the Trinity in our lives; being aware and appreciative of just how the divine family of love accompanies us and invites us to holy communion. Then our faith makes all the difference in how we live and move and have our being. It allows us to express our faith: belief in one God, and what God reveals to us; belief in Jesus Christ, God’s Word made flesh, the one who dwells among us; and belief in the Holy Spirit in whom we find strength, courage and the insight of faith. In Trinity faith we find our true home.