The Saints Reflect on the Most Holy Trinity
Today we are celebrating Trinity Sunday. As the Cathechism of the Catholic Church tells us in number 234: The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of Christian faith and life. It is the mystery of God in himself. It is therefore the source of all the other mysteries of faith, the light that enlightens them. It is the most fundamental and essential teaching in the ‘hierarchy of the truths of faith’. The whole history of salvation is identical with the history of the way and the means by which the one true God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, reveals himself to men ‘and reconciles and unites with himself those who turn away from sin’.“
Greatly inspired by this solid and ever-refreshing teaching, the saints have their contribution to make regarding the greatest mystery of our faith, the Holy Trinity. God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are the source for our own greatness, for His power and grace not only transform us, but also those around us, whom they may be. Let now let the saints who, as God instruments, they can enlighten and empower our minds and hearts to love the Lord our God with all [our] heart, and with all your soul, and with all [our] mind, and with all [our] strength (see Mk 12:30).
When we let the fruits of the Holy Trinity live and abound in us we reach our greatest joy possible. St Augustine tells us: For to have the fruition of God the Trinity, after whose image we are made, is indeed the fullness of our joy, than which there is no greater. Within the Trinity, each Person is unique. When one contemplates the Trinity one realizes that the Three Persons are of one substance, power and knowledge. They are one God. St Teresa of Ávila teaches us:
The three Persons are distinct from one another; a sublime knowledge is infused into the soul, imbuing it with a certainty of the truth that the Three are of one substance, power, and knowledge and are one God.
The Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Holy Trinity, is capable of thoroughly transforming the sinner into the garments of eternity. St Seraphim of Sarov says: In spite of our sinfulness, in spite of the darkness surrounding our souls, the grace of the Holy Spirit, conferred by baptism in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, still shines in our hearts with the inextinguishable light of Christ … and when the sinner turns to the way of repentance the light smooths away every trace of the sins committed, clothing the former sinner in the garments of incorruption, spun of the grace of the Holy Spirit. It is this acquisition of the Holy Spirit about which I have been speaking. The Holy Trinity is the source of great strength. This thought is found from St Patrick’s Breastplate prayer: Today I put on a terrible strength invoking the Trinity, confessing the Three with faith in the One as I face my Maker.
In St Catherine of Siena’s view, the Holy Trinity is eternal, fire and abyss of love. The Holy Trinity nurtures us with itself through Christ’s redemption and the Father’s eternal love for us. This great Italian mystic and Dominican Tertiary said: O Trinity, eternal Trinity! Fire, abyss of love…Was it necessary that you should give even the Holy Trinity as food for souls? You gave us not only your Word through the Redemption and in the Eucharist, but you also gave yourself in the fullness of love for your creature.
Again, the Dominican community presents to us another giant of their own theology and spirituality, St Thomas Aquinas. This Italian Dominican friar and priest said that the Father loves his Son, himself and us humans, by the agency of the Holy Spirit. He said: The Father loves not only the Son but also himself and us, by the Holy Ghost. The Holy Trinity brings us on our feet again and takes us to the Church. St Ambrose said: Rise, you who were lying fast asleep … Rise and hurry to the Church: Here is the Father, here is the Son, here is the Holy Spirit.
With St Pope St John Paul II, sees the Trinity as the indescribable mystery which only attracts wonder and worship. This greatest mystery that provokes and includes us thanks to the grace, Jesus Christ’s Incarnation the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. He said: A great mystery, a mystery of love, an ineffable mystery, before which words must give way to the silence of wonder and worship. A divine mystery that challenges and involves us, because a share in the Trinitarian life was given to us through grace, through the redemptive Incarnation of the Word and the gift of the Holy Spirit.
For St Faustina, each Person of the Holy Trinity is capable of uniting us with all the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity in full happiness that comes forth from the same Trinity. The latter’s happiness transforms the entire creation in its happiness and thus fills it with the eternal life of the Trinity itself. St Faustina wrote: When One of the Three Persons communicates with a soul, by the power of that one will, it finds itself united with the Three Persons and is inundated in the happiness flowing from the Most Holy Trinity, the same happiness that nourishes the saints. This same happiness that streams from the Most Holy Trinity makes all creation happy; from it springs that life which vivifies and bestows all life which takes its beginning from him.
Let us start our day with the following consecration prayer to the Trinity written by St Francis de Sales:
I vow and consecrate to God all that is in me: My memory and my actions to God the Father; My understanding and my words to God the Son; My will and my thoughts to God the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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