Meditation 49
The Trinitarian Mystery
One of the oldest
persevered form of the doxology loud, “Glory be to the Father, through
the Son, in Holy spirit.” It is this truth which is exposed on the Icon of icons by Andrey Rublev. And
in the letter to the Ephesians St. Paul says, “Thus he chose us in
Christ before the world was made to be holy and faultless before him in
love, marking us beforehand, to be adopted sons, through Jesus Christ.
Such was his purpose and good pleasure, TO THE PRAISE OF THE GLORY OF
HIS GRACE” (Ep 1. 4-6). It is one of the saints and great Byzantine
theologians, Simeon the New Theologian, who gives us answer how we can
accomplish this,
It is in the Holy Spirit where we glorify the Father through the Son, as He told us in His farewell words before He left earth, “Still I am telling you the truth: it is for your own good that I am going, because unless I go, the Paraclet will not come to you” (Jn 16. 7). And He added in order to emphasize His words, “He will lead yo through the complete truth” (Jn 16. 13).
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On the icon we see clearly the circular movement, this circumvolutiondiscussed above (Med. 46). The center or pivot point is the Sacred Heart (3), the primeval Mover. Below Christ is the table of life and on it the Eucharist (2). Below the chalice we see an opening or hole symbolizing the door into the tomb (1). The message is clear: the gate to heaven consist in dying from oneself in order to approach the Sacred Heart through the Eucharistic mystery. The message is in full accordance with the revelation in the Sanctuary of the Tabernacle. The door or gate to eternal life is through the courtyard into the Holy where the soul sustains herself on the Eucharist to be able to enter into the glory in the Holy of Holies. Her ascending to the mystery of the Sacred heart is grounded on her previous death, from the habits of the old man of flesh and sin.
And the image of the Trinity is impressed and concealed in the three sections of the Sanctuary: the courtyard (the Son and His purification); the Holy (His sanctification in the Spirit) and the Holy of Holies (a participation in His glory in the spiritual marriage).
The icon gives us account of the truth how the soul gets gradually participation in the lovable life of the Trinity. I refer here also again to Fig. 48. By dying from her sensuous disposition in the courtyard (1) the soul goes through the Pentecostal experience entering the Holy. It is then that the Holy Spirit (a) leads her to the Tree of life in order to nourish her on its fruits at the golden table of loaves (b) by revealing the Son (c) at the lamp stand. Then this Spirit of power leads the soul to the golden altar of incense where she rises as an offer of incense to the glory of the Son in the Father of glory (d) in order to live eternally in the Celestial City, the new Jerusalem in the Father's glory (e) as revealed by the Holy Spirit in the Son.
And this is nothing but a participation in the lovable life of the Trinitarian mystery. It is to this bottomless abyss of love which Ruysbroeck referred to as the “supreme summit of the inward life” when the human spirit attains a participation in the LIFE OF THE TRINITY when it is transported into the Holy of Holies, an eternal fruition in boundless love,
This is the super substantial life of the Holy Trinity which “brings about unity and inwardness; and makes the heart grow and bring forth the leaves of inward love, the flowers of ardent devotion, and the fruits of thanksgiving and praise, and makes these fruits to endure eternally, in humble grief, because of our shortcomings.” [3] This is the cairn of the hidden theology of the heart in the freedom of living experience as an alternative and fulfillment of the speculative and theoretical theology,
This experience is “knowing with all one’s soul“ as Gustav Thibon put it, [5] revealing how we grow in the life of glory as Ruysbroeck ascertained when the human essence confronts the divine Essence when the Godhead raises it above itself as a new creature,
This is a continuous birth of the eternal Word, the same mystery which took place in the purity of the Blessed Virgin as an Immaculate Conception, “eternal return of the Bridegroom” in an eternal seeing and staring in the Light of Glory,
This is the setting for the complete and final union – the spiritual marriage between the bride and her Bridegroom by staring at that Light of Glory, by the Light and in the Light in this “limitless Abyss of Simplicity,” an inscrutability where Suso was immersed and consumed,
Where from? Teresa of Avila was in no doubt regarding the cause of this joy and its origin, “All these things must come to the soul from its roots, from where it is planted.” [9] Before she had written, “The Lord puts the soul in this dwelling place of His, which is the center of the soul itself” (ibid). Wherever we look into the history of the Church we see how the contemplatives try to express the unutterable. Gregory of Nyssa used a Greek neologism, meteoroporein, to fly in the empyrean heaven with the celestial hierarchies: symmeteoropousa tais ouraniais dynamesin. [10]
This is the circulation as Abba Serenus referred to in the desert formerly (Med. 7) reaching its final phase when the spirit begins to gaze in its wonder. It flies on its newly acquired wings into the inscrutability, to this simple point of its essence in the Tetramorph’s center, the point of gravity of the wastes of the spiritual and invisible order to be burnt in an ocean of vehement love. In the amazement of his contemplation Tauler tried to describe this bottomless and infinite wastes which can only be filled with the infinite blessings of God Himself and exclaimed,
And nothing can fill these infinite wastes of love's caverns but God alone,
The soul is drawn inwards in love by God’s attraction as the magnet draws the iron each time when the Spirit touches her both to active love and fruitive rest in the inscrutability of the Trinity, and thus the soul is continuously renewed in infused virtues and ever more profoundly immersed in fruitive rest.
