GENERAL AUDIENCE: THE TRINITY IS PRESENT IN THE ASCENSION

VATICAN CITY, MAY 24, 2000 (VIS) - In this morning's general audience, held in St. Peter's Square in the presence of 50,000 people, John Paul II spoke on "the glory of the Trinity in the Ascension."

"Christ," recalled the Pope, "after having travelled the road of history and after having entered the shadows of death, ... returns to the glory which from all eternity He has shared with the Father and the Holy Spirit, and He brings redeemed humanity with Him."

The Holy Father indicated that "before the glorious Christ of the Ascension, we pause to contemplate the presence of the entire Trinity." In the Risen Christ's farewell to the Apostles "there appears, above all, the Father's plan of salvation, (the Father) Who, in the Scriptures, had announced the death and resurrection of the Son, source of forgiveness and liberation. However, in those same words of the Risen Christ, the Holy Spirit may also be discerned, whose presence will be a source of strength and apostolic witness. ... Consequently, the entire Trinity is present at the moment the Church comes into being."

"The Ascension is, then," he concluded, "a Trinitarian epiphany that indicates the goal towards which individual and universal history travel. Although our mortal body dissolves in the dust of the earth, all our redeemed self reaches out towards heaven, towards God, following Christ as a guide."

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