Masaccio, The Holy Trinity with Virgin Mary, St John and donors fresco
Santa Maria Novella, Florence
"God chose us in Him before creation, that we should be holy and immaculate in His presence, in love"(Eph 1:4.)
The Holy Trinity created us in its image, according to the eternal design that it possessed in its bossom before the world was created, in this beginning without beginning of which Bosuet speaks following St John: "In principio erat Verbum" (John 1:1). In the beginning was the Word; and we could add: in the beginning was nothing, for God in His eternal solitude already carried us in His thought. The Father contemplated Himself in the abyss of His fecundity, and by the very act of comprehending Himself He engendered another person, the Son. His eternal Word. The archetype of all creatures who had not yet issued out of the void eternally dwelt in Him, and God saw them and contemplated them in their type Himself. This eternal life which our archetypes possessed without us in God, is the cause of our creation.
Our created essence asks to be rejoined with its principle. The Word, the Splendour of the Father, is the eternal archetype after which creatures are designed on the day of their creation. This is why God wills that, freed from ourselves, we should stretch our arms towards our exemplar and possess it, rising above all things towards our model. This contemplation opens the soul to unexpected horizons.In a certain manner it possesses the crown towards which it aspires. The immense riches that God possesses by nature, we may possess by virtue of true love, by His dwelling in us and by our dwelling in Him. It is by virtue of this immense love that we are drawn into the depths of the intimate sanctuary where God imprints on us a true image of His majesty. Thus it is, thanks to love and through love, as the Apostle says, that we can be holy and immaculate in God's presence (Eph 1:4), and can sing with David: I will be unblemished and I will guard myself from the depths of sinfulness within me.(Ps 17:24)
Bl Elisabeth of the Trinity, Prayer One, Day Seven, Collected works, vol 1
Posts
