“The greatest proof that we are all made in the image of the Trinity is this: only love makes us happy, because we live to love and to be loved. Borrowing an analogy from biology, we could say that the human “genome” is profoundly imprinted with the Trinity of God-who-is-Love”. On the day when the universal Church celebrates the feats of the Holy Trinity, Benedict XVI returned to dwell on one of the themes dearest to him, that of God-who-is-Love, to which he dedicated his encyclicals Deus Caritas est.
To the 20 thousand people gathered in St Peter’s Square for the Angelus prayer, on an overcast day, the Pope said “everything that exists, because everything comes from love, reaches out for love and is moved by the spirit of love” and that God “is love and love alone, pure, infinite and eternal”.
Benedict XVI began by recalling that “after the period of Easter-time, that culminate din the feast of Pentecost, the liturgy is marked by these three solemnities of Our Lord: today the feast of the Holy Trinity; next Thursday, that of Corpus Domini” and finally the following Friday the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Each of these liturgical events – he added – highlights a perspective by which the entire mystery of Christian Faith is embraced: those being respectively, the reality of the One and Triune God, the sacrament of the Eucharist and the divine-human centre of the Person of Christ. In reality they are all aspects of the one mystery of salvation, from the incarnation to the resurrection and the ascension and the gift of the Holy Spirit.
“Today – he continued - we contemplate the Holy Trinity as it was made known to us by Christ. He revealed to us that God is love “not in the unity of a single person but in the Trinity of one substance” (Preface): he is Creator and merciful Father; he is the only Son, eternal wisdom made flesh, who died and rose again for us; he is the Holy Spirit who moves everything, cosmos and history, towards the full and final recapitulation. Three Persons who are one God alone, because the Father is love, the Son is love and the Spirit is love”.
“God –he went on to add once more - is love and love alone, pure, infinite and eternal. He does not live in splendid solitude, rather he is an inexhaustible source of life that ceaselessly gifts itself and communicates. We can, to some extent, perceive this by observing both the macro-universe: our earth, the planets, stars, galaxies; and by observing the micro-universe: cells, atoms and elementary particles. The ‘name’ of the Sacred Trinity is impressed on everything that exists, because everything comes from love, reaches out for love and is moved by the spirit of love, naturally with differing degrees of awareness and freedom. ‘O LORD, our Lord, how awesome is your name through all the earth! You have set your majesty above the heavens!’ (Psalm 8, 2) – exclaims the psalmist. Speaking of a ‘name’ the bible refers to God, in his truest identity: the identity which shines on all of creation, where every being, by virtue of its very existence and by virtue of the “tissue” of which it is made, refers to a transcending Principal, to eternal and infinite Life which is gifted, in one word: to Love. ‘In him – said St Paul in the Areopagus in Athens –we live and move and have our being,’ (At 17,28). The greatest proof that we are all made in the image of the Trinity is this: only love makes us happy, because we live to love and to be loved. Borrowing an analogy from biology, we could say that the human “genome” is profoundly imprinted with the Trinity of God-who-is-Love”.
“The Virgin Mary - he concluded - in her docile humility, made herself the handmaiden of Divine Love: she welcomed the will of the Father and conceived the Son by the power of the Holy Sprit. The Omnipotent but a temple worthy of Him within her, and made her the model and image of the Church, mystery and home of communion for all mankind. Help us Mary, mirror of the Holy Trinity, to grow in faith in the Trinitarian mystery”.
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