May 31, 2026 ~ The Most Holy Trinity ~ Year A
Spiritual Reflection
May 31, 2026 ~ The Most Holy Trinity ~ Year A (PDF)
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God
and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you. 2 Cor 13:13
In a surprising and, at the same time, overwhelming volume, Doctor Balthazar Stähelin, a German psychiatrist, affirms: “One must associate psychotherapy and the revelation of Christian faith because the spirit of Christ is in everyone’s psyche.” It is not an insignificant person who says this, but a medical psychiatrist and consultant in psychosomatic medicine at the medical polyclinic of the University of Zurich:
In our times, the first question is formulated this way: Is the revelation of the Trinity that reaches each human individual authentic and real? My personal response as a therapist is a firm yes.
The basic idea and the centerpiece of my therapy is to reconnect the link between the temporal and the spiritual, between temporal reality and the spirit of the triune God of Christians or, during therapy, to at least reinforce their capacity to believe it.
The break between the human being and God, from which comes anxiety and illness, must be abolished. The human being was created and endowed with a psychosomatic disposition to receive God, to carry him, and to respond to his love.
Today, most of us will say that there is a need to learn to pray again. For myself, as a therapist and psychiatrist for more than thirty years, I am not afraid to affirm that prayer remains the most important task to save humanity. We need to let ourselves be loved and embraced in faith, we need to surrender and love in the context of this presence in us that is the Trinity.
And, in a conference given about health, Doctor Stähelin said:
The end of our millennium is characterized by an increase of trouble and psychic illnesses because materialism has invalidated the universal conception, accepted up to now, of the presence of a supernatural God working in each individual.
It is why we must, in work and leisure, strive to recover the triune God as a fundamental value. In order to find and deepen one’s faith, we must learn to pray an hour a day, month after month, for all of our life. He proposes four basic principles of psychosomatic therapy to find peace and interior serenity:
Every night, before falling asleep, read for a half-hour a few pages from the Bible or some spiritual reading and try to harmonize the reading with one’s own life.
Rise early in the morning, start with listening to some classical or religious music, and dedicate a half-hour to bodily relaxation through exercise (bicycling, gymnastics, jogging, etc.).
After physical exercise, abandon oneself in silence, entering one’s heart and the prayer of the heart in the most total physical or psychic inactivity, a time of personal or mental prayer.
Finally, during the day, try entering into one’s heart, interiorize and live the Divine Presence in one’s soul.
And Doctor Stähelin observes that, after a while, sometimes a dramatic transformation can occur in terms of serenity and deep peace. The person is no longer the same and radiates kindness and love.
André Daigneault, The Long Journey toward Serenity, pp. 167-169
References from the Catechism of the Catholic Church
1024 This perfect life with the Most Holy Trinity - this communion of life and love with the Trinity, with the Virgin Mary, the angels and all the blessed - is called "heaven." Heaven is the ultimate end and fulfillment of the deepest human longings, the state of supreme, definitive happiness.
1266 The Most Holy Trinity gives the baptized sanctifying grace, the grace of justification: - enabling them to believe in God, to hope in him, and to love him through the theological virtues; - giving them the power to live and act under the prompting of the Holy Spirit through the gifts of the Holy Spirit; - allowing them to grow in goodness through the moral virtues. Thus the whole organism of the Christian's supernatural life has its roots in Baptism.
Questions for Reflection
1. What does the sign of the cross mean to me regarding the mysteries of the Blessed Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – when I am sorely experiencing my woundedness and failure?
2. When, how often, do I make the Sign of the Cross as a path to welcoming the Holy Trinity – with Jesus’ redeeming love – into all areas of my life?
3. How can our Blessed Mother help me to make a determined effort to be more conscious of the presence of the Trinity in all aspects of my daily life?
Prayer after Sharing
Thank you, God, for allowing me to see the truth about my weaknesses and how it calls upon the abyss of your merciful Love.
