THE TRINITY

If we think in terms of modal ontology, we might be able to imagine how the possible, actual, probable and

necessary correspond to a grammar of the Trinity. I will not explicate it, but will leave this as poetry.

I got this intuition meditating on the Trinity with the "grammar" of Julian of

Norwich. First I thought of the psychologists and theologians who speak of our

*desire*, our *intention* and *action*. Then I thought of how Julian restated

that all *may* be well, all *can* be well, all *will* be well, all manner of

things *shall* be well, and you will know that all manner of things will be well.

Next I thought of the Father's *permissive will* who designed things such that

all *may* be well and this was His *intention*. And it followed that the Son's

*efficacious will* was such that all *can* be well and this required His

*action*. The Spirit's *desiring will* which says "I will, I would" that all

things *will* be well corresponds to *desire*.

Now these Persons being omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, omnibenevolent ...

when They conspire with perfectly aligned permissive, efficacious and desiring

wills ... a *mandatory will* of the Holy Trinity proclaims that all manner of

things *shall* be well.

In the Holy Trinity thus resides *Desire* and *Intention* and *Action*.

And we, made in God's image and likeness, recognize these faculties in ourselves !

And what do we find in ourselves but DESIRE, longing, yearning !

And here is the Grace, the Holy Spirit which animates us and draws us, this

*desire* precedes our assent and helps preserve it through the indwelling

promptings of the Spirit.

Through our free cooperation with grace, our will is transformed such that we

share, increasingly, the *intentions* of Our Father (Thy will be done) and our

*actions* progressively conform to those of the Son. And, if like Mary, we

ponder these things in our hearts, we will know that all manner of things will be well.

And I take heart and carry on because I have heard that others have been *gifted* with the same heartrending,

Love is present in any desire ... in all feelings of attraction, in all caring and connectedness. It embraces us

in precious moments of immediate presence. It is also present when we experience loneliness, loss, grief

and rejection. We may say such feelings come from the absence of love, but in fact they are signs of our

loving; they express how much we care. We grieve according to how much of ourselves we have already

given; we yearn according to how much we would give, if only we could (3).

And I would add that we desire to desire, yearn to yearn and long to long.

If you feel attracted to the good just because, to the truth just because, to justice just because, to beauty just

because, to love just because

... you know they are their own reward ...

and you may be poised on the horizon of loving, God just because.

We dialogue with Other and others *just because* they are ends sufficient unto themselves.

gulp! oh well. Therese of Lisieux and Simone Weil, pray for me.

SIMONE WEIL

in her Spiritual Autobiography, Simone wrote:"As soon as I reached adolescence I saw the problem of God

as a problem of which the data could not be obtained here below, and I decided that the only way of being

sure not to reach a wrong solution, which seemed to me the greatest possible evil, was to leave it alone So I

left it alone."

"The very name of God had no part in my thoughts.''

"In those days I had not read the Gospel."

"I had never read any mystical works because I had never felt any call to read them."

"I had never prayed. I was afraid of the power of suggestion that is in prayer."

one day, however, Simone was reciting a poem, by George Herbert (1592-1633), entitled 'Love' . it was a

poem she had learned by heart and had repeated often. she reports that she was ''concentrating all my

attention upon it and clinging with all my soul to the tenderness it enshrines."

it was during this particular recitation, she claims: ''Christ himself came down and took possession of me....

In this sudden possession of me by Christ, neither my senses nor my imagination had any part; I only felt in

the midst of my suffering the presence of a love, like that which one can read in the smile on a beloved

face.''

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Love

Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,

Guiltie of dust and sinne.

But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack

From my first entrance in,

Drew near to me, sweetly questioning

If I lack'd any thing.

"A guest," I answer'd, ''worthy to be here".

" Love said, "You shall be he."

"I, the unkinde, ungrateful!? Ah my deare, I cannot look on thee.''

Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,

''Who made the eves but I ?"

''Truth Lord, But I have marr'd them: let my shame

go where it doth deserve."

''And know you not, sayes Love, who bore the blame ?"

"My deare, then I will serve."

"You must sit down,'' sayes Love," and taste my meat."

" So I did sit and eat."

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Simone continues:" In my arguments about the insolubility of the problem of God I had never foreseen the

possibility of that, of a real contact, person to person, here below, between a human being and God. I had

vaguely heard tell of things of this kind, but I had never believed in them.... God in his mercy had

prevented me from reading the mystics, so that it should be evident to me that I had not invented this

absolutely unexpected contact.''

even as she rested firm in her new found certitude, she vividly recalls the Dark Night and the following

Dawn:"Affliction makes God appear to be absent for a time, more absent than a dead man, more absent

than light in the utter darkness of a cell. A kind of horror submerges the soul. During this absence there is

nothing to love. What is terrible is that if, in this darkness where there is nothing to love, the soul ceases to

love, God's absence becomes final. The soul has to go on loving in the emptiness, or at least to go on

wanting to love, though it may only be with an infinitesimal part of itself. Then, one day, God will come to

show himself to this soul and to reveal the beauty of the world to it, as in the case of Job. But if the soul

stops loving it falls, even in this life, into something almost equivalent to hell."

despite her implicit Catholic faith, Simone chose to remain unbaptized and outside the Church: "You can

take my word for it too that Greece, Egypt, ancient India and ancient China, the beauty of the world, the

pure and authentic reflections of this beauty in art and science, what I have seen of the inner recesses of

human hearts where religious belief is unknown, all these things have done as much as the visible christian

ones to deliver me into Christ's hands as his captive. I think I might even say more. The love of those things

which are outside visible christianity keeps me outside the Church."

Simone argued, not for any syncretism or radical pluralism, but for recognition of the implicit faith of other

peoples. This was an inclusivistic Christocentrism, that, many years later, would become prominent in

Vatican II and, most recently, has been even more clearly articulated by John Paul II in his encylcical

"Fides et Ratio" (faith and reason). According to Simone: ''So many things are outside the Christian

Church, so many things that I love and do not want to give up, so many things that God loves, otherwise

they would not be in existence. All the immense stretches of past centuries except the last twenty are

among them; all the countries inhabited by coloured races; all secular life in the white peoples' countries; in

the history of these countries, all the traditions banned as heretical, those of the Manicheans, and

Albigenses for instance; all those things resulting from the Renaissance, too often degraded but not quite

without value."

Simone is not objecting to Church dogmas, rituals or moral codifications. she was, in fact, attracted to the

liturgy, to Eucharistic adoration, to hymns and rituals and even held Church doctrine as true. rather, she

was a voice of prophetic protest against exclusivistic ecclesiocentrism:''I am kept outside the Church ....

not by the mysteries themselves but the specifications with which the Church has thought good to surround

them in the course of centuries.''

one thinks here of the "mystical core of organized religion" as explicated by Stendl-Rast and of the

deterioration of dogma, ritual and moral codes into dogmatism, ritualism and legalism. whatever the

authentic Church teaching at the time, i can personally attest to the fact that, before Vatican II, at a grass

roots level, the faithful had clearly received the message that non-Catholic religions had no salvific

efficacy.