“God is love. God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and he gave his life for us, so we make the sign of the cross,” he said.
The pope spoke on Trinity Sunday, a solemnity celebrated on the Sunday following Pentecost that dates to before the 10th century.
The tradition of making the sign of the cross dates back much further. St. Basil (329-379) wrote that the Apostles “taught us to mark with the sign of the cross those who put their hope in the Lord.”
In his Angelus address, the pope reflected on a conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus recorded in the Gospel of John 3:16-18. Pope Francis noted how Jesus “revealed the heart of the mystery to him, saying that God loved humanity so much that he sent his Son into the world.”
Pope Francis pointed out that one way to picture the Holy Trinity is to think of “the image of a family gathered around the table, where life is shared.”
“But it is not only an image; it is reality,” he said. “It is reality because the Holy Spirit, the Spirit that the Father poured into our hearts through Jesus (cf. Gal 4:6), makes us savor God’s presence: a presence that is close, compassionate and tender. The Holy Spirit does with us what Jesus does with Nicodemus: he introduces us to the mystery of new birth– the birth of faith, of the Christian life – he reveals the heart of the Father to us, and he makes us sharers in the very life of God.”
“The invitation he extends to us, we might say, is to sit at the table with God to share in his love. This is what happens at every Mass, at the altar of the Eucharistic table, where Jesus offers himself to the Father and offers himself for us.”
At the end of the Angelus prayer, Pope Francis prayed for the victims of a train crash in India that killed more than 280 people.
“I am close to the wounded and their families. May our heavenly Father welcome the souls of the deceased into his kingdom,” he said.
Courtney Mares is a Rome Correspondent for Catholic News Agency. A graduate of Harvard University, she has reported from news bureaus on three continents and was awarded the Gardner Fellowship for her work with North Korean refugees.
