The Trinity

 

 

 

 

I began this post wanting to focus on the Holy Spirit, but the more I tried to isolate the gifts, virtues and actions of the Holy Spirit the more I found that it is impossible to write about the one without including the other persons of the Holy Trinity.  So I will instead assemble a post about the most Holy Trinity as found in the Volumes.

 

Luisa saw the image of God's Holy, operative Trinity most perfectly in the sun.  One sun with three aspects; fire, light and heat from which all goods on the earth can trace their origin.  Three distinct aspects of one being which can not be separated from each other but each have their own appearance and role.




 

in the sun, in which I see a special shadow of God.  I see Him as though concealed within this sphere, as the king of all other spheres.  What is the sun?  It nothing but a globe of fire.  One is the globe, but its rays are many; from this we can easily understand how the globe is God, and the rays are the immense attributes of God.
Second.  The sun is fire, but it is also light and heat.  Here is the Most Holy Trinity veiled in the sun:  the fire is the Father, the light is the Son, the heat is the Holy Spirit.  However, the sun is one, and just as one cannot separate fire from light and heat, so one is the power of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who in reality cannot be separated from one another.  And just as fire produces light and heat at the same time, in such a way that fire cannot be conceived without light and heat; in the same way, the Father cannot be conceived before the Son and the Holy Spirit, and vice versa, but all Three of the Them have the same eternal beginning.
Vol. 2, (4) How she sees the Divinity of Jesus.

As a little side note, this image of the Trinity, symbolized in the sun, worked very well to befuddle an atheist Jew who was knocking the idea of the Trinity.  Very rarely would I see him at a loss for words but this was one instance where he didn't have a come back.

I love this image of the Trinity in the sun.  The fire, the source of all, the light, the manifestation of the fire in order to make it known and understood and the heat, the passion and active fecundator of the two which transforms everything into it's own nature of fire.

In another example Luisa explains the manifestation of the Trinity which although different still contains that idea of the Father being the source, the Son being the messenger, the revealer of the Father and the Spirit being the active essence of the two.

“I manifest Myself to the soul in three different ways:  by power, by news and by love.  The power is the Father, the news is the Word, the love is the Holy Spirit.”

Vol. 3, December 22, 1899

Again God the Father is the source, the power which creates and conserves, the Son is the light, the news which always seeks to reach out to creatures to make himself known and loved and the love is the burning transformative nature of the Holy Spirit which always seeks to sanctify and transform all into fire.

And again.

...the Heavens opened and I heard everyone say, in chorus:  “Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit”.  I don’t know how, but it was my turn to answer:  ‘As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.’  But who can say what was happening?  In the word “Father” one could see the creative power flowing everywhere, preserving everything, giving life to everything.  The mere breath of this word was enough to maintain everything He had created intact, beautiful and ever new.  In the word “Son” one could see all the works of the Word, renewed, ordered, and all in act of filling Heaven and earth to give themselves for the good of creatures.  In the word “Holy Spirit” one could see all things being invested with a speaking, operative and vivifying love.  But who can say everything?

Vol. 19, March 2, 1926

And again with another image of the sun although this time there are three suns and she sees how we were created to be transformed into the perfect image and likeness of our God in each of his three persons through our three powers of will, memory and intellect.

 

I found myself outside of myself, and in looking into the vault of the heavens, I saw three Suns:  one seemed to set in the east, another in the west, and the third in the south.  The splendor of the rays that they sent forth was so great that they united with one another, in such a way as to become one.  I seemed to see the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity, and man, formed with the three powers in Its image.  I also understood that for one who stayed in that light, his will would be transformed in the Father, his intellect in the Son, his memory in the Holy Spirit.
Vol. 3, May 9, 1900

This idea of being transformed is also supported in the Bible and even in Thur. 6/15/2017's first reading:

All of us, gazing with unveiled face on the glory of the Lord,
are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory,
as from the Lord who is the Spirit.
2 Cor 3:15—4:1, 3-6 (for the full first reading)


It is this complete union that God so desires in each of us, so that he can expand his own field of action.  Although he is God and can do and reach all he will not over step the free will which he endowed in each of us and therefore must conquer each of us in love first before he will act.  But when we invite him in to move, act and have live in us by living in His Divine Will, each act becomes part of the one continuous act of the generation found within the Trinity but now within the creature.  How is it even possible to grasp such a concept to a created limited mind.  We are called to share in the inner most secrets and mysteries of God himself in as much as a limited creature can.  So that this living in the Divine Will is nothing that we can take credit for.  All comes from Him, we only say; yes or no.

