THE DIVINE EQUATION: THE PARADIGM OF THE TRINITY

I am finally at peace over whether I will ever understand the Trinity. The answer is NO because the only way to even approach that problem is The Mystery of Faith. I just let it go and use the Trinity as Christ intended me to do. The Trinity is for me to use during my final time on earth in the Spiritual Universe to lift me up to a higher level of humanity that I could not reach by my naked nature by itself. If it were unknowable with human languages and concepts, Jesus would not have had to reveal that One God has three separate functions that, for lack of better terminology, we call persons. Actually, they are not persons but we call them that for our sake. It is as close as we can get with our human intellect, superior as we think it might be with all the scientific knowledge and computer-assisted learning we have uncovered during the past one hundred years.

I have peace because I now realize that humility is the essential element to approach the Mystery of the Trinity, not intelligence as the world sees it. St. Benedict set forth the steps for humility in his Chapter 5 of the Rule. Step one is that we must have in us the fear of the Lord. Brushing aside sixty years of trying to define what that is, I now realize that it means to let God be God and you be you. It means it is useless to try to comprehend what humanity can never contain, as if there is a mastery (domination) of the thing we are trying to solve. I can only approach the Trinity using stories, parables given by Jesus, and similies. A simile compares two things, one totally unknown and the other a known process, or more likely a common human experience used to describe some part of the other. Similies might be totally unlike the thing they try to describe. Jesus used similies because just raising the question of the Trinity to his followers (including us twenty centuries later) can not be addressed by any science or equation we know today. So, the conclusion is that it is just an old tale made up by the followers of Jesus 300 years after Jesus actually lived, and you can’t prove anything. And the answer is, you are perfectly correct. You can’t prove any of this using science, logic, any patterns of religious thinking, any secular humanistic thinking that life only ends in the grave and get what you can while you can. “Simili est regnum coelorum” or the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed. Read the Chapter in Matthew on Similies.

The Parable of the Weeds Among the Wheat.24He proposed another parable to them.^* “The kingdom of heaven may be likened to a man who sowed good seed in his field.25While everyone was asleep his enemy came and sowed weeds^* all through the wheat, and then went off.26When the crop grew and bore fruit, the weeds appeared as well.27The slaves of the householder came to him and said, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where have the weeds come from?’28He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ His slaves said to him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’29He replied, ‘No, if you pull up the weeds you might uproot the wheat along with them.30Let them grow together until harvest;^* then at harvest time I will say to the harvesters, “First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles for burning; but gather the wheat into my barn.”’”^g

The Parable of the Mustard Seed.^*31^h He proposed another parable to them. “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that a person took and sowed in a field.32^*i It is the smallest of all the seeds, yet when full-grown it is the largest of plants. It becomes a large bush, and the ‘birds of the sky come and dwell in its branches.’”

The Parable of the Yeast.33He spoke to them another parable. “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast^* that a woman took and mixed with three measures of wheat flour until the whole batch was leavened.”^j

The Use of Parables.34^*k All these things Jesus spoke to the crowds in parables. He spoke to them only in parables,35to fulfill what had been said through the prophet:^*

“I will open my mouth in parables,

I will announce what has lain hidden from the foundation [of the world].”^l

The Explanation of the Parable of the Weeds.36Then, dismissing the crowds,^* he went into the house. His disciples approached him and said, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field.”37^* He said in reply, “He who sows the good seed is the Son of Man,38the field is the world,^* the good seed the children of the kingdom. The weeds are the children of the evil one,39and the enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age,^* and the harvesters are angels.40Just as weeds are collected and burned [up] with fire, so will it be at the end of the age.41The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom^* all who cause others to sin and all evildoers.42^m They will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.43^*n Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Whoever has ears ought to hear.

More Parables.^*44^o “The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure buried in a field,^* which a person finds and hides again, and out of joy goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.45Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant searching for fine pearls.46When he finds a pearl of great price, he goes and sells all that he has and buys it.47Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net thrown into the sea, which collects fish of every kind.48When it is full they haul it ashore and sit down to put what is good into buckets. What is bad they throw away.49Thus it will be at the end of the age. The angels will go out and separate the wicked from the righteous50and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.

