The Trinity is a bit like a family

This monthly column is called “Family Friendly”, and I try to link faith and life, Church life and home life, the liturgical calendar with the regular national calendar.

This seems a fairly easy and obvious thing to do, and it makes a lot of sense. But I wonder how many parishes included recent national public holidays such as Freedom Day and Workers’ Day in their liturgy in some way and, from our perspective, in some family context.

How were Mothers’ Day and Pentecost linked, if at all, this month? Gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit are manifested and certainly required to perform a motherly role affectively.

But another opportunity, if not such an auspicious one, arises this week: Trinity Sunday, the Sunday after Pentecost when we commemorate the three persons of the Blessed Trinity, the first and most perfect community of love.

We worship and honour the Trinity, and at the same time consider our own calling to emulate the relationship of this community of love as a model for our own families.

In some lessons I was asked to develop for a national religious education programme some years ago, I used the example of a family to try (in an obviously still imperfect way) to explain the mystery of the Trinity. Members of a family are individuals with particular functions, yet together they are one family. One can take it further and say that the love of the spouses results in a child.

Some may well criticise such statements; that family life is broken, even non-existent. But that is not true. Family life does exist, albeit in changed and changing forms. Somehow, mysteriously, even in imperfect families, love does exists. It is necessary that positive images of family life must still be presented.

Someone has to parent our children—the family life theme for May 2008 “Me and Parenthood” is an invitation and a challenge to reflect as child, parent, or grandparent on how we are doing in our parenting and responding to our parents.

In my parenting role am I authoritarian (laying down the law), laissez-faire (overly free and flexible), or authoritative (firm but kind and understanding)? In my relationship with my parents am I obedient, demanding, cheeky, friendly and kind? The in-between generation of adults are faced with children and ageing parents, so they can look both ways.

Let the celebration of Trinity Sunday, while honouring the Trinity, also be an occasion for an examination of conscience and a celebration of the good and positive aspects of family life, accompanied by a firm purpose of amendment to take a step or two towards building a closer, more united community of love at home. Let us get into the habit of using every available opportunity for building up family life, and thereby also society, by linking our everyday life experiences of work and play, school and sports, crime and punishment too, to an experience of God and God’s love.

May of course is Mary’s month too. Over the years I have been promoting a prayer campaign, a prayer-chain really, a Continuous Movement of Prayer for Marriage and Family Life built around the rosary and to be prayed at home. It can be done in various ways, for example a parish or group could begin by inviting different families to pray on different days of the month or week. A booklet with readings is available too, but for more information on this campaign, please contact me at

We know the slogan “A family that prays together, stays together”, but I believe that we need to add something: “A family that prays and plays together, stays together.”