AKA: The Blessed Trinity, The Most Holy Trinity, 
         God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are the Three Divine Persons of the Blessed Trinity.

Feast Date:  The Sunday After the Feast of Pentecost
Readings for the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (paragraph 234 and following) teaches,

The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of Christian faith and life. It is the mystery of God in Himself. ... The whole history of salvation is identical with the history of the way and the means by which the one true God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, reveals himself to men “and reconciles and unites with himself those who turn away from sin.”

The Trinity is One. We do not confess three Gods, but one God in three persons...

The divine persons are really distinct from one another. “God is one but not solitary.” ”Father”, “Son”, “Holy Spirit” are not simply names designating modalities of the divine being, for they are really distinct from one another...

Theology of the Trinity

Fulton Sheen on the Trinty

Prayers:

The Sign of the Cross

"In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen."

The Sign of the Cross is a profession of faith—faith in the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, faith in the Incarnation, and in our Redemption on the Cross. When used while blessing oneself with Holy Water, it recalls our baptism into Christ and the Indwelling of the Trinity within us. It is also a powerful sacramental that protects against the Evil One, and evil in general.

The Glory Be

Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son,
and to the Holy Spirit.
As it was in the beginning,
is now,
and ever shall be,
world without end.

Amen.

Litany to the Most Holy Trinity
 

Feast Day: October 4
Born: 1181 in Italy
Death: 1226
Patron Saint of: of Animals, Merchants & Ecology
Vocation: Deacon
Founder of the Franciscan Order

Received the Stigmata (the wounds of Christ)
Francis trusted in God’s providence and gave away everything he owned to follow Christ.

Francis was given the name Giovanni after John the Baptist by his mother. When his father returned from a trip, he renamed his son Francesco. Francis enjoyed a very rich easy life growing up because of his father's wealth and the permissiveness of the times. From the beginning everyone loved Francis. He was constantly happy, charming, and a born leader.

As he grew up, Francis became the leader of a crowd of young people who spent their nights in wild parties. Francis himself said, "I lived in sin" during that time. Despite his dreaming, Francis was good at business. But Francis wanted more than wealth. But not holiness!

Francis wanted to be a noble, a knight. He got his first chance and was taken prisoner only to be ransomed a year later. After joining the Fourth Crusade, Francis had a dream in which God told him he had it all wrong and told him to return home. After returning and facing ridicule Francis started to spend more time in prayer. But there was a business to run.

One day while riding through the countryside, Francis, the man who loved beauty, who was so picky about food, who hated deformity, came face to face with a leper. Repelled by the appearance and the smell of the leper, Francis nevertheless jumped down from his horse and kissed the hand of the leper. When his kiss of peace was returned, Francis was filled with joy. As he rode off, he turned around for a last wave, and saw that the leper had disappeared. He always looked upon it as a test from God...that he had passed.

His search for conversion led him to the ancient church at San Damiano. While he was praying there, he heard Christ on the crucifix speak to him, "Francis, repair my church." Francis assumed this meant church with a small c -- the crumbling building he was in. Acting again in his impetuous way, he took fabric from his father's shop and sold it to get money to repair the church. His father saw this as an act of theft. Pietro dragged Francis before the bishop and in front of the whole town demanded that Francis return the money and renounce all rights as his heir.

The bishop was very kind to Francis; he told him to return the money and said God would provide. That was all Francis needed to hear. He not only gave back the money but stripped off all his clothes -- the clothes his father had given him -- until he was wearing only a hair shirt. In front of the crowd that had gathered he said, "Pietro Bernardone is no longer my father. From now on I can say with complete freedom, 'Our Father who art in heaven.'" Wearing nothing but castoff rags, he went off into the freezing woods -- singing. And when robbers beat him later and took his clothes, he climbed out of the ditch and went off singing again. From then on Francis had nothing...and everything.

Francis rebuilt the San Damiano church with his own hands, not realizing that it was the Church with a capital C that God wanted repaired. He preached about returning to God and obedience to the Church.

Francis, now with companions, created a rule based on three Gospel passages. Jesus’ command to the rich young man to sell all his good and give to the poor, the order to the apostles to take nothing on their journey, and the demand to take up the cross daily. He thought of what he was doing as expressing God's brotherhood. His companions came from all walks of life, from fields and towns, nobility and common people, universities, the Church, and the merchant class. Francis practiced true equality by showing honor, respect, and love to every person whether they were beggar or pope.

Prayers of St. Francis

Francis' brotherhood included all of God's creation. Much has been written about Francis' love of nature but his relationship was deeper than that. We call someone a lover of nature if they spend their free time in the woods or admire its beauty. But Francis really felt that nature, all God's creations, were part of his brotherhood. The sparrow was as much his brother as the pope.

In one famous story, Francis preached to hundreds of birds about being thankful to God for their wonderful clothes, for their independence, and for God's care. The story tells us the birds stood still as he walked among him, only flying off when he said they could leave.

Another famous story involves a wolf that had been eating human beings. Francis intervened when the town wanted to kill the wolf and talked the wolf into never killing again. The wolf became a pet of the townspeople who made sure that he always had plenty to eat.

Following the Gospel literally, Francis and his companions went out to preach two by two. At first, listeners were understandably hostile to these men in rags trying to talk about God's love. People even ran from them for fear they'd catch this strange madness! And they were right. Because soon these same people noticed that these barefoot beggars wearing sacks seemed filled with constant joy. They celebrated life. And people had to ask themselves: Could one own nothing and be happy? Soon those who had met them with mud and rocks, greeted them with bells and smiles.

Francis was a man of action. His simplicity of life extended to ideas and deeds. If there was a simple way, no matter how impossible it seemed, Francis would take it. So when Francis wanted approval for his brotherhood, he went straight to Rome to see Pope Innocent III. You can imagine what the pope thought when this beggar approached him! As a matter of fact he threw Francis out. But when he had a dream that this tiny man in rags held up the tilting Lateran basilica, he quickly called Francis back and gave him permission to preach.

When Francis returned to Italy, he came back to a brotherhood that had grown to 5000 in ten years. Pressure came from outside to control this great movement, to make them conform to the standards of others.

Francis' final years were filled with suffering as well as humiliation. Praying to share in Christ's passion he had a vision received the stigmata, the marks of the nails and the lance wound that Christ suffered, in his own body.

Francis died on October 4, 1226 at the age of 45. Francis is considered the founder of all Franciscan orders and the patron saint of ecologists and merchants.

Biography of St. Francis

Once the top 5 saints are selected there will be information posted here about the saint. 

Once the top 5 saints are selected there will be information posted here about the saint. 

Once the top 5 saints are selected there will be information posted here about the saint.