Treasures New and Old.51“Do you understand^* all these things?” They answered, “Yes.”52^* And he replied, “Then every scribe who has been instructed in the kingdom of heaven is like the head of a household who brings from his storeroom both the new and the old.”53 When Jesus finished these parables, he went away from there.

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/matthew/13

I have a profound peace that comes not from solving The Divine Equation, which I am neither capable of doing, nor can I do, because of my human nature, but from using it or living it to What I can do is ask the Trinity to lift my humanity up to what it was intended to be before the Fall in the Garden of Eden. I keep asking the question of “How does all of this fit together?” and the answer that keeps reoccurring is, “You don’t need to know what you can never know as a human. You need to be 100% of your nature, be what you were created to be from the beginning of time. One way that I have discovered to be 100% is my nature is to use Contemplative Practices and Cistercian charisms to move from my false self to my true self. This is done by dying to myself each day to grow in the capacity to receive Christ in my heart (capacitas dei). It means embracing a Divine Equation that uses the opposite of what the world says love is, what peace is, what fulfillment as a human means. The Divine Equation means I must let go of all that I know about being human and have in me the mind of Christ Jesus (Philippians 2:5) a mind that, if I let it into my heart, transforms me with the sign of the cross (a Trinitarian symbol of my belief) to an adopted son (or daughter) of the Father.

This past Sunday, the Church commemorates The Trinity and its place in the Mystery of Faith. Before I go too far, would you look at this marvelous YouTube on the Trinity from Bishop Barron? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqjFe3AoZYw After you have viewed it, write down three ideas you received about the Trinity that you want to pursue later on. What follows contains my three ideas I received from Bishop Barron’s YouTube on the Trinity. Because of these three contemplative encounters at the deepest level of my spirituality (the deepest so far), my focus is not on who the trinity is, but rather on how I approach this paradigm of One and the Many or Three dimensions yet one reality.

MY ROMANCE WITH THE TRINITY

I like the idea of romancing the Trinity, because it is more like the process of dating someone, getting to know them (in my case over a lifetime) where bits fall into place when there is humility and a recognition that God is God and I am me and that there is a big gap between the One True God and broken-down, old me. In my romancing the Trinity, I have a passion to want to know, love, and serve God in this world so that I might continue that love in the next world. Where do I get this love that transforms me from just a human being who lives and dies, to one that inherits the Kingdom of the Father, sharing it with Jesus (both God and Human) all with the energy of God, the Holy Spirit. Romancing also has a certain danger for me because I get so excited about my interaction with the Holy Spirit that I might unintentionally stray from what is true and authentic. Part of the danger is my thinking that, because I get these “out of this world” ideas when I ask the Holy Spirit to overshadow me, I speak for the Holy Spirit. I do not. I simply take dictation and try to bring all things together later on by my application of the Christ Principle to what I received. My romance with the Mystery of Faith is that, although I can never know God as God, I can know what Christ has revealed to us through Scriptures and authentic teachings of the dynamic Church Universal.

Romancing the Trinity means I accept that there is only one God, but three persons or personalities or something like that. God is not three gods, nor does God have gender, live in space and time as we know it, or have a beginning nor end. So what is God? God is love? God revealed the Trinity to us in ways consistent with our human weakness and fragility (I only live seventy or eighty year, if I am lucky). In my desire for contemplation (being in the presence of God the Father, the Son, with the Holy Spirit), I have stumbled across four ways I view the Trinity, all of whom are subject to my fallibility and need to love others as Jesus loved us.

