The Mystery of the Most Holy Trinity(2022-12, June)

My dear brethren,

 The Mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the mystery of the very inner Life of God, from all eternity, the most beautiful, the most excellent, the supreme mystery, yet the most necessary for us.

 It is not difficult for us to know that we have a mind, with which we think and consider the general laws of nature, laws of physics, laws of the plants, laws of animal life, human laws. Comparing our human nature with that of animals, we easily find that some animals have better senses than ours (for example, dogs have a better nose than we have: they can even recognise people by their smell – we don’t do that! They can trace people by their smell, we can’t do that.) But we achieve better than all animals by our reason, our intelligence; for example, it is evidently through the work of the best human minds that men were able to go to the moon, which no animal has ever done and evidently will never do. It is not surprising that man can tame animals, but no animal has ever tamed a man. Thus, the psalmist sings: “Thou hast subjected all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen: moreover, the beasts also of the fields” (Ps. 8:8).

 If our mind is our highest faculty, that which makes the greatness and dignity of our human nature, then it follows that our real happiness has to be at that level: it has to be in our mind, using our mind and applying it on the highest reality: thus our real happiness, our ultimate end has to be in the contemplation and love of God, the Supreme Reality, the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end of all things, the First Cause and Ultimate End of all things. Even pagan philosophers had been able to understand that.

 But one also easily finds that our intelligence is limited. In fact, human intelligence is the lowest degree of intelligence; each angel is a higher step on a ladder and God is infinitely above the highest angel! So, can we really know God? The truth is that, though we can never fully comprehend God, we can still know certain truths about God, such as His existence, His attributes, and that knowledge is already a great joy; if I am not mistaken, Aristotle had said that “a little knowledge about the Supreme Being gives more joy that a great knowledge about earthly things.” Yet, it remains true that, with our nature only, and especially because of the wounds of sin, it is difficult to get that knowledge of God, and so many people give up on such spiritual contemplation and search for happiness in earthly things. Yet these earthly things are fundamentally unable to give true fulfilment to our mind, to our human nature in what it has of most noble. It is a great perversity for a human to use one’s spiritual faculty as tools to serve one’s flesh, as many people do in the world.

 Therefore, we need the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ to heal our nature and elevates our abilities, so that we can reach that ultimate happiness: “this is eternal life: That they may know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent” (Jn. 17:3). “No man hath seen God at any time: the only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him” (Jn. 1:18). “No one knoweth the Son, but the Father: neither doth any one know the Father, but the Son, and he to whom it shall please the Son to reveal him” (Mt. 11:27). Our Lord Jesus Christ came to reveal us His Father: this is the goal. In order to reach it, there was need to remove sin, but that removal of sin is only a means towards that goal, to reveal His Father, to make us know the most Holy Trinity.

 My dear brethren, we are made BY God and FOR God. We can find our real happiness only in God. Anything else is limited and God has made our mind open to the infinite: therefore anything else is not enough! Only He, Who is infinite Good, can fill it. St Augustine beautifully says at the very beginning of his Confessions: “thou has made us for Thee, o Lord, and our heart cannot find rest, it is restless until it can rest in Thee.”

 

 The first disposition to find God is a great thirst for Him: “My soul hath thirsted after the strong living God; when shall I come and appear before the face of God?” (Ps. 41:3). “Let the poor see and rejoice: seek ye God, and your soul shall live” (Ps. 68:33). “Thus saith the Lord to the house of Israel: Seek ye me, and you shall live” (Amos 5:4). “Seek ye the Lord, and be strengthened: seek his face evermore” (Ps. 104:4). “My heart hath said to thee: My face hath sought thee: thy face, O Lord, will I still seek” (Ps. 26:8). “I sought the Lord, and he heard me; and he delivered me from all my troubles” (Ps. 33:5).

 “O God, my God, to thee do I watch at break of day. For thee my soul hath thirsted; for thee my flesh, O how many ways! In a desert land, and where there is no way, and no water: so in the sanctuary have I come before thee, to see thy power and thy glory” (Ps. 62:2-3). We are on earth as in a desert, walking towards Heaven as towards the Promised Land, the “Land of Vision” (Gen. 22:2) And our Lord said: “If any man thirst, let him come to me, and drink” (Jn. 7:37). “To him that thirsteth, I will give of the fountain of the water of life, freely” (Apoc. 21:6).

 Our Lord Jesus Christ recalls us to these heavenly desires when he says: “Be not solicitous therefore, saying, What shall we eat: or what shall we drink, or wherewith shall we be clothed? For after all these things do the heathens seek. For your Father knoweth that you have need of all these things. Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God, and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you” (Mt. 6:31-33). One cannot go up and down at the same time; love if a movement of the soul. One cannot thirst for heaven and the beatific vision of the most Holy Trinity and love earthly things at the same time. Hence St John tells us: “Love not the world, nor the things which are in the world. If any man love the world, the charity of the Father is not in him” (1 Jn. 2:15).

 

  A practical means to develop that thirst for God and the knowledge of the most Holy Trinity is holy reading, with meditation on these truths: reading the Holy Scriptures, the writing of the Fathers of the Church, Doctors and Saints. There is something in the writings of the saints that tastes of God, because these Saints were truly living with God, were truly temples of the Holy Trinity.

 

  When we are alone, in silence, we all experience that we have an inner conversation, often with our own selves, sometimes we imagine a conversation with friends. In the Christian life, that inner conversation tends to become a conversation with God, and it should grow as to be continual. St Paul teaches us that our soul is a “temple”: “Know you not, that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” (1 Cor. 3:16). And Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself teaches us that the soul who loves God is inhabited by the Father and the Son: “If any one love me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and will make our abode with him” (Jn. 14:23).

 

 How few are those who pay attention to this Divine Guest! This is the absolute opposite of Buddhism: they search for the nirvana, absolute emptiness; the true Christian on the contrary searches to be filled with God, absolute fullness! The more we appreciate that Presence of God, of the most Holy Trinity, the more we understand the drama of sin, the evil of sin, that deprives us from this supreme treasure! The more we understand the value of this supreme gift of God, God giving His own self to us, the more we understand how justly deserved is the punishment of Hell for those who despise such gift, for those who prefer creatures, money, pleasure rather than God.

 Let us listen to St John the Apostle in his first epistle: “Behold what manner of charity the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called, and should be the sons of God. Therefore the world knoweth not us, because it knew not him. Dearly beloved, we are now the sons of God; and it hath not yet appeared what we shall be. We know, that, when he shall appear, we shall be like to him: because we shall see him as he is. And every one that hath this hope in him, sanctifieth himself, as he also is holy” (1 Jn. 3:1-3).

 

 May the Blessed Virgin Mary, who has a very special relation with the most Holy Trinity, obtain for us to really thirst for God, thirst for that beatific vision which is promised to us, and prepare ourselves by a true Christian life, “walking in the presence of God” (Gen. 17:1), “glorifying and bearing God in our body” (1 Cor. 6:20)! Amen.

 

Father François Laisney