“Now, this union with Me - part to part, mind to mind, heart to heart, etc. - produces in you, in the highest degree, the life of my Will and of my love.  In this Will, the Father is formed; and in this love, the Holy Spirit; and through the operating, the words, the works, the thoughts, and everything else that can come from this Will and from this love, the Son is formed – and here is the Trinity in souls.  So, if We need to operate, it is indifferent whether We operate in the Trinity in Heaven, or in the Trinity within souls on earth.  This is why I keep taking everything else away from you, be they even good and holy things:  to be able to give you the best and the holiest – which is I; and to be able to make of you another Myself, as much as it is possible for a creature.  I believe you won’t lament any more, will you?”

Vol. 11, June 12, 1913 

 

Here Jesus attempts to explain the significance of what is contained or more precisely what overflows from this one continuous act of God.  This is the act which God wants to reproduce within us. 

“My daughter, listen still to me, where can the soul arrive that lives in our Will.  She puts all of our works to daylight.  Our Supreme Being always holds in continuous act all her works.  For us the past and the future don’t exist, so that the Celestial Father generates continually his Son, and between the Father and the Son proceeds the Holy Spirit.  This is life in us, and is as the heartbeat and the respiration, that forms our life:  to generate and to proceed continually.  We would be missing life if this were not so, as would be missing the life to the creature if she didn’t have a heartbeat and a continuous breath.

                “Now, in this continual generating and proceeding becomes formed immense joys, felicity and such contentments, that not being able to contain them inside of us, they overflow outside and form the joys and felicity of all heaven.

                 “From the immense goods that the continuous generation of the Word and the proceeding of the Holy Spirit produces, overflowed outside the sumptuousness and magnificence of the machine of all creation, the creation of man, the Conception of the Immaculate Virgin and the descent of the Word upon the earth; all this and (more) is always in act in our Divine Being, as it is always in act that the Father generates his Son and the Holy Spirit proceeds.

Vol. 35, August 23, 1937



Everything is contained and has it's origin and is conserved in this one continuous act of God which it to Him as breath and heartbeat to us.  But in a special and more complete image is man who was created in God's image and likeness, that which he did not do in all the rest of Creation.  Each man is a complete microcosm and reflection of the whole in which God wants to continue his one continuous act of creating, loving, conserving, and sanctifying.

“My daughter, do not marvel; everything is possible in my Will.  True love, when it is perfect, commences from oneself.  The true model is the Most Holy Trinity.  My Celestial Father loved himself and in his love generated his Son, hence he loved himself in the Son.  I, his Son, loved myself in the Father, and from this love proceeded the Holy Spirit.  (In) this loving oneself the Celestial Father generated only one love, only one power and sanctity, and so on; it bound the inseparable union of the three Divine Persons.
                “And when we created the creation we loved ourselves.  So that we loved ourselves in stretching out the sky, in creating the sun; it was the love of ourselves that pushed us to create so many beautiful things worthy of us and inseparable from us.  And when we created man, the love of ourselves made itself more intense, and loving ourselves in him, our love reproduced our life and likeness in the depth of his soul.

Vol. 35, October 19, 1937

Man was created to be the palace of God, bound by three perfect routes of communication with God in man's will, memory and intellect.  But man willingly cast God out and corrupted his senses disordering them from their purpose.




“I endowed man with will, intellect and memory.  In the first shone my Celestial Father who, as primary act communicated His power, His sanctity and His height, through which He elevated the human will, investing it with His own sanctity, power and nobility, leaving all currents between Himself and the human will open, so that it might be enriched more and more with the treasures of my Divinity.  Between the human will and the Divine there was neither ‘yours’ nor ‘mine’, but everything was in common, with mutual accord.  Man was Our image - Our own thing; so, he veiled Us.  Our Life was to be his; therefore, as primary act He constituted his will free and independent, just as the Will of my Celestial Father was, as primary act.  But how much has this will disfigured itself!  Free as it was, it rendered itself the slave of most vile passions.  Ah! it is the will that is the beginning of all the evils of man - it can no longer be recognized.  How it decayed from its nobility - it is disgusting to look at.

“Now, as second act, I, Son of God, concurred by endowing man with intellect, communicating to him my wisdom and the knowledge of all things, so that by knowing them, he might enjoy them and delight in what is good.  But, alas, what a bilge of vices is the intelligence of the creature!  He has used knowledge to deny his Creator.

