As she was dying, my late mother said to me: “Peter, son, I am going home.” On this Trinity Sunday, let’s not tax our minds to try and grasp (in vain!) the eternal Mystery of God but instead let’s allow our hearts to be drawn to understand God as our true and eternal home.

In the month of June, the Catholic soul is drawn to the beautiful devotion of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. I’d like to suggest that, on this Trinity Sunday, we are all gathering round, not so much the Heart as the Hearth, the “sacred hearth”, of our heavenly home. That’s what we are really doing at any Mass. Many of us will remember from our childhood, when central heating was not yet (except for those with the means), that you would gather around the hearth with your parents and siblings. The warmth of the fire and the warmth of the love of our loved ones created a deep sense of union and peace. You were secure because you were loved. A deep joy fed the soul. Your parents would share memories of their own childhood and talk of their own families; there would be moments of laughter and giggling and sometimes of tears and pain. There would be prayer and conversation about faith in God, the Mass and the sacraments; there would be gentle moments of teaching right and wrong. There would be song, poetry, family tradition and stories. Around the hearth, the bonds of family were beautifully and skilfully weaved together in the strength of love and deep trust.

The family hearth is a sacred space and a sacred time, grounded in the sacred bonds of marriage and family. It is quite simply the work of God, the Holy Trinity, and is the image of God’s own life. Jesus came to draw us into His own intimate union with the Father and sent us the Holy Spirit to make that possible for us. Around the sacred hearth of our heavenly home there is also our Mother. Jesus shares His Father and His Mother with us, His sisters and brothers. The burning fire around which we gather is the very love of God Himself, the Holy Spirit. There, too, are gathered all the just who have ever lived, including, we pray, our own loved ones and billions of others whom we shall one day meet and love with the very love of God. On this Day for Life, let’s remember, too, that around the hearth of God will be all the children miscarried, aborted, stillborn or dead in infancy. They are all united now around the throne, the hearth of God, loving us from above with the purest and strongest of loves, yearning for us more than we can imagine or understand.

The Trinity’s desire for every child it creates is life in abundance. Abundant life for an abundance of children. God doesn’t want the children He creates to resist His plan to create more of them, to limit their horizon to this earth and the fleeting values it espouses. Any child conceived is God’s, not ours, yet entrusted to us to bring them back to God. He certainly does not want his children to destroy one another in body or in spirit through violence and sin. He created us to live, not to kill and not to justify killing by mindlessly calling it a right, with no respect for the law of God or for the innate dignity of every human being. No human being is a “problem” to be eliminated but a child of God to be welcomed, protected, defended and accompanied until God takes them to Himself. Every human life is a sacred mystery in which the image and likeness of God is alive and to be revered. The multiple forms we witness in our times of deliberate suppression of individual human beings or entire communities cry out to God for vengeance. The even greater tragedy, as St. John Paul II taught, is the spiritual death of those who commit these crimes. Their innocent victims will be welcomed into the sacred hearth of God, but those who are guilty risk the loss of eternal life unless they repent of their sin and learn again to love as God loves.

When human beings reject or are indifferent to God, we lose sight of our own humanity, too. The two words “Our Father” tell us that we are all children of God, equal in dignity before Him and before each other. These two words, if prayed sincerely and believed in truth, should prevent all war, genocide and every other form of wilful murder of anyone at all. There can be no brotherhood or sisterhood of humanity without the fatherhood of God. There can only be the survival of the fittest and the domination of the weak by the strong. When the Trinity of Life, Love, Truth and Grace is denied, the fire in the human hearth and heart goes out. The world becomes a cold, cold place and love loses its authenticity and becomes conditional on selfish advantage.

That’s why the Holy Trinity needs you and I to be women and men of faith, hope and love. The Trinity needs our homes to become once again those flaming hearths of love, prayer, sharing and unconditional acceptance. God is not the enemy of our home life and its flourishing, but its author and protector. Let’s try and recreate, if we have lost it, our family hearth. Turn off the screens and mobile phones and just be there together in simple love and grateful acceptance. Talk to one another about life, love, problems, dreams and hopes. In a direct and straightforward way, bring the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit into your company. Calmly and lovingly ask Their presence to bless you with Their love and grace. Talk to one another about God, about your prayer or lack of it. If someone needs to cry or express difficult feelings, let them do so in the intimate and secure sanctuary of the hearth. The Lord knows every heart.

If we do this, there’s no question that our homes and families will grow in real happiness. Children don’t so much need things, experiences or activities. These have their place, but children need above all the presence of their parents, their love, their time. They want to be part of your memories and your hearts whether hurting or happy. There will be less temptation to seek intimacy, affection or help in problems from outside or from the doctor or therapist – or worse, from the false and easy consolations which the world offers but which end up enslaving people and destroying their hearts and minds as well as marriages and families. Health and wholeness of heart can be found in the hearth of the family especially if it is embedded in the sacred hearth of the Blessed Trinity.

“Peter, son, I am going home.” Let us all prepare together for our great day, whenever it is to be, by making our earthly homes hearths and havens of true love, prayer and joy. Then we will recognize God when we meet Him because we have lived with and for Him here below.