I. THE TRINITY AS THE PRISM OF LIGHT

A long time ago, I think it was around 1963 that I entered the School of Theology at St. Meinrad, Indiana, to prepare for the priesthood. https://www.saintmeinrad.edu/ If you view this site, you will notice the solid sandstone buildings of the School of Theology, walls being three feet thick. On a particularly hot Mayday, I found myself walking up the four stories (no elevator) to the chapel at the top of the building. Each morning, we would gather at the top story for Eucharist, Lectio Divina, prayers in common, or other activities. I remember that there just four small windows at the top of the chapel and that they were just regular glass and no patterns to notice. So, here I am at the top chapel, no one there, asking myself why I am crazy enough to be up here rather than playing softball to ask God to explain the Trinity to me. I was not, nor am I a great student or scholar, but just someone who wants to know how there can be just one God but three persons simultaneously. I actually expected to get the answers from God that would give me relief from my seemingly unsolvable problem. I got no answers, at least none that I was prepared to hear at that time. What I got was heat and more heat. After about a half-hour, the heat won the battle of convenience over my short-lived passion for knowing about the Trinity. I got up, genuflected, and gave one last glance at the tabernacle containing the remnants of the Eucharist bread. At the top right-hand window (26″ by 36″ inches), I saw light streaming through the clear glass but refracted to include all the colors of the spectrum. It hit me in an instant. I had my answer, one that kept telling me that what I asked was far beyond my human capability or capacity to know in itself, but that the Trinity was liked visible light, which is composed of three primary colors (red, green, and blue). Together they make up light. I can’t see the colors unless the glass reflects them so I can pick up the patterns. I can’t control the light nor the refraction, but I can be aware of it and see because of the light presented to me. Without the light, I am in darkness. It reminded me of the Prologue of St. John’s Gospel. Read this passage in its context and try to see how the Trinity is highlighted.

1, In the beginning,^* was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.^a

2 He was in the beginning with God.

3^* All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be.^b What came to be4through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race;^c 5^* the light shines in the darkness,^d and the darkness has not overcome it.6^* A man named John was sent from God.^e7He came for testimony,^* to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.^f8He was not the light, but came to testify to the light.^g9The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.^h

10 He was in the world, and the world came to be through him, but the world did not know him.

11He came to what was his own, but his own people^* did not accept him.12ⁱ But to those who did accept him he gave power to become children of God, to those who believe in his name,13^*j who were born not by natural generation nor by human choice nor by a man’s decision but of God.

14And the Word became flesh^* and made his dwelling among us, and we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son,

full of grace and truth.^k15^* John testified to him and cried out, saying, “This was he of whom I said,^l ‘The one who is coming after me ranks ahead of me because he existed before me.’”16 From his fullness we have all received, grace in place of grace,^*17 because while the law was given through Moses, grace, and truth came through Jesus Christ.^m18 No one has ever seen God. The only Son, God,^* who is at the Father’s side, has revealed him.ⁿ

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/john/1

II. THE TRINITY AS A MYSTERY OF FAITH THAT IS LIKE BEYOND CAPTURING BY OUR MIND BUT YET IS NECESSARY FOR YOUR SPIRIT TO MOVE TO THE NEXT LEVEL OF OUR EVOLUTION

Some of my colleagues in the past have accused me of using the moniker of The Mystery of Faith as a way to deflect me from admitting that I don’t know what I am talking about. While admitting my limitations of knowledge in many areas, it is not that I don’t know what I am talking about as much as it is that what I am talking about is not knowable except through parables, similies, stories. Christ is Messiah and the next step in the Divine Equation, the next step in our human evolution.

God had a problem with trying to tell humans who He is. How can you explain who you are to humans who do not have the capability nor will ever have the capacity to know you as you are? In the Old Testament, Moses asked the key question: Who are you? The answer is, I am not like other gods. I am the one who is. I am the God who is. The context was Moses standing in front of a bush that was not consumed by its flame (the sign of contradiction). I am a fire that is not destroyed and which lasts forever. The Old Testament is a multitude of ways that God tried to prepare his People to receive the fullness of the one who is. God relates to Israel as the chosen people through visible representations, the pillar of fire by night, and the cloud during the day.

20 Setting out from Succoth, they camped at Etham^g near the edge of the wilderness.21^h The LORD preceded them, in the daytime by means of a column of cloud to show them the way and at night by means of a column of fire^* to give them light. Thus they could travel both day and night.22 Neither the column of cloud by day nor the column of fire by night ever left its place in front of the people.

