“I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of truth. . . You know him, because he remains with you, and will be in you.” John 14: 16-17 We are well into the Easter Season, that segment of the Liturgical Year that moves us from one hard-to-grasp mystery, the Resurrection, to two other hard-to-grasp mysteries, the Holy Spirit and the Trinity, commemorated in the back to back feasts of Pentecost and Trinity Sunday.  Mysteries, that they all are. “Realities”, difficult, seemingly impossible, to understand, but letting our minds wrestle with them is really the main purpose of our lives. For what is my life but a time to come to know and love God? With each passing day as we get closer to our final earthly destination – heaven’s door – we should be comprehending more fully these mysteries of our Catholic faith. And whom will we meet there at heaven’s door? A stranger? A God who will be something of a stranger because we didn’t use much of our lifetime to get to know God and to grow to love God? Think about it.  How do you get to know and love someone? . . . your spouse? . . . your child? . . . your best friend? A natural process it is for us to learn to love another:  be with the person, explore the person, get to know their mystery, their truth, their meaning. Perhaps God made us that way, hoping we would use those same innate gifts to discover and fall in love with God, not forcing Himself upon us, but hoping we would find Him/Her. Doesn’t that seem to be the sole reason for our existence: to make that discovery, to come to know God while we are living, so that our hearts and the whole world are filled with God’s love? And, as Jesus tells us in John’s Gospel, the Father has given us an Advocate to be with us always, to remain with us, to be in us. THE FULLNESS OF CATHOLIC BELIEF: GOD AND US – ALL OF US AND ALL OF CREATION I think that Catholicism, boiled down to its essence, is three simple but profound statements: • God is Love • God is Trinity – a communion of persons • We – you, me, each and every one of us – participate in God – now, at this very moment as you read this. In some ways, this is a mystery.  But, in the deepest way, it is as firm as the holy ground on which we stand and as all-consuming as the greatest love we could ever imagine.  Sheer gift from God to us – affirmed by Christ, “I will not leave you orphans.” – the essence and the joy of our every day reality. Think of it, especially during these remaining days between now and Pentecost and Trinity Sunday. Sister Loretta