Lectio divina
God One and Triune
The Trinity is a mystery "for us", that is, for our salvation: a mystery of condescension. This is the word that helps us understand all the preciousness, the scope of the meaning. Condescension: two concepts contained in this word: that of descending and that of descending together, together (with) God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit descend together towards us, adapt, condescend, to our small stature, to our small step. They come to live with us.
To send, to descend, to come: these are the verbs with which we speak of the Divine Person. "Jesus" I came down from the Father and came into the world", "God sent His Son into the world" - "I and the Father will come" - "the Spirit will come to you and make his home with you". God comes to us and comes in all that he is and as we will know him one day.
The revelation of the Trinity is, therefore, like a waterfall of love; it is the supreme gesture of divine condescension towards us. The Greeks said "No god can mix with man". (Plato) Our God, on the other hand, has mixed with us; he has intertwined his life with ours to prepare us for eternal communion with Him.
Our life as Christians is inextricably linked to the three divine Persons. There may be, without a doubt, people who are more familiar to us in life and daily experience: our spouse, our children, our friends. It almost seems that we can no longer conceive of our existence apart from theirs; they appear to us as branches of our own existence. There is almost a symbiosis, that is, like a living together among us, and we realize it when one of them leaves us forever. But no person is rooted in us and roots his existence like these three Persons: the Father, his Son Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
They came to us in Baptism. They took up residence in us and are more intimate to us than we ourselves, says St. Augustine. In their name and in dialogue with them, our entire life of faith unfolds, from the cradle to the grave, at the threshold of existence we were baptized in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; at the sunset of it, we will depart again in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit from this world.
By marking ourselves with the sign of the Cross, we declare each time our will to belong to the Trinity. We walk, therefore, with the three Divine Persons, but often we walk without recognizing them, without noticing Them. This is not the case for the Saints: for them a dialogue, a heartfelt, dear and constant presence. Sister Elizabeth of the Trinity addresses the Trinity calling it "my Three" and writes "I have found heaven on earth... because heaven is the Trinity and the Trinity is within me". Christian life, without this interior anchorage, and without this strength, is empty and tiring, above all it takes place outside of love; with Them, instead, it is transformed into a paradise.
Therefore, the God Trinity is the God who came down among us, who condescended to live with us. But why this? Perhaps because God converted to us or to the world?
Perhaps because down below, among creatures, is true life and God needs to come down here, into the vortex of the world, to survive Himself? Today, there is a theological doctrine, which has dared to insinuate such a thing. The sacred has dissolved into the profane and "God died" to "give life to the man Jesus". But it is not so! God converted to us to convert us to Him; He came down to us, to raise us up to Himself. This is the second aspect of today's mystery: the Trinity of hope, after the Trinity of faith. The Trinity that awaits us and that is "ahead" after the Trinity of the past that revealed itself to us and the Trinity of the present that dwells in us!
We are on the road back to the Father, in the company of the Son Jesus, in the unity of the Holy Spirit.
With Them will be our eternal life, perhaps sooner than we think: in a few years or in a few days. For many of our brothers, the mysterious encounter is in this moment; in this instant, their eyes open wide in the light of the Trinity and they understand how all history and all the universe gravitate around that point, how everything from there proceeds and everything returns. Blessed are they if they have prepared themselves for this encounter: Jesus "Blessed are those whom the Son of Man will find prepared".
The Dogma of the Trinity
253 The Trinity is one. We do not confess three gods, but one God in three persons: "The Consubstantial Trinity" The divine persons do not divide the one divinity, but each of them is God entirely: "The Father is all that the Son is, the Son is all that the Father is, the Holy Spirit all that the Father and the Son are, that is, one God in nature".
254 The divine Persons are really distinct from each other. "God is one but not solitary". "Father", "Son" and "Holy Spirit" are not simply names that indicate modalities of the divine Being; in fact, they are really distinct from each other: "the Son is not the Father, the Father is not the Son, and the Holy Spirit is not the Father or the Son". They are distinct from each other by their relations of origin: "It is the Father who generates, the Son who is generated, the Holy Spirit who proceeds". The divine Unity is Triune.
255 The divine Persons are relative to one another. The real distinction of the divine Persons among themselves, since it does not divide the divine unity, resides exclusively in the relations that put them in reference to one another... In fact "everything is one in them, where there is no opposition in the relation".
258 The entire divine Economy is the common work of the three divine Persons: In fact, just as the Trinity has one and the same nature, so it has one and the same operation. "The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are not three principles of creation, but one single principle". However, each divine person carries out the common operation according to his personal property.
In summary
261 The mystery of the Holy Trinity is the central mystery of faith and of Christian life. Only God can give us knowledge by revealing himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
262 The Incarnation of the Son of Phfio reveals that God is the eternal Father and that the Son is consubstantial to the Father, that is, that in him and with him is the same one God.
263 The mission of the Holy Spirit, whom the Father sends in the name of the Son and whom the Son sends "from the Father", reveals that he is with them the same one God. "With the Father and with the Son he is adored and glorified".
(Catechism of the Catholic Church 253-263)..