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/exodus/13

God is the way for the Israelites and a foretaste of Christ. The Messiah is the way, the truth, and the life, leading both Jews and Gentiles through the wilderness of Original Sin to the promised land where He is. God reveals things gradually as He prepares Israel to accept a covenant relationship that is a paradigm of who he is. It is as if God tells his Israel in each age of the Old Covenant how to prepare to see him, not with eyes, but in nature, in their hearts, in their minds, with all their strength. Scripture in the Old Testament is just a record of how well the Twelve Tribes kept the commands of God, not just the 613 prescriptions of the Law, but the one written in their hearts, one that is also in the heart of God. If you want to pursue this, check out Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Laws_of_Noah and also, The Halakha at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halakha.

The evolution or natural progression of the Divine Equation laid the groundwork for the Messiah to fulfill. Setting the stage for God to become human was necessary to be consistent with the natural flow of reality from simplicity to complexity, to hand on to the next generation that was necessary for sustainability and continuity of how God speaks to humans. This gradual awareness is part of God’s DNA, the impression that He left on all physical reality, moving it from physical reality to mental reality so that humanity would be free to choose spiritual reality, the fulfillment of the Old Testament longing to be one with God, and the revelation that there is a more complex reality to One God without destroying the integrity of that Oneness.

God had to reach down from the divine nature, not to make humans gods, but to lift them up to the next level of their natural evolution, from physical reality to mental reality to animality to rationality to spirituality. Humans are spiritual apes. You can read the three volumes that I wrote on that contraversial topic of evolution and how the Rule of Threes allows us to see evolution or the natural progress in not limited to human change but that it involves me making a decision to join in the next level of human develoment, the Kingdom of Heaven. Remember, God keeps trying to reveal bits and pieces of who He is in ways humans can assimilitae into their patterns of behavior (service) without scaring them to death. Even now, whether we know it or not, humanity assimilates what is the way, the truth, and the life into what went before in order to ask the question: How does it all fit together? The problem for humans comes in accepting who God is and what he is trying to tell us collectively (humanity), as Church Universal, and individually.

In a previous blog, I spoke of God revealing to humans who he is through the Messiah, Jesus, and what He taught us about communicating with God. God is love, and that love is present to us through, with and in Jesus who alone can see the Father because He is the Object of the Father’s love, and that love is a person (not an individual but pure love, which is pure energy, who just is.) Go back and take a look at Bishop Barron’s articulate explanation of the Trinity as an archetype of love in his YouTube.

Those who have wrestled with the topic of the Trinity come to the same conclusion that I did. Use the Trinity as you would use unlimited nuclear fusion, not to power your ambitions in the world, but to seek to grow in the capacity to have in you the mind of Christ Jesus (Philippians 2:5). St. Patrick is famous for picking up a three-leaf clover and teaching about one plant having three leaves. One wonders what would have happened if it had picked up a four-leaf clover. Would history have been changed?

III. THE TRINITY IS THE DIVINE EQUATION

So, how can I measure what cannot be measured to come up with some formula that incorporates all of reality (physical universe, mental universe, and spiritual universe) into something we can’t comprehens but makes perfect sense, using the Christ Principle as the key?

The Divine Equation is just that, it originates from the Divine Nature, not human nature. It is completely unknowable of itself to humans but God worked out a way to explain it to us that each of us, from this broken-down, old Lay Cistercian down through the rest of humanity can grasp it according to the capacity within each of us to receive that equation. Remember my blog on how each of us receives reality differently depending on our capacity to receive it? Whatever is received comes from God, not us. My capacity to receive it comes from me. Each day, I must seek God where I am and as I am. I don’t consciously think of the Trinity yet, whatever I do think filters through The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the sign of the cross I made on my forehead when I got up that morning.