The soul is active in loveable works as she has found her place of rest. She is a pilgrim on earth for she sees clearly her “homeland in heaven”(Ph 3. 20) in the immanent heaven of her essence. In her rest in God in the immovable inscrutability of His Essence her strength is renewed to serve her fellow human beings in restless love of holy and jealous zeal for the living body of Christ, His Church. And one of the saints of our own times, the blessed elder Jerome of Simon Petras on the Holy Mountain Athos speaking about heavenly things of Christ’s commandments as a true nourishment, light and guide said,
Let us thus gaze to the first and most sublime fruit of this active love and fruitive rest in the fathom of the Trinity, The Blessed Virgin, her that was so beloved by “My Threes“ as Elisabeth of the Trinity put it, that she became full of grace.
Let us look and learn
how to glorify God. The only way we can glorify Him is as the Son has
glorified Him. But by that, by which the Son has glorified His Father,
was He also glorified by the Father. Let us then strive to do what the
Son has done, so as to glorify our Father Who is in heaven, and Who
deigned so to call Himself; and by ourselves be glorified by Him
through the glory of the Son ‘which’ the Son ‘had with’ Him ‘before the
world was” (Jn 17. 5). This is the Cross – to become dead to the whole
world, to suffer sorrows, temptations and other passions of Christ; in
bearing this Cross with complete patience, we imitate Christ's passion
and thus glorify our God the Father as His sons in grace and co-heirs
of Christ. [1]
It is in the Holy Spirit where we glorify the Father through the Son, as He told us in His farewell words before He left earth, “Still I am telling you the truth: it is for your own good that I am going, because unless I go, the Paraclet will not come to you” (Jn 16. 7). And He added in order to emphasize His words, “He will lead yo through the complete truth” (Jn 16. 13).
On the icon we see clearly the circular movement, this circumvolutiondiscussed above (Med. 46). The center or pivot point is the Sacred Heart (3), the primeval Mover. Below Christ is the table of life and on it the Eucharist (2). Below the chalice we see an opening or hole symbolizing the door into the tomb (1). The message is clear: the gate to heaven consist in dying from oneself in order to approach the Sacred Heart through the Eucharistic mystery. The message is in full accordance with the revelation in the Sanctuary of the Tabernacle. The door or gate to eternal life is through the courtyard into the Holy where the soul sustains herself on the Eucharist to be able to enter into the glory in the Holy of Holies. Her ascending to the mystery of the Sacred heart is grounded on her previous death, from the habits of the old man of flesh and sin.
And the image of the Trinity is impressed and concealed in the three sections of the Sanctuary: the courtyard (the Son and His purification); the Holy (His sanctification in the Spirit) and the Holy of Holies (a participation in His glory in the spiritual marriage).
