On Mondays, I’ll be sharing a quote from Christian history to help us learn and grow by engaging with those Christians who come before us as we sit at a soul table. In his Angelus Message, St. Peter’s Basilica, May 17, 1991, Pope John Paul II shares, ‘We are invited to meditate on the supreme reality of God to us by the Incarnate Word. Trusting in the divine word of Jesus, we believe in God the Father, who is absolute and eternal creative power; we believe in God the Son, the consubstantial Word of the Father, who by his incarnation in the womb of the Virgin Mary took on a soul and body like our own and died on the cross for the salvation of humanity; we believe in God the Holy Spirit, the uncreated Person who proceeds from the Father and the Son as their eternal love, the “Consoler” promised by Jesus to his pilgrim Church on earth.

‘O Most Holy Trinity, we thank you for this supreme and ineffable revelation! The mystery, however, remains unfathomable in itself and inaccessible: a mystery of love, a mystery of light, but also a mystery of infinite transcendence, “Truly you are a hidden God!” (Isa. 45:15). And so meditation and gratitude should always be accompanied by adoration; the latter in turn must be translated into a witness of fraternal communion which makes believers “one.” We all remember the prayer of Jesus: “As you, Father, are in me, and I in you; I pray that they may be one in us, that the world may believe that you sent me” (John 17:21).’

Image Credit: “Pope John Paul II.”