My paradigm for looking at all reality is Trinitarian. I use the Rule of Threes to evaluate everything that is. My formula for one reality having three separate universes, all with different dimensions but one in nature is one God has three persons. I am still chewing on what that means and will probably be doing so until I have dentures or move my mailing address to Heaven. My romancing the Trinity means it makes no difference to the Trinity if I know anything about it at all. It does mean that the Trinity makes a difference to me in so far as I use it to decrease while Christ increases in my heart. The Old Testament revealed that there is One God and also that God is One. That One God entered human nature because the Divine Nature’s purpose is Love, and that Love is a person in the form of the Holy Spirit. Jesus is one of us in all things but sin, to experience all that we do to struggle with the effects of Original Sin in our daily life and give us Hope in the future that one day we will be adopted sons and daughters of the Father. He took on the martyrdom of human living to transform it into something beyond what the physical and mental universes can offer and show how to get to Heaven. This suffering and death on a cross is a sign of contempt and disrespect, but Christ Jesus turned this symbol of shame into one of triumph. It is a sign that all reality in the spiritual universe, God’s playground, is the opposite of the world. The Trinity makes no sense to the world but, with the Christ Principle and His voluntary passion and death, this defeat is a victory for all of us.

Applying the Divine Equation means you know or want to know how to use it. You must learn the language and how it is applies to your individual and collective situation each day. If I would put this Divine Equation in terms of a formula (which is for human consumption, not God’s), it would read something like: one Nature or Being having three distinct functions (creation, re-creation, and fulfillment). These functions are all of Divine Nature. Jesus voluntarily took on not only our nature but also the mission from the Father to die for the sin of Adam and Eve to restore us again as adopted sons and daughters of the Father…Forever.

THE RULE OF THREES

In my own limited view of how all reality fits together, I have developed a way to integrate all reality into three components, each one different with its own characteristics and rules. Each universe is part of just one reality. I call it the Rule of Threes. Here are some ideas that are based on the Trinitarian formula.

There is only one reality but with three distinct universes. I took this approach to looking at spiritual reality based on the Divine Equation of one reality with three distinctive persons. The Word (John 1:1) is a person, the Son (Philippians 2:5) is a person, the Holy Spirit is a person, yet they are not one person but one nature. It would certainly be understandable for anyone to think that the Trinity is just a fantasy. The words we use are simply inadequate to describe that there is a reality without time nor space nor atoms nor gravity, actually none of the measures that ordinary people would use to describe this phenomena.

The physical universe is not only the basis of life. It is also its base. What we know, how we know, it depends on environmental factors of adequate oxygen, water, right chemical balances, not too hot, not too close to the Sun, not too far away from the Sun. Usually, humans just don’t think about our fragility on this rocky ball of gases and chemicals. Earth is the laboratory to cultivate life, a global Petrie dish of just the right combinations for life. Life moves forward not backward unless there is a physical disaster to stop the growth, and even then, life finds a way to move forward in evolution. All the laws of physics and nature apply to this universe. Humans live in this universe but have an additional dimension of living also in the mental universe. Only humans, in fact, live in this mental universe. What distinguishes this universe from the physical one is that humans evolved from animality to inhabit their own universe. It was as though they were lifted up past their animality to begin a new existence. Humans possess what no other species has, as far as we know. They have the unique qualities of human reasoning and the freedom to choose whatever they choose that is good or bad for them.

Humans kept on moving, growing, maturing both biological but also mentally. All of this so that we might approach the last phase of human evolution, the spiritual universe. God made all three universes but the spiritual one can only be accessed by individuals who choose to do so. The spiritual universe begins with the Baptism of each individual and has no ending, except it culminates in the Christ Principle.

In the beginning, say St. John in his Prologue to the Gospel (John 1:1) was the Word. What was that word? Yes. From the nothingness of God came all reality with a simple thought (pure knowledge). In the Trinity, as with humans who are made in the image and likeness of that Word, pure knowledge exists outside of time and space, a concept for which the human mind is not prepared, but it also denotes intelligence and the capability to reason and make choices. In the case of God, his choice was to be consistent with his nature (believe me, I am not so presumptuous as to know what the nature of God is) and to choose to share with all that is. This object of the Word was the Son, who is able to receive the Word and thus create love between them. This love is so dynamic that is pure energy, containing pure thought and pure love but producing a distinct person, the Holy Spirit. All three are one nature together but are different aspects of the Word.