The icon gives us account of the truth how the soul gets gradually participation in the lovable life of the Trinity. I refer here also again to Fig. 48. By dying from her sensuous disposition in the courtyard (1) the soul goes through the Pentecostal experience entering the Holy. It is then that the Holy Spirit (a) leads her to the Tree of life in order to nourish her on its fruits at the golden table of loaves (b) by revealing the Son (c) at the lamp stand. Then this Spirit of power leads the soul to the golden altar of incense where she rises as an offer of incense to the glory of the Son in the Father of glory (d) in order to live eternally in the Celestial City, the new Jerusalem in the Father's glory (e) as revealed by the Holy Spirit in the Son.
And this is nothing but a participation in the lovable life of the Trinitarian mystery. It is to this bottomless abyss of love which Ruysbroeck referred to as the “supreme summit of the inward life” when the human spirit attains a participation in the LIFE OF THE TRINITY when it is transported into the Holy of Holies, an eternal fruition in boundless love,
And through this
showing and the touch of God, love remains active. For
this just man has established a true life in the spirit, in rest and in
work, which shall endure eternally; but, after this life, it shall be
changed into a higher state. Thus the man is just; and he goes towards
God with fervent love in eternal activity; and he goes in God with
fruitive inclination in eternal rest. And he dwells in God, and yet
goes forth towards all creatures in universal love, in virtue, and in
justice. And this is the supreme summit of the inward life. [2]
This is the super substantial life of the Holy Trinity which “brings about unity and inwardness; and makes the heart grow and bring forth the leaves of inward love, the flowers of ardent devotion, and the fruits of thanksgiving and praise, and makes these fruits to endure eternally, in humble grief, because of our shortcomings.” [3] This is the cairn of the hidden theology of the heart in the freedom of living experience as an alternative and fulfillment of the speculative and theoretical theology,
Theology is occupied
with supernatural matters, and is ever running
into mysteries, which reason can neither explain nor adjust. Its line
of thought come to an abrupt termination, and to pursue them, or to
complete them is to plunge down into the abyss. St. Augustine warns us
that, if we attempt to find and tie together the ends of lines which
run into infinity, we shall only succeed in contradicting ourselves. [4]
This experience is “knowing with all one’s soul“ as Gustav Thibon put it, [5] revealing how we grow in the life of glory as Ruysbroeck ascertained when the human essence confronts the divine Essence when the Godhead raises it above itself as a new creature,
This is how we grow
and when we are raised above ourselves, over the
reason and into the true heart of love, we nourish ourselves in a
spiritual manner and fly to the Godhead in naked love. We have a date
with our Bridegroom, with His Spirit who is His love, and thus God
directs us from our separation to the fullness of love were we get a
participation in the beatific bliss and become one with God. [6]
This is a continuous birth of the eternal Word, the same mystery which took place in the purity of the Blessed Virgin as an Immaculate Conception, “eternal return of the Bridegroom” in an eternal seeing and staring in the Light of Glory,
And here there is
nothing but an eternal seeing and staring at that
Light, by that Light, and in that Light. And the coming of the
Bridegroom is so swift that He is perpetually coming, and yet dwelling
within with unfathomable riches; and ever coming anew, in His Person,
without interruption, with such new brightness that it seems as though
he had never come before. For His coming consists, beyond time, in an
eternal Now, which is ever received with new longings and new joy . . .
