The Holy Trinity and the Heart

The very substance of the human heart is the loving act of the Holy Trinity summoning it into existence. It was not enough for God simply to think about this unrepeatable instance of his glory. With a yearning movement of love, He willed that this human heart should exist in time and space, at the exact moment that He prepared beforehand with every blessing it needed not only to survive but to thrive. This truth is hidden in every breath, every heartbeat, every circumstance of a person's life, even those circumstances that are so obscured by evil that life seems no longer to make sense, those particular circumstances marked by gratuitous suffering in the face of death. This truth animates Christian prayer, transforming and simplifying it until this prayer participates perfectly in the very life of the Holy Trinity.

None of this contradicts the stark observation of St. Augustine who described our life in this world as a living death, a dying life. Instead, it contextualizes this painful reality within a greater truth. We behold, contemplate the goodness of God even in the face of suffering and death because evil was not the first word about humanity and, because of what Christ has done for us, it is not the last word. The Love that summons us into existence also calls us home, and prayer in the face of death is no less than a step on this journey that no suffering, not even death, can hinder.

The Father beholds the heart that faces death and He never abandons it even when the dying person feels all alone and that no one understands his plight. The Father sees an unrepeatable manifestation of His inexhaustible glory, mystery so beautiful that it captivates his paternal Heart. He longs to share this unique manifestation of eternal goodness with His Son, and so He gives it to His Son through the movement of the Holy Spirit. The soul so moved has freedom, and the Father delights whenever his creature chooses to exercise it. This is the movement of freedom that a soul discovers in mental prayer, in that silent surrender of love, that humble adoration of its whole being before God. Indeed, a creature's own agency is a gift that God has given it so that it might manifest His glory all the more. It's very liberty before God in prayer reveals Divine Liberty. Accordingly, the Father pours out in every blessing ever new comings of the Son and the Spirit into the heart who seeks Him, until that heart is empowered to use its freedom to the fullest. In other words, until the enfleshed spirit's whole existence becomes an irrevocable prayer, a canticle of praise, a harmony of love and truth so exquisite that where the Trinity ends and the soul begins no one really knows, for each entirely belongs to other in love. Some have even heard this sublime music proclaimed on the altar of a hospital bed in the pious whispers hidden in the final anguish of a lonely heart.

There is a love that is stronger than death, a love so great that no destructive power of chaos can hold it back. Each human person has been given the gift of becoming the praise of glory of the Holy Trinity and our task is to choose, by God's unfathomable grace, to become the gift God wills us to be. To become a perfect gift, the praise of glory that the Trinity contemplates, the heart needs the Gift of the Holy Spirit that the Father sends through the Son. The Holy Spirit descends like burning fire with revealing brightness that warms the heart lifting up all of its natural capacities beyond themselves, beyond all of its natural powers. Even as what is natural melts into the powerlessness of death, a new supernatural life rises up that death has no power over. The heart's own limited God-given agency is overshadowed by an entirely new presence of the Trinity that it could not have imagined or guessed. Under this overshadowing, freedom is not diminished by heightened because the heart discovers a secret wellspring of love and truth, a fountain of life so deep within it began flowing forth even before it was ever noticed.

The heart, overflowing with this grace, is empowered to choose, to sanction and to embrace the Holy Spirit's unlimited movement of Uncreated Love. This Love is a movement filled with eternal meaning, so filled with the Word of the Father, in fact, that Divine Truth animates the soul until one's whole being is aglow. What such an enflamed soul do but offer its body as a living sacrifice of spiritual praise? When it does, the heart knows the unsurpassable joy of the Father giving it away to the Son.

Such is the joy of a bride on her wedding day. It is the joy that Adam and Eve shared when their eyes first met. It is the joy of David dancing naked before the Ark. It is the joy that Simeon and Anna raised in song in the Temple. It is the joy of Mary Magdalene discovering her teacher disguised as a gardener. It is the joy of the fishermen who recognize the Lord disguised as a mysterious stranger on the shore. It is the joy of the 144,000 around the thrown of the Lamb. Everytime the heart raises itself in prayer, it is making this decision before God so that at its final moment, all these other moments of offering and surrender reach their full perfection.