‘Weekly Post. Anno Domini 2023 June 27

Beloved of the Lord:

Today is Tuesday, 27 June, in the year of our Lord 2023. The scheduled services are as-follows:

• Tuesday (today): 6:30 PM, Mass, monthly Parish Requiem.
• Wednesday: 12:10 PM, Mass, S. Irenaeus, Bishop & Martyr.
• Thursday: 6:30 PM, Sung Mass with Incense, Mass, SS. Peter & Paul, Martyrs; Soup & Study to follow.
• Friday: 9:00 AM, Mass, S. Paul, Apostle & Martyr, with Gregorian Canon.
  Immediately following, Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.
• Saturday: 5:00 PM, Mass, Precious Blood of our Lord.
• Sunday: 8:30 & 10:00 AM, Mass, Visitation of the BVM (Commem. Trinity IV).

A week from Tuesday will be the Fourth of July. The custom of the Regiment has been to walk in the parade, which begins at 10:00 AM. This usually ends by 10:30 or so, after which we return to the Parish, and say the Mass for the day, at 11:00. Insofar as I'm aware, Hilton Village is still on-track with their plans, which means that we will hold true to ours.

Thursday, the Feast of SS. Peter and Paul, marks the Twenty-first Anniversary of my ordination to the Priesthood. July Fifteenth will be the Eleventh Anniversary of my first Service at S. Matthew's; the 'Eighteenth will be the Twenty-fourth Anniversary of my Ordination to the Diaconate. Pepper joined my life in June of AD 2012, and the next month he and I began working at S. Matthew's. Time flows ever-more quickly....

If we were to try to choose the single-greatest mystery of the Christian Faith, that would almost certainly have to be the Most Holy Trinity. The 'Trinity is the source, the font, the focal-point, the first point, of all things, all creation, outside of the three Persons themselves, who are, as they have ever been defined by Holy Church, truly timeless. Even in that single aspect of time, there are multiple mysteries.

One sense in which this is commonly understood is that they ~ the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost ~ have neither beginning nor end. The Father has always been, and the Son was always with the Father, from the beginning, as was the Holy Ghost. A limited understanding of this can be gotten from looking at our own natures, as made by the Father, and the Son, without whom nothing that was made was made.

I have been with ~ inside, a part-of ~ every one of my ancestors that ever was, inasmuch as I am a product of the genetic material that was within them all, which was finally distilled into my being, my creation, as it were. Thus, as our Lord was always with (within) the Father, so also was I within my earthly father, and his before him, etc. Again, this is not a perfect metaphor, but it casts the question of the existence of the Son with the Father in a perhaps more comprehensible light.

Another sense of the timelessness of the Holy Trinity is that they are outside of time, in-terms-of the linear experience of it that we perceive. Our Father is at Creation, at the Fall of Angels, at the Fall of Man, at the End of Days, simultaneously. Our Saviour is at Creation, His earthly Birth, His earthly Death, His sitting in Judgement over all Creation, simultaneously. So it is for the Holy Ghost.

We now see that even in something as direct as we think time to be, the Most Holy Trinity is not only a mystery, but one that shall never be solved. In this life, we cannot. In the 'next, we will have better things to do. Welcome to Trinitytide! I remain

in His praise,

The Rev'd Canon. T. L. Crowder

Pastor, Saint Matthew's Parish