And this is why the eyes with which the spirit sees and gazes at its
Bridegroom, have opened so wide that they can never close again. For
the spirit continues for ever to see and to stare at the secret
manifestation of God. [7]
This is the setting for the complete and final union – the spiritual marriage between the bride and her Bridegroom by staring at that Light of Glory, by the Light and in the Light in this “limitless Abyss of Simplicity,” an inscrutability where Suso was immersed and consumed,
O my heart, whence
comes this love and grace, whence comes this
gentleness and beauty, this joy and sweetness of the heart? Does not
all this flow forth from the Godhead, as from its origin? Come! let my
heart, my senses and my soul immersed themselves in the deep Abyss
whence come these adorable things. What shall keep my back? [8]
Where from? Teresa of Avila was in no doubt regarding the cause of this joy and its origin, “All these things must come to the soul from its roots, from where it is planted.” [9] Before she had written, “The Lord puts the soul in this dwelling place of His, which is the center of the soul itself” (ibid). Wherever we look into the history of the Church we see how the contemplatives try to express the unutterable. Gregory of Nyssa used a Greek neologism, meteoroporein, to fly in the empyrean heaven with the celestial hierarchies: symmeteoropousa tais ouraniais dynamesin. [10]
This is the circulation as Abba Serenus referred to in the desert formerly (Med. 7) reaching its final phase when the spirit begins to gaze in its wonder. It flies on its newly acquired wings into the inscrutability, to this simple point of its essence in the Tetramorph’s center, the point of gravity of the wastes of the spiritual and invisible order to be burnt in an ocean of vehement love. In the amazement of his contemplation Tauler tried to describe this bottomless and infinite wastes which can only be filled with the infinite blessings of God Himself and exclaimed,
These great wastes to
be found in this divine ground have neither image
nor form nor condition, for they are neither here or there. They are
like unto a fathomless Abyss, bottomless and floating in itself. Even
as water ebbs and flows, up and down, now sinking into a hollow, so
that it looks as if there were no water there, and then again in a
little while rushing forth as it would engulf everything, so does it
come to pass in this Abyss. [11]
And nothing can fill these infinite wastes of love's caverns but God alone,
God only can fill it
in His Infinity. For this abyss belongs only to
the divine Abyss, on which is written: Abyssum abyssum invocat (Ps 42. 8).
. . For it [the ground of the soul] is so close and yet so far off, and
so far beyond all things, that it has neither time nor place. It is a
simple and unchanging condition. A man who really and truly enters,
feels as though he had been here throughout eternity, and as though he
were one therewith (ibid).
The soul is drawn inwards in love by God’s attraction as the magnet draws the iron each time when the Spirit touches her both to active love and fruitive rest in the inscrutability of the Trinity, and thus the soul is continuously renewed in infused virtues and ever more profoundly immersed in fruitive rest.
The soul is active in loveable works as she has found her place of rest. She is a pilgrim on earth for she sees clearly her “homeland in heaven”(Ph 3. 20) in the immanent heaven of her essence. In her rest in God in the immovable inscrutability of His Essence her strength is renewed to serve her fellow human beings in restless love of holy and jealous zeal for the living body of Christ, His Church. And one of the saints of our own times, the blessed elder Jerome of Simon Petras on the Holy Mountain Athos speaking about heavenly things of Christ’s commandments as a true nourishment, light and guide said,
Hearing the
invitation of God, we feel a knocking at the door of our
soul, into which He is pleased to enter and dwell. Opening and
receiving Him well, we become a worthy dwelling place for Him. We have
Him as an aid and source of grace against the demons. But that does not
exhaust God’s goodness, ‘He who conquers, I will grant him to sit with
Me on My throne, as I Myself conquered and sat down with my Father on
His throne’ (Rv 3. 21). [12]
Let us thus gaze to the first and most sublime fruit of this active love and fruitive rest in the fathom of the Trinity, The Blessed Virgin, her that was so beloved by “My Threes“ as Elisabeth of the Trinity put it, that she became full of grace.
[1]. Philokalia, On the Prayer of the Heart,
p 124.
[2]. The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage, II. lxv.
[3]. Ibid, XVI.
[4]. Cardinal Henry Newman, Difficulties felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching, 5. ed. p, 430.
[5]. Grace and Gravity, p. ix.
[6]. The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage, III. 2.
[7]. Ibid.
[8]. Suso, Leben, chapter IV.
[9]. The Interior Castle, 7. 2, 9.
[10]. Patrologiae Greace, 47. 972 A.
[11]. Tauler, The Inner Way, "Sermon XI, On the Feast of the Nativity of John the Baptist."
[12]. The Divine Ascent, Nr. 8 (Autumn 2002), p. 31.
[2]. The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage, II. lxv.
[3]. Ibid, XVI.
[4]. Cardinal Henry Newman, Difficulties felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching, 5. ed. p, 430.
[5]. Grace and Gravity, p. ix.
[6]. The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage, III. 2.
[7]. Ibid.
[8]. Suso, Leben, chapter IV.
[9]. The Interior Castle, 7. 2, 9.
[10]. Patrologiae Greace, 47. 972 A.
[11]. Tauler, The Inner Way, "Sermon XI, On the Feast of the Nativity of John the Baptist."
[12]. The Divine Ascent, Nr. 8 (Autumn 2002), p. 31.
