Dear friend,

We are about to celebrate the biggest, most intimate and deepest mystery of God: one single God and Three Divine Persons. God is a family! He is love! Who could have even suspected before this wonderful reality? We celebrate God’s beauty in itself!

Previously - theologically speaking, before the coming of Jesus Christ everything was "previously" - men knew God only in a fragmentary way. They were even afraid of Him! Still worse: They were afraid of “them”, because polytheism (belief in several or many 'gods') has been an unremitting feebleness in ancient thought. In the pagan world barely a few souls – like Aristotle - were able to determine that only the existence of a single God was possible.

Only the Jewish people - as the chosen people for the regeneration of Mankind — were "impervious" to the polytheistic error. God tried to preserve monotheism (belief in a single God) among Israelites, while preparing them for the Trinitarian revelation. It is a very serious issue! For whenever the Israelites were unfaithful to this truth they suffered very severe consequences (wars and defeats, exiles, etc.). Today it may look disgraceful that God himself would act in such a way. Let us learn from history! : ignoring the true God is the worst thing that can happen to us in this life and in the hereafter.

With the Incarnation of the God-Son "a before and after" happens. Everything changes since Jesus unveiled – gradually - the marvel that He has an eternal Father – whom He is fully identified with - and that the Spirit that merges them is also another Person (not some kind of “energy") of divine category.

«When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father - the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father - he will testify about me» (John 15:26). Jesus spoke in a natural way - familiarly and personally – of the Father and of the Holy Spirit. Christ did not give a theological explanation. It has been up to Christian philosophers and theologians who, with the passing of the years, have deepened in the "being" of each one of these Divine Persons.

As a matter of fact, the consideration concerning the spiritual actions we, human beings, are able to undertake - to understand and to love - has enabled us to recognize a bit more of the Trinitarian mystery. The knowledge that the Father has of himself - his own image – is so perfect, so infinite that substantially is a divine Person: the Son, completely analogous to the Father. At the same time, from this "infinitely looking alike" comes a reciprocal complacency - Love - which is also immeasurable: the Holy Spirit is the divine epitome of love between the Father and the Son.

This approach may seem abstract, but... are we not finding in it a trace of our own being, too? We are His image! Is it not true that each one of us is capable of thinking about himself, of having an image of himself? The difference lies on the fact that the image I have of myself is not substantial (it is not a complete person), nor infinite. In the case of God it is (this why He is God!). And, what about human love? Is it not also true that we are capable of loving and identifying ourselves with the person we love? However, we cannot do it to an infinite degree (commonly, our love – while real - is yet fragile). Are not our children a personification of the parents’ love? In the case of God all this is experienced at an infinite level: is the Third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, an infinite love originated from the Father and the Son.

We are invited to become part of this "Family", out of which we are children of the Father in the Son through the Holy Spirit. To talk with the Father, to talk with the Son, to talk with the Holy Spirit: this is the greatest upheaval which human beings are capable of!.

Fr. Antoni Carol i Hostench

(General Coordinator of evangeli.net)