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Sancte Michael Memento Mei Ante Deum

Horae ad usum Trecensem dites Heures de Michel Berthier, 1415-1420

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Prayer to the Holy Trinity

I Adore Thee, O my God, one God in three Persons; I annihilate myself before thy Majesty. Thou alone art being, life, truth, beauty, and goodness. I glorify Thee, I praise Thee, I thank Thee, and I love Thee, all incapable and unworthy as I am, in union with thy dear Son Jesus Christ, our Saviour and our Father, in the mercifulness of his heart and through his infinite merits. I wish to serve Thee, to please Thee, to obey Thee, and to love Thee always, in union with Mary immaculate, Mother of God and our Mother, loving also and serving my neighbour for Thy sake. Therefore, give me Thy Holy Spirit to enlighten, correct, and guide me in the way of Thy commandments, and in all perfection, until we come to the happiness of heaven, where we shall glorify Thee forever. Amen.

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Perichoresis

Perichoresis (from Greek: περιχώρησις perikhōrēsis, “rotation”) is a term referring to the relationship of the three persons of the triune God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) to one another. Circumincession is a Latin-derived term for the same concept. It was first used as a term in Christian theology, by the Church Fathers. The noun first appears in the writings of Maximus Confessor (d. 662) but the related verb perichoreo is found earlier in Gregory of Nazianzus (d. 389/90). Gregory used it to describe the relationship between the divine and human natures of Christ as did John of Damascus (d. 749), who also extended it to the “interpenetration” of the three persons of the Trinity, and it became a technical term for the latter. It has been given recent currency by such contemporary writers as Jürgen Moltmann, Miroslav Volf, John Zizioulas, Richard Rohr, and others.

Since Christians believe humans are made in the image of God, a Christian understanding of an adequate anthropology of humans’ social relations is informed by the divine attributes, what can be known of God’s activity and God’s presence in human affairs. Theologians of the Communio school such as Hans Urs von Balthasar, Henri de Lubac, and Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) locate the reciprocal dynamism between God and God’s creatures in the liturgical action of sacrament, celebrating the sacred mysteries in Eucharistic communion, in a hermeneutic of continuity and apostolic unity.

The relationship of the Triune God is intensified by the relationship of perichoresis. This indwelling expresses and realizes fellowship between the Father and the Son. It is intimacy. Jesus compares the oneness of this indwelling to the oneness of the fellowship of his church from this indwelling. “That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us” (John 17:21). The great 12th century Cistercian reformer St. Bernard of Clairvaux spoke of the Holy Spirit as the kiss of God, the Holy Spirit being thus not generated but proceeding from the love of the Father and the Son through an act of their unified will.

If, as is properly understood, the Father is he who kisses, the Son he who is kissed, then it cannot be wrong to see in the kiss the Holy Spirit, for he is the imperturbable peace of the Father and the Son, their unshakable bond, their undivided love, their indivisible unity. – St. Bernard of Clairvaux, in Sermon 8, Sermons on the Song of Songs

The Cappadocian Fathers described the Trinity as three individualities in one indivisible being, asserting that Christian community is an analogy:[citation needed] that the social trinitarianism is—in Eastern Orthodox terminology—an “icon” or sign of God’s love. Such a conception refutes the adoptionism which some attribute to the Anomoeans (an “Arian” sect) and other anti-trinitarians, which reduce the conception of the unity of God in Christ to a purely ethical concept, strictly comparable to a human relationship between two (or three) individuals. In contrast, the basis for human relationship pointed to by the Cappadocian Fathers is within God as such, not in God in relation to another that is not God.

[Source]

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The Being of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is one. Blessed be the Trinity

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'Trinity' by Mikhail Nesterov (1897)

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Viktor Vasnetsov - Fatherhood (Detail); State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia; 1907

I’ve posted this one a few times before, but I never tire of looking at it

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“Let God love us into people of love.”

John Mark Comer on Psalm 59

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Sitting Christ

- Vasily Polenov

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A mosaic representing Pentecost on the ceiling of St. Louis Cathedral 

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Veni, Sancte Spiritus!  

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when God opens a door i walk in the other direction because even though i was screaming at him all night to let me in i don’t actually want to go in, i just wanted attention, but as soon as he closes the door i will begin scratching and crying for it to open again

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From Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God

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From Tolstoy’s Circle of Reading.

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Take heed, dear Friends, to the promptings of love and truth in your hearts. Trust them as the leadings of God whose Light shows us our darkness and brings us to new life.

Quaker Faith and Practice 1.02, Britain Yearly Meeting of the Society of Friends

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a beam of light in the monastery chapel