“Then, as third act, the Holy Spirit concurred by endowing him with memory, so that in remembering so many benefits, he might be in continuous currents of love, in continuous relations.  Love was to crown him, embrace him and permeate all of his life.  But how saddened the Eternal Love remains!  This memory remembers pleasures, riches, and remembers even to sin, while the Sacrosanct Trinity is cast out of the gifts which It gave to Its creature. 

“My sorrow was indescribable at seeing the deformity of the three powers of man.  We had formed Our royal palace in him, and he had cast Us out.”

Vol. 14, April 8, 1922

 

 

Man was created in the image and likeness of God.  This reflection can be seen in the unity and distinctness of the three powers of man.   These powers of the will, the memory and the intellect are still operative in man but disordered in that they do not receive the vivifying rays of the sun of the Divine Will.  They are the channels of communication wit God but are blocked by the thick clouds of the human will. 

 

“My daughter, how many prodigies of Ours concurred in creating man! With Our breath, the soul was infused in him, and in the soul Our paternal goodness infused three Suns, by which We formed in it the perennial and refulgent day - not subject to any night. These three Suns were formed by the Power of the Father, by the Wisdom of the Son, by the Love of the Holy Spirit. While being formed in the soul, these three Suns remained in communication with the Three Divine Persons, in such a way that man possessed the way through which to ascend to Us, and We possessed the way through which to descend in him. These three Suns are the three powers: intellect, memory and will. While being distinct among them, they hold hands and arrive at forming one single power, symbol of Our adorable Trinity, since while being three distinct Persons, We form one single Power, one single Intellect, and one single Will. Our Love in creating man was so great, that It felt content only when We communicated Our Likeness to him. These three Suns were placed in the depth of the human soul, just like the Sun in the depth of the vault of the heavens, which keeps the earth in feast with its light, and gives life to all plants with its admirable effects, giving to each one the flavor, the sweetness, the color and the substance that befits it. In its tacit silence, the Sun guides the earth, instructs everyone – not with words, but with facts, and with such eloquence that no one else can reach it; and with its penetrating light it becomes life of everything that the earth produces. Look: there is only one Sun for the entire earth, but for the soul Our Love was not content with one alone. And finding Ourselves in the ardor of Our love for giving and giving…, We formed three Suns, by which all the human acts were to be directed, animated and receive life. What order, what harmony We placed in Our beloved and dear son!
Now, my daughter, these three Suns exist in man, but they find themselves in the same condition of the Sun that shines in the heavens when it is surrounded by thick clouds and cannot fill the earth with the vividness of its light. Even though the communications are neither interrupted nor broken by the clouds, the earth receives its effects with difficulty, and does not enjoy all the good which the Sun could do to it. So, not receiving all the life of the Sun, it is as though ill, its fruits are insipid and unripe, and many plants are without fruits. Therefore the earth is melancholic, without feast, because the clouds have prevented it from receiving all the fullness of the light of the Sun, so as to be crowned with glory and honor. Such is the condition of man: all things are in place, between Us and him nothing is broken or interrupted, but the human will has formed thick clouds, and therefore one sees man without the glory, the order and the harmony of his creation. His works are without fruits, rotten and without beauty; his steps are unsteady. One can say that he is the poor ill one, because he does not let himself be directed by the three Suns which he possesses within his soul. Therefore, in coming to reign, the first thing that my Will will knock down will be the human volition. Blowing, It will dispel the clouds, and man will let himself be directed by the three Suns he has in the depth of his soul, and which possess Our communication; and immediately He will rise to Our origin, and everything will be feast and glory for Us and for him.”
Vol. 24, June 7, 1928

Symbol of The Most Holy Trinity

I had meant to have this out for this past Sunday, the feast of the Most Holy Trinity but now it is a bit delayed.  I wanted to start this post with the beautiful symbol that is described in the Volumes of the Trinity.  There will again be other posts to follow on this topic but just this one symbol is enough for one post and is something which I often return to contemplate on.





          While I am outside of myself, and I find myself in the height of the heavens, I seem to see God within a light. He Himself seems to be light, and within this light there is beauty, strength, wisdom, immensity, height, depth - endless and boundless. Even in the air we breathe is God present, and we breathe Him; so, each one can make Him his own life, as indeed He is. Nothing escapes Him, and nothing can escape Him. This light seems to be all voice, though it does not speak; and all operating, though it always rests. It is present everywhere, though it occupies no space; and while it is present everywhere, it also has its own center. Oh, God, how incomprehensible You are! I see You, I feel You, You are my life, You restrict Yourself within me, but You remain always immense and lose nothing of Yourself. Yet, I feel I am stammering, and it seems I can say nothing.

