Benedicta sit sancta Trinitas, atque indivisa unitas.
We have come to believe in and approach the Father through Christ in the Holy Ghost. Starting from this reality one can not consider the Godhead as an abstract conception or a logical proposition to be examined and analysed as one would deduce the properties of a triangle or how one would form a judgement about a particular state of affairs.
Although revelation is objective and the statements proposed for belief by Holy Mother Church express the truth about God and His relations with the universe which He created freely out of His abundant goodness, the mystery far transcends our limited attempts to grasp what has been communicated to us. Yet, what has been communicated to us is not simply articles of faith which one must subscribe to in order to form some organization, but it is the self-subsistent, self-existing, Being Who is truly Father, Son and Holy Ghost. These make Themselves known to us so that we may share in their essential and ineffable communion of life and love. The Godhead does not exist as a 'naked substance', inert and lifeless. They Who have made us able to approach them in confidence through grace, are plenitude of being and possessing simply, formally and eminently all perfections that we see participated in all around us. The diversity of being in our environment mirrors and reflects in a very finite degree yet one that truly participates in the perfections the fullness of God Who is pure act and exists without lack or want, the principle of all that comes to be and the sustainer of all that is.
One may wish to make a distinction between the Author of nature and the Author of grace, yet it is still the same Trinity that controls, directs and governs all things no matter their degree of complexity. If such is the case can it be said that God may be known as three subsistant relations simply through a process of intellectual inquiry a postiori? No. This may be likened to the truth that man's felicity can only exist in God, His origin and end. Man, in his natural will, seeks happiness necessarily (or there would be no justification for him to do anything at all) and his heart longs to rest in God as Saint Augustine famously wrote. However, man is unable to realise exactly what his blessedness and security exists in as it is one thing to know that someone is approaching and that Peter is approaching. Our consideration of God through reason can only come through an examination of effects and perfections which we realise exist in God primarily and in plenitude. However real this knowledge of God may be, it is not enough to elevate man to a knowledge of the Trinitarian reality. In no way can we reach such a high through a posteriori reasoning alone.
Furthermore, what is revealed by the Father through the Son in the Holy Ghost transcends any of our hopes, imaginations or desires. Man is not positively ordained for the beatific vision, and only possesses a conditional and inefficacious desire for happiness, but through the descent of the Logos and the indwelling of the Holy Ghost (and hence, of the Father and the Son) man can come to the supernatural level through grace and mercy that he could not even dream of. He is raised to the intimate life of God as He is. However, in this life we have not reached the full realisation of this glory, therefore we must be watchful not to allow us treasure to be prised from our grasp. In heaven, we will delight in the eternal procession of the Son and the ineffable spiration of the Holy Ghost, thereby possessing this glory for all eternal without diminution. By means of the created light of glory and God Himself united to our intellect, man is capable of beholding the vision of God and know as he himself is known, yet in no sense can the Godhead be truly comprehended by us whereby God would have served His purpose and would then be relegated to a proposition. No, He is and without reduction will remain the fullness of Goodness, Love and Life and no man can, upon beholding His essence turn away.
Oh if we truly believed this! What would man not abandon for the sake of His incomprehensible gift! It was the Trinity that allowed Francis to take leave of his father, for Thomas to resist the snares of his family and the carnal allure of the prostitute, the same Godhead that strenghtened Athanasius in his five exiles and this Mystery for which countless men and women have deserted earthly hopes and set their hearts on an unending eternal inheritance of glory.
Let us adore in silence the Mystery.
As it is, ; ''For of Him, and by Him, and in Him, are all things: to Him be glory for ever. Amen''.
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