The Silence of the Trinity

From the Eucharistic Congress 2025 in the Archdiocese of Port of Spain

There are many different kinds of silence, and the most beautiful of all is filled with eternal meaning. There is a silence in which the Word of the Father awakens. How can He who was awake before the first dawn be awaken in the heart? Only the silence of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit can make this possible. Prayer is about making space for this kind of silence until the heart thirsts with the very thirst of the Holy Trinity.

Not all silence in this broken world is beautiful. Broken silence excites concupiscence just as much as any experience of the world seperated. from God. It stirs and flows from lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, the pride of life. This painful silence knows the dawning of embarrassed sluggishness after a boorish night. It is felt behind the euphoric shock after a brutal exchange. It animates the humiliated emptiness of betrayal. It broods in the stillness after one has exhausted himself on fomenting grievances. It whispers in self-satisfaction after humiliating an enemy. It shouts in wordless shame when self-indulgent indifference confronts the glance of the destitute. It is the heartless toleration of injustice toward the most vulnerable. Though disconnecting, demoralizing and disabling, souls drink from this meaninglessness not realizing that such is the foretaste of hell.

There are in this life other silences, that however much baseness threatens, rise up into human experience and grab our hearts all the same. This is the original silence of creation. It is the silence that flowed through Eden. Such silence evokes a certain ennui, a longing for something that one does not have the words to describe. This silence unites lovers as they gaze into each other's eyes. It lives in a mother's heart as her baby rests against her breast. It rushes through the soul when the misery of another has pierced it so deeply it must needs act. It explodes in the exchange of smiles when one soul finally feels listened to and valued. It whispers discretely when friends finally reconcile. Fathers fight that such silences might exist before the family hearth and heroes shed their blood that other might know such joys. These silences are messengers of something even more wonderful. They are signs pointing to something beyond anything this world can hold.

There is a supernatural silence, a silence that transcends the natural order. This silence is so fundamental to all that exists that it would go unnoticed if it were not revealed to us. This silence is divine, God's own life. It is no empty silence, but a silent fulness from which every word begins and into which every word ends. To find it, we must set aside our earthly cares and take that journey of faith All the other silences of the world revolve around it - evil silences to be born away by it and good silences to be redeemed and held together. This silence is spoken to us in Christ Crucified and if we open the eyes of our hearts, this silence grabs hold of us and fills us with meaning. On the Cross, we see the silence of the Father for "Whoever sees me, sees the Father."

The eternal silence of the Holy Trinity echoes in the heart of Christ. His silence is that of the eternal Son in adoration before the Father in whom He has absolute confidence and to whom He has definitively surrendered His spirit. In his conception, birth, life, suffering, death, resurrection, ascension and glorification, all of this is present to Him all at once, He is in constant communication with the Father, interceding for us and recieving His eternal blessings so that we might know the glory that He knows because the Father has loved Him from before the foundation of the world. His last wordless cry begins and ends in the hidden glory that evokes unending praise. At once eeper than all depths and higher than every height, His heart expands the hearts of those in whom He dwells. His heart shares silences that are more silent than death and that not even the silence of death can silence. At once deeper than all depths and higher than every height, the harmonies of silence that His heart knows expand the hearts of those in whom He dwells.

This silence is the spiration of the Father and the Son, the same Breath of of God that the Son recieves from the Father and gives to us with Him. This most profound of all silences is being breathed into sleeping humanity until we rise up from the mud and stand before the face of God. This is the silence that moves with awe and reverence, grants true piety, gives strength, guides with good counsel, frees with knowledge, heals with understanding and gives undying rest in wisdom. This is a sacred silence humbles the proud and raises up the lowly, satisfies the hungry but leaves the well fed in want. It sings in the hearts of the pure but silences the monologue of sin. Such is the silence of the Holy Trinity.

The silence of the Trinity is an indwelling silence. This is the silence that dwells in the soul that

believes in Christ Jesus. Believing in the Name of Jesus means to hold fast to the silent love of the Son for the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit. It is a filial silence, a spiritual silence, a relational silence, a silence filled with the most intimate communication of the most meaningful mysteries, a silence of blessing, of thanksgiving and of praise. No earthly noise can drowned out this heavenly harmony, but one must by drawn out of slavery and enter the wilderness to catch its whisper. Such is the silence of the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit.

This silence is tranforming for human existence and renewing for all of creation. The indwelling of the Trinity is the dramatic breaking forth of life in the soul that through the soul draws everything into its wake. The heavens declare the glory of God, and the soul is meant to share in the greatness of this canticle. The Trinity yearns that its silent music might flood the heart until it resonates with the fullness of life and love it was created to know. For the Trinity yearns to be made known through the heart that will welcome His presence, that will show the the Divine Pilgrim hospitality and that will allow the Almighty One space to accomplish all that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit yearn to do.

The indwelling is a thirsting silence. It aches in us with eternal ache. That is, the Trinity rushes to the heart and yearns to be let in. Our thirst for God is the faintest echo of the Trinity's thirst for us. Souls that welcome Him share His thirst and ache that others might welcome Him too. This welcome involves a surrender, a decision, the disavowing of one's own plans, and the embracing of plans to great for the human heart to grasp. Yet it is not really the soul that initiates this as much as responds to this great thirst. It cannot do otherwise. It cannot remain indifferent. This is because it has been touched by the Word in the power of the Spirit and must welcome this light that shines in the darkness.

Whoever welcomes this indwelling light opens a floodgate of grace until one's whole being overflows and is carried beyond itself. No longer for itself, the self flows in the silent thirst of the Light that allows it to become a gift, an offering for others, one that no darkness can ever hold back. This is an awaking of the soul - an awakening of Christ in the innermost man so that His whole mystery might be renewed in all its unrepeatable transforming force. Filled with these deep movements of truth and love, this meaningful flood of grace carries all that is holy, noble and good through the soul and into the world, glorifying the Father, bearing away sin, reconciling, and establishing a fresh newness of hearts - if only the heart surrenders enough to allow the thirsting Word to awaken.

The waking of the Word in the substance of the soul is no less than the hearts partaking of the silence of God. Immutable in the face of evil and death, this sacred silence unfolds in the innermost being of man, bearing away sin, establishing hope, evoking the courage to love, healing what is broken, purifying of all that is not worthy, establishing a new integrity, reconstituting body and soul, and the powers of the soul to the soul itself. This silence is Unquenchable Fire that delicately restores and quickens the very existence of life itself where all once seemed lifeless. Each human being issues from and is hurtling toward this very immensity of meaning, this infinite solitude, this surprassing beatitude - to allow the Word to awaken is to cross the threshold of glory even in death, but to hinder, to put off, to forget this sacred silence is to fall short of the greatness for which we are made.