Bulletins

May 30, 2021

The very essence of the Christian faith consists in the knowledge and adoration of one God in three Persons. This is the mystery whence all others flow. Our faith centers in this as in the master-truth of all it knows in this life, and as the infinite object whose vision is to form our eternal happiness; and yet, we know it only because it has pleased God to reveal Himself thus to our lowly intelligence, which, after all, can never fathom the infinite perfections of that God, who necessarily inhabits light inaccessible. Human reason may, of itself, come to the knowledge of the existence of God as Creator of all beings; it may, by its own innate power, form to itself an idea of His perfections by the study of His works; but the knowledge of God’s intimate Being can come to us only by means of His own gracious revelation. It was God’s good pleasure to make known to us His essence, in order to bring us into closer union with Himself, and to prepare us, in some way, for that face-to-face vision of Himself which He intends to give us in eternity. But His revelation is gradual: He takes mankind from brightness unto brightness, fitting it for the full knowledge and adoration of Unity in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity. During the period preceding the Incarnation of the eternal Word, God seemed intent on inculcating the idea of His Unity, for polytheism was the infectious error of mankind; and every notion of there being a spiritual and sole cause of all things would have been effaced from the earth, had not the infinite goodness of God watched over its preservation. Not that the Old Testament books were altogether silent on the three divine Persons, whose ineffable relations are eternal; only, the mysterious passages which spoke of them were not understood by the people at large; whereas, in the Christian Church, a child of seven will answer those who ask him, that in God, the three divine Persons have but one and the same Nature, but one and the same Divinity. When the Book of Genesis tells us that God spoke in the plural, and said: “Let Us make man to Our image and likeness,” the ancient Jew bowed down and believed, but understood not the sacred text; the Christian, on the contrary, who has been enlightened by the complete revelation of God, sees, under this expression, the three Persons acting together in the formation of man; the light of faith develops the great truth to him, and tells him that, within himself, there is a likeness to the blessed Three in One. Power, understanding, and will, are three faculties within him, and yet he himself is but one being.

Commentary from The Liturgical Year by Dom Prosper Guéranger, O.S.B. (1805-1875)

Holy Trinity, one God, have mercy on us!

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