477. The Blessed Trinity (III)

Meditations no. 220 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

The Trinity is the central mystery of our Faith.

Blessed be God the Father, and his only Son, together with the Holy Spirit, for he has shown us his mercy. By means of the liturgy, our Mother the Church has been preparing us throughout the year for the great solemnity which we are celebrating today. We have contemplated the birth of the Son of God, and his life and death. We have been filled with joy at his glorious Resurrection. We have been present at his Ascension into heaven, and we have received the Holy Spirit. Now, filled with faith, we can contemplate the wonder of the mystery of the Trinity - a mystery at the very heart of our faith, on which the whole liturgy is centred; a mystery which Tertullian describes as the substance of the New Testament.

The greatest of all the works of God the Son, says St Hilary, is to bring us to the knowledge of the Father. God has given us his Revelation in order to incorporate us into his divine Life, and make us share in his own nature. This means, in the words of St Thomas, that knowing the Trinity in the Unity of God is the fruit and summit of our whole life. Our meditation, our actions, our ascetic struggle, and our response to God’s grace, should all be geared towards this loving knowledge of the Trinity.

It is a truth of our faith which is so supernatural that, as our Father often commented, however deeply we go into it, we will never be able to understand this great mystery fully. Sometimes we get a bit of light; but then comes a great deal of darkness. That makes me very happy, my children; because if, merely by my own efforts, I could understand the mystery of the Blessed Trinity, how small God would be! So I am quite content to wait for the moment of the Beatific Vision, when this faith, this Love, and this hope, that our Lord has given me, will come to their full fruition.

To contemplate and meditate on this mystery while we are still on earth, is to experience, with the help of faith, a foretaste of the direct contemplation that will be ours in heaven. Through the supernatural virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, our minds are led by God far beyond their natural limits; and our lives begin to be shaped on the model of God’s own Life. St Augustine tells us: This contemplation is promised to us as the end of all our labours and the eternal fullness of our joys … For this is the fullness of joy, than which there is nothing greater: to enjoy God the Trinity, in whose image we have been made.

Our Lord revealed this mystery to us so that we could participate in a supernatural way in the life of the Trinity. It is something that gives light and meaning to our whole existence. Blessed be the creator and ruler of all things, the holy and undivided Trinity, both now and for ever and for ages unending.

Jesus leads us to the Father and the Holy Spirit.

I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also; henceforth you know him and have seen him. When we hear our Lord saying this, we may feel like repeating St Philip’s request: Lord, show us the Father, and we shall be satisfied. And Jesus will reply, as he did at the Last Supper: Have I been with you so long, and yet you do not know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father. Our Lord shows us the way with infinite love. We can show our devotion to the Blessed Trinity by putting all our heart into becoming identified with Jesus, so that we are led to contemplate his life, and to live as children of God. As St Paul writes, because you are his sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!”

By contemplating our Lord’s life, by falling in love with Jesus, we will live his life, joining in his loving dialogue with his Father. We will listen to what he tells us, and ask him to give us light so that we can understand what he is saying and explain it to other people, who are all our brothers and sisters. And Jesus will say: I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Counsellor, to be with you for ever, even the Spirit of Truth … he will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. The Spirit himself will shape our souls in the Son’s likeness, and, as our Father so often told us, we will experience even more intensely the truth that we are children of God: other Christs, ipse Christus - Christ himself.

This is the path we are called to follow by virtue of our vocation to Opus Dei, which is a vocation to be contemplatives in the middle of the affairs of the world. As our Founder wrote: We started out with the simple and attractive vocal prayers that we learned as children, prayers we want never to abandon. Our prayer, which began so child-like and ingenuous, now opens out into a broad, smooth-flowing stream, for it follows the course of friendship with him who said: “I am the Way”. If we love Christ so, if with divine daring we take refuge in the wound opened in his Side by the lance, then the Master’s promise will find fulfilment: “Whoever loves me keeps my commandments, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling in him”.

Our heart now needs to distinguish and adore each of the divine Persons. The soul is, as it were, making a discovery in the supernatural life, like a little child opening his eyes to the world about him. The soul spends time lovingly with the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and readily submits to the work of the lifegiving Paraclete, who gives himself to us with no merit on our part, bestowing his gifts and the supernatural virtues!

We have run “like the deer, longing for flowing streams”; thirsting, our lips parched and dry. We want to drink at this source of living water. All day long, without doing anything strange, we move in this abundant, clear spring of fresh waters that leap up to eternal life. Words are not needed, because the tongue cannot express itself. The intellect grows calm. One does not reason: one looks! And the soul breaks out once more into song, a new song, because it feels and knows it is under the loving gaze of God all day long.

The liturgy, especially the Holy Mass, nourishes our devotion to the Trinity.

The Opening Prayer of today’s Mass gently leads us to contemplate this mystery, and raise our hearts in praise. O God our Father, you sent your Word into the world to teach us your truth, and your Spirit to sanctify us, and in this way you revealed to us the wonderful mystery of your own being. Grant that in professing the true faith, we may acknowledge the glory of the three Persons who are One God, almighty and eternal.

All the Church’s liturgy is an act of homage to the Blessed Trinity. Likewise our interior life and our struggle for holiness are guided by the action of the Trinity in our soul. We know that we are children of God the Father, and that the Holy Spirit is sanctifying us by making us more like God the Son. And indeed it is in the liturgy, this great work in which God is perfectly glorified and men are sanctified, that we glorify, in one common song of praise, the one and triune God.

In the Holy Mass, which is the centre and root of our interior life, we have the opportunity to grow daily in our love for the Blessed Trinity. The Mass, as our Father taught, is the most splendid manifestation of the Blessed Trinity’s love for us. The Holy Sacrifice is in truth the holocaust that will give to the holy name of God the glory that is due. The sanctification we pray for is attributed to the Paraclete, who is sent to us by the Father and the Son … The three divine Persons are present in the Sacrifice of the Altar …

The Holy Mass brings us face to face with one of the central mysteries of our faith, because it is the gift of the Blessed Trinity to the Church. It is because of this that we can consider the Mass as the centre and the source of a Christian’s spiritual life.

It is the goal of all the sacraments. The life of grace, into which we are brought by baptism, and which is increased and strengthened by confirmation, grows to its fullness in the Mass. “When we participate in the Eucharist,” writes St Cyril of Jerusalem, “we are made spiritual by the divinizing action of the Holy Spirit, who not only makes us share in Christ’s life, as in baptism, but makes us entirely Christ-like, incorporating us into the fullness of Christ Jesus.”

This outpouring of the Holy Spirit unites us to Christ and makes us acknowledge that we are children of God. The Paraclete, who is Love, teaches us to saturate our life with the virtue of charily. Thus, consummati in unum, “made one with Christ”, we can be for others what the Eucharist is for us, in the words of St Augustine: “a sign of unity, a bond of love”.

Every day we can unite ourselves to Christ’s sacrifice, and, through his mediation, offer our whole existence to God the Father in the Holy Spirit. And in our daily work we remember that our life is just that: a continual offering made to God. The efforts we make will bear fruit, with God’s grace, if we have recourse to our Lady. Throughout the day you can often hold conversation with the trinity on earth, which is the way to reach the Trinity in heaven. Bear in mind, our Father advises us, that the Mother leads us to the Son, and the Son, through the Holy Spirit, leads us to the Father, according to those words of his: he who has seen me has seen the Father.