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.” (Saint Ambrose).
Saint Francis de Sales prayed, “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.”
Saint Teresa of Avila explained that “The three Persons (of the Trinity) 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.”
And I have been reflecting on the power of the Holy Trinity as I have been reflecting on these beautiful words of the Saints. On Saint Patrick’s breastplate of his armour, was inscribed, “Today I put on a terrible strength invoking the Trinity, confessing the Three with faith in the One as I face my Maker.” You see, Saint Patrick understood the power of the Most Holy Trinity!
And there is such love in the Holy Trinity. Saint Thomas Aquinas explained that “The Father loves not only the Son, but also Himself and us, by the Holy Ghost.” And it is this PERFECT LOVE of the Trinity for each other and the invitation of Christ to allow sinners such as me to join in this Trinitarian relationship, that is such a great mystery! Saint Catherine of Siena understood something of that mystery of love, which she explained when she said, “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.”
And this love of the Holy Trinity – this love of God – has consumed the minds of the Saints for millennia… Pope Saint John Paul II said in his reflections on the Holy Trinity… “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.” And he understood this because, just as Saint Seraphim of Sarov understood that “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.”
You see, Saint Faustina revealed in her Diary 911, “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.”
And so, reflecting on this wonderous gift of the Most Holy Trinity and some share in the PERFECT unity of God Himself, I follow the advice of Saint Ambrose who 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.”
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.