“The Virgin Mary, in her docile humility, became the handmaid of divine Love: she accepted the Father’s will and conceived the Son by the power of the Holy Spirit. In her the Almighty built a temple worthy of Him and made her the model and image of the Church, mystery and house of communion for all human beings. ” Pope Benedict XVI June 06, 2009
Despite knowing no man, Mary trusted the power of the Holy Spirit to conceive the Son, and accomplish the will of the Father. Like Mary, we too are given the choice to accept the Father’s will, everytime we are asked to trust the power of the Holy Spirit to “conceive” the Son through the Eucharist. The catechism, quoting St Thomas Aquinas, describes faith as “an act of the intellect assenting to divine truth by command of the will moved by God through grace.” CCC 155 “Hail, full of grace”…. Love is also triune in its very nature, requiring one who is beloved, the lover, and the love exchanged. In both faith and love, one can see traces of the Trinitarian triangle of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In similar way, one finds in creation, creatures, and Creator, the three-pronged aspects of the origin of life . In fact, the more one looks at the world, the more one can see this relation between the three Divine Persons in the very image of the world.
In his book “Why does everything come in threes?” by Peter Kreeft, he expands on this topic with various observations from common life. Take the universe, for example. It consists of matter, time, and space. In time, there is a past, present, and future. Matter is made of energy, mass and motion. Space has three dimensions: height, width and depth. “And God saw that it was good.” Gen 1:10
Families are made of a father, a mother, and child(ren). The Church’s faith relies in the three pillars of Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition and the Magisterium, while its mission is also threefold, consisting of worship, evangelization, and help for the poor. In Canada, our very own government is structured with three branches: legislative, executive and judicial. Aristotle list three kinds of goods: the goods of the soul (virtues), the goods of the body (health, physical ability) and external goods. He also uses the three concepts of function, classification and hierarchy to explain the natural world. Interestingly, he also pointed out three appeals that move the will: logos (facts), pathos (emotions), and ethos (moral standing) and three types of knowledge: episteme (scientific), techne (skills and crafts), and phronesis (practical wisdom, experience). The human is made of mind, body and soul. “Let us make man to our image“… Gen 1:26
The Trinitarian approach is found even in our storytelling. Stories have plots, characters and setting. Although not always the case, we often encounter the three roles of priest (servant), prophet (wise man) and king (ruler) in literature, as in Frodo, Gandalf and Aragorn in the Lord of the Rings, or even in popular culture, as in movies like Jaws (police chief, shark hunter, and scientist). In some cases, those three roles appear under one character, such as in William Wallace in Braveheart or Optimus Prime in Transformers. There’s three types of sentences: declarative, imperative and exclamatory. and even our speech consists of three parts: descriptive (nouns and adjectives), active (verbs and adverbs), and relative (conjunctions and prepositions). In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. John 1:1
As you engage the three acts of your mind (understanding, judging, and reasoning) to consider the three stages of life (life, death, and resurrection) and the three possibilities after death (Heaven, Hell, Purgatory), remember to contemplate the mystery of the Three Persons in one God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). In this way, you’ll be well prepared to encounter, seek and strive for the true, good and beautiful. As Saint Mother Teresa wisely said, “Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.”
St Joseph, pray for us.
St Michael, pray for us.
Most Holy Trinity, have mercy on us.
Roberto Freire
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