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Opening Prayer
Round dance of Love, Blessed Trinity, Mystery of Mysteries, One and Three, Three and One, I adore you, My Love. Praise you above all. Give me the joy and love you share within yourselves each one and among yourselves all of three. Lead me to live the mystery of your essence and action that my mind cannot grasp and my heart cannot feel but as a shadow of a Truth beyond myself, and every self. Lead me to that to be adored, not understood. Direct me to the place that I can more adore by knowing less. Amen.
Quote
The mystery of the Trinity only becomes accessible to that ignorance which rises above all that can be contained within the concepts of the philosophers. … this ignorantia … redescends again upon these concepts that it may mould them; that it might transform the expressions of human wisdom….
—Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church
Comments
The Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross (1542-1591) refers to the divine Spirit as the “flame of love.” God is Fire, he taught, and uniting to that Fire “produces within [us] a living flame.” This flame is “the Holy Spirit.” Yes, “the interior acts he produces shoot up flames, for they are acts of inflamed love, in which the will of the soul united with that flame, made one with it, loves most sublimely.” This loving, St. John writes, expressed as a flame shooting up, makes a person “love with delight and divine quality, … giving him eternal life, since it raises him up to the activity of God in God.” And this God is “the soul’s center.” (J. Frederick Nims, Trans., The Poems of St. John of the Cross)
Christian mysticism, or contemplation, will not let us rest content with anything less than union with God within, our Center, the Center of All: indeed, to be in the Center within the self is to be, at the same time, in the Center of Everything, for the Center cannot be parceled in parts. Prayer, in word and silence and act, leads us—unless we remain in the courtyard of rational and social religion and mental duality—to the Most Holy Place, from externals to the Center, Who is the Internal, External, and the Everywhere.
This Center is God acting in and with God, as the Holy Trinity. Therefore, this Prayer of act and life, of Love and Loving, is not first Theocentric or Christocentric; first and foremost, this Prayer is Trinitycentric. This Prayer derives from the Source, the Father, and, thus, the Prayer derives from the Word and the Spirit, for the Three Persons act in accord, being One-in-Three and Three-in-One. All speech of time and space, spoken of in theology and at any level less than mystical theology does not apply to God in God. In Godhead, there is no causation and no duration, and no space. Therefore, there is no sequence or number in God, for God is in God, and as a Trinity from Eternity; yet, this Trinity transcends our concept of number, and this leaves us with Mystery. Therefore, the number three itself speaks of a Fullness in God in God that cannot be reduced to three.
However, three allows us to get a hint of an important teaching. If God is only one, then, we have a monad, which is an extreme. If God is two, then, we have a dyad, which is a dualism and separation. God as Three Persons is a Union, a Unity, a Unitive Harmony, for three represents both the surpassing of one and two, but not only into three, but three as the unification of one and two in a Whole. Therefore, all harmony, all unity, derives from God in God, and God is the Eternal One that represents, mirrors, and births all Unity.
Then, through the spark of the Holy Spirit in the soul, which is also where is the Center, God in God, even God in God in God, comes forth the living flame of Love. However, this fullness of Love is found in the Holy of Holies, where is spirit and Spirit, not the externals of religion.
How does this man or woman Love, then, who has been united with the living flame of Love, which is the Holy Spirit and, thus, which is God in God in God, the Triune One-and-Three? St. John tells us. He or she loves sublimely, delightfully, and divinely.
How can this man or woman love with such sublime, delightful, and divine Love, when there is such pain in his or her life and the person lives within the suffering of all Creation? Again, St. John teaches us. By entering the Holy of Holies, the Center, the flame of Love, from the sparks of the sacred Spirit Within, shares with the soul and imbues the very flesh with a Love sourced in the Trinity, not from within the limited faculties of the man or woman.
Therefore, the primary trait of a man or woman living in and from the Center, in union with the Spirit, is not what most persons think it is. Many focus on faithful prayer evidencing in answer to the prayers, specific responses to specific requests. This is not the chief or near chief result of Prayer. Then, what is it? The man or woman in Prayer, not from the outer courts of the mind, but from the Holy of Holies in contemplation, or mystical Prayer, will evidence a capacity and practice of Love that is as St. John teaches us: sublime, delightful, divine.
As the Sun shining on Creation, those of light will be drawn to such Love, while those of darkness, even if religous, will flee such Love. No man or woman can be neutral before such Love. Therefore, the one who loves with this Love will create a stark contrast between those attracted and those distracted: that is the nature of this Love.
Thus, the average Christian, if we may use that language, will never understand such a person, for the masses talk in the outer courts but do not enter into the Holy of Holies of Prayer. Therefore, not only is mysticism, or contemplation, needed for the Church and you, such is essential for the survival of the Church, as history has shown already; and your experience of union with the flame of Love depends on surrending into the Mystery, Godhead. For only in embracing the Mystery, the root of Mysticism, God in God in God, can we transcend the limits of rational and social religion and enjoy and give this Love with delight and with Gracefulness.
Questions for Reflection
Have you ever experienced a love for someone you could not have loved at all without the love coming from God Within?
What is the role of ignorance, or ignorantia, in appreciating the Mystery of the Trinity? In attaining Divine Wisdom, as contrasted with human wisdom?
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