          In order to explain myself better, according to our human language, I will say that I see a shadow of God in the whole creation, because in the whole creation – someplace He has cast the shadow of His beauty, someplace His fragrances, someplace His light, as in the sun, in which I see a special shadow of God. I see Him as though concealed within this sphere, as the king of all other spheres. What is the sun? It nothing but a globe of fire. One is the globe, but its rays are many; from this we can easily understand how the globe is God, and the rays are the immense attributes of God.

          Second. The sun is fire, but it is also light and heat. Here is the Most Holy Trinity veiled in the sun: the fire is the Father, the light is the Son, the heat is the Holy Spirit. However, the sun is one, and just as one cannot separate fire from light and heat, so one is the power of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who in reality cannot be separated from one another. And just as fire produces light and heat at the same time, in such a way that fire cannot be conceived without light and heat; in the same way, the Father cannot be conceived before the Son and the Holy Spirit, and vice versa, but all Three of the Them have the same eternal beginning.

          I add that the light of the sun diffuses everywhere; in the same way, God penetrates everywhere with His immensity. However, let us remember that this is but a shadow, because the sun cannot reach where it cannot penetrate with Its light, while God penetrates everywhere. God is most pure Spirit, and we can represent Him with the sun, which makes its rays penetrate everywhere, and no one can grab them with their hands. Moreover, God looks at everything – the iniquities and the evils of men – but He remains always as He is, pure, holy and immaculate. A shadow of God is the sun, which sends its light over rubbish, but remains immaculate; it spreads its light in the fire, but is not burned; in the sea and in the rivers, but is not drowned. It gives light to all, it fecundates everything, it gives life to all with its heat, but does not become poor in light, nor does it lose any of its heat. Even more, while it does so much good to all, it needs no one, and remains always as it is – majestic, shining, ever immutable. Oh, how well one can see the divine qualities in the sun! With His immensity, God is present in the fire, but is not burned; in the sea, but is not drowned; under our steps, but is not trampled. He gives to all, but does not become poor, and needs no one; He looks at everything – even more, He is all eyes, and there is nothing He does not hear. He is aware of each fiber of our hearts, of each thought of our minds, but, being most pure Spirit, He has neither ears nor eyes, and no matter what happens, He never changes. The sun invests the world with its light, and it does not tire; in the same way, God gives life to all, helps and rules the world, and He does not tire.

          A man can hide or place shelters so as not to enjoy the light of the sun and its beneficial effects, but he does nothing to the sun – the sun remains as it is, while all the evil will fall upon man. In the same way, by sin, the sinner can move away from God and no longer enjoy His beneficial effects, but he does nothing to God – the evil is all his own.

          The roundness of the sun also symbolizes the eternity of God, which has no beginning and no end. The penetrating light of the sun itself is such that no one can restrict it in his eye; and if one wanted to stare at it in its midday fullness, he would remain dazzled; and if the sun wanted to draw near man, man would be reduced to ashes. The same for the Divine Sun: no created mind can restrict It in its little mind so as to comprehend It in all that It is; and if it wanted to try, it would remain dazzled and confused; and if this Divine Sun wanted to display all Its love, allowing man to feel It while he is in his mortal flesh, he would be reduced to ashes.  

          So, God has cast a shadow of Himself and of His perfections over the whole creation; it seems that we see Him and touch Him, and we are touched by Him continuously.

Vol. 2, Feb. 28, 1899



Each time I return to this image I seem to gather new insights.  The Father being the fire the source and the power over all.  Fire which consumes and transforms all into more fire.  The Son represented by the light, that which we can see, the visible form of the Father and the manifest Truth, the spoken word.  The Holy Spirit, the heat which fecund and the passionate love which sanctifies and purifies as only heat can.

And how many cultures and peoples throughout the ages have worshipped the sun.  It is as if they recognized the power in the image but lacking the knowledge of the greater truth behind and within the sun, that it is but an image of God, they stopped there and missed the mark.  This knowledge is supposed to bring us closer to God, to know him better and therefore love Him more, instead they settled for the cold shadow of the Divinity in the sun and missed the real embrace of the Triune God in all his glory.

The sun is untouchable, immutable by us as creatures.  So God is immutable and untouchable by us, so far above us in being.  Able to give always without ever diminishing and even one who might hide and refuse to place himself in the light of the sun is still dependent on the effects of the sun to live in the food that he eats, the air that he breaths, all effects of the heat and light of the sun.  Even the gravity which keeps all firmly and safely on the earth, an effect of the rotation of the earth around the sun.

What a beautiful lesson in the sun of the beauty, power, wisdom of our God and how all his attributes are the mirrored in all the effects which the sun brings about.