Former Superior General Robert Maloney offered the following insights on Vincent on the Trinity and Corpus Christi. As we approach a “trinity” of celebrations which includes Father’s Day in the USA we offer the following as the topic for reflection in the series Saturday Study Hall.

In an article “As friends who love one another deeply – reflections on community living yesterday and today” he writes…

• “He often spoke of the mystery of the Trinity to the Vincentians and Daughters.

During a meeting of the General Council of the Daughters on June 19, 1647, he told them that they should “be the image of the Most Holy Trinity, so as to have but one heart and one spirit even though they are many persons.”

He reminded the members of the Congregation of the Mission that the bull establishing the Company binds them “to honor in a special way the Most Holy Trinity.”

In a conference given on May 23, 1659, he urged his confreres: “Let us be well-grounded in this spirit if we wish to have in ourselves the image of the adorable Trinity, if we wish to have a holy relationship with the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit. What is it that produces unity and intimacy in God if not the equality and the distinctiveness of the three persons? And what produces their mutual love if not their perfect resemblance?”

• Vincent called the missionaries to be conscious that they are one body. As the parts of a body are bound tightly together, so also must union reign among the members of the Company.

In a conference about a paragraph in the Common Rules concerning charity, he exclaimed: “What! To be a Christian and to see our brother afflicted without crying with him, without being sick with him! That is to be without charity. It is to be a mere caricature of a Christian, without humanity, worse than a brute beast!”

In the same paragraph of the Common Rules which he was commenting on, he offered a list of highly evangelical means for growing in the charity that would bind the members of the Company together as one body:

1) to try to treat others as we might reasonably expect to be treated by them;

2) to agree withothers, and to accept everything in the Lord;

3) to put up with one another without grumbling;

4) to weep with those who weep;

5) to rejoice with those who rejoice;

6) to yield precedence to one another;

7) to be kind and helpful to one another in all sincerity;

8) finally, to be all things to all people so that we may win everyone for Christ.

From a longer article by Father Robert Maloney on living community http://tinyurl.com/ohhtje8