29 May 1988
Paris, France

My dear Sisters,

On a hot summer's Sunday in 1653, here in Paris, St. Vincent left his house to do a little catechetical work with some poor children. Somebody had the good idea of taking notes during St. Vincent's catechesis, for we have a brief summary of the simple, charming lesson which he gave. Probably conscious of the heat, and we know it was very hot at that time, St. Vincent thought of the sun, and he used it to expound the mystery of the Trinity. Let us listen for a moment to M. Vincent:

My children, I am going to give you a comparison which was used by St. Augustine. It is that of the sun. Just as in the sun there are three things, and these three things do not make up three suns, so in the Blessed Trinity there are three persons who make up one God. There are three things in the sun: the sun itself, the light, the heat. The sun itself is a beautiful star which we see in the heavens. The light makes all things clear, dissipates the darkness of the night and rejoices the world....The third thing in the sun is its heat, a great heat which comes from the sun's mass and from the light. It is this great heat which matures the fruits and other things which are on the earth. When there is hot, suffocating weather, as we are experiencing here now, it is from the sun that all this proceeds. From this comparison you can understand that there is no more than one God, and that there are three persons in God, Who are inseparable one from the other, just as the sun is inseparable from the light and the light from the heat. (Coste XIII, Fr. ed, p. 159-160).

It would be interesting indeed to know how St. Vincent might have developed the mystery of the Trinity in relation to our own lives but, like a good teacher, he breaks off after that point to question his audience in order to find out if they have followed him.

What would St. Vincent have said about the mystery of the indwelling of the Trinity in the souls of the just? Were he alive today, he might very well have gone on to illustrate the marvel that is within each one of us by appealing to atomic physics. It was only when the scientists of our own day succeeded in splitting the atom that they discovered the wonders of the movement of protons and electrons that are to be found within the smallest particle of matter. So, too, with the marvel of the indwelling life of the Trinity in each one of us. Our eyes, my dear Sisters, like those of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, are held. We can only dimly see the wonder and miracle of housing within the temple of our fragile bodies the eternal Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We read, but only weakly grasp the meaning of the simple words of Our Lord: "If a man loves Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him and We will come to him and MAKE OUR HOME with him." (Jn 14:23). Perhaps our experience at the moment of death will be not so much of going out to God, but of God rising up from the depths of our being into our full consciousness. The astounding truth is that within us there is the harmony of the living and loving God, but because of our absorption in the material world, we cannot hear the beauty of the music.

There is another dimension to today's feast, and it is St. Louise who repeatedly highlighted it for the first Sisters. Community life is rooted in the life of the Trinity. It is from the Trinity that the Community draws its dynamism. The practical consequence of that truth is that we keep striving to sacramentalize in our Communities the love, the understanding, the union which exists in the Trinity. "Remember me to all our Sisters," wrote St. Louise, "and tell them always to remember the advice of Monsieur Vincent, especially forbearance and cordiality, so as to honor the unity and the diversity of the Persons of the Blessed Trinity." (Spiritual Writings of Louise de Marillac, ltr. 248, p. 289).

In the Church's prayers for the dying, the work of the Holy Trinity in each one of us is marvelously expressed in a single sentence: "Go forth, O Christian soul, in the name of the Father Who created you, in the name of the Son who re-created you, and in the name of the Holy Spirit Who sanctified you."

The work of creation and re-creation is over. It is the work of sanctifying that continues, and the agent of that work is the Spirit of God. But He does not act without reference to the Father and the Son, as today's second reading reminds us: "...You have received the Spirit of sonship. When we cry, 'Abba, Father!', it is the Spirit Himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ." (Rom 8:15-17).