The sharing of God is so intense that it must be shared with others (the creation of choirs of angels and the Archangels), who have God’s DNA, i.e., angelic reasoning and the ability to choose freely to be or not have God as their center. Some (Lucifer and the other fallen angels) chose poorly, while others continued to be what they were destined to be. This is called cosmic resonance, i.e., when nature is consistent with what it is created to be. Cosmic dissonance is when nature is at odds with what it was designed to be.

IV. RESONANCE, DISSONANCE AND THE TRINITY

In this sense, the physical universe has resonance which is to be what it is created to be. A supernova follows the laws of nature to be what it is. Humans, before they were lifted up from animality to rationality, were resonant, which is why Genesis 2-3 speaks of what God created as good. Something happened when God created humans. They were made in the image and likeness of God, like everything else, to be what they were created to be. Given the choice to act their nature or not (resonance or dissonance), at the urging of the Snake (Lucifer), they chose poorly. Genesis is an attempt by those early writers to describe the human condition, one that is intrinsically good, as is all that God created, but flawed because of the poor choice by Adam and Eve our progenitors, and the archetype for Original Sin in which we find ourselves today. Evil came into the world, and it was night.

Adam and Eve were, and continued to remain, free to choose what was good for them, what was true, only now the path was clouded by all the false directions that are influenced by greed, envy, lust, idolatry, gluttony, murder, theft, coveting neighbor’s goods and wife. Dissonance entered the world and would continue until someone came to restore resonance. Those who followed Adam and Eve up to and including today as you read this, still choose what is bad for them (and remember no one in their right mind chooses what they think is bad for them). The motivations and options for good or evil come from within them. At odds with that is God saying, I am the way, the truth, and the life. Some people see that, while some do not. The amazing thing is that God allows people to do evil (God does not cause nor condone evil) with the realization that they will give an accounting for their actions when they face God. It is the ultimate freedom and sign of love that God would do for me what I probably would not do for anyone else. Read the Parable

Humans could not lift themselves up to the next level of their evolution, the spiritual universe, where they would have God’s help as they make their way to fulfill their original destiny. Read the Parable of the Unforgiving Steward to get a sense of how we must die to our old self and become more like Christ.

The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant.^*21ⁿ Then Peter approaching asked him, “Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him? As many as seven times?” 22^* Jesus answered, “I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times.23^o That is why the kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king who decided to settle accounts with his servants.24^* When he began accounting, a debtor was brought before him who owed him a huge amount.25 Since he had no way of paying it back, his master ordered him to be sold, along with his wife, his children, and all his property, in payment of the debt. 26^* At that, the servant fell down, did him homage, and said, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back in full.’ 27Moved with compassion the master of that servant let him go and forgave him the loan.28 When that servant had left, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a much smaller amount.^* He seized him and started to choke him, demanding, ‘Pay back what you owe.’29Falling to his knees, his fellow servant begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’ 30 But he refused. Instead, he had him put in prison until he paid back the debt. 31 Now when his fellow servants saw what had happened, they were deeply disturbed, and went to their master and reported the whole affair.32His master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you your entire debt because you begged me to. 33^p Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant, as I had pity on you?’ 34 Then in anger his master handed him over to the torturers until he should pay back the whole debt.^* 35^*q So will my heavenly Father do to you, unless each of you forgives his brother from his heart.”

 This simple looking parable contains the Trinitarian formula of the Divine equation. The paradigm to live in Heaven and be an adopted son or daughter of the Father is to do what God is to those around you, regardless of their belief system or creed. If you want God to forgive you, you must forgive others from your heart. You not only have to forgive but replace hatred with love and love is at the core of who the Trinity is for each person, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Christ even had to leave the security of the Godhead (human language of what happened) to take on human nature. To raise us up from rationality to spirituality, Jesus had to say YES, the same YES that the Word uttered at the beginning of all that has a beginning and an ending. (Philippians 2:5-12).But taking on human nature, Christ had to endure pain, suffering, betrayal, jealousy, and all that comes from living in a condition of Original Sin, without sinning. St. Paul goes so far as to say that Christ became sin for us, he who knew no sin, because of that divine love, the Divine Equation at work.

There was one last part to the Divine Equation. Having endured humiliation, betrayal, and beating, scourging at the pillar, crowing of thorns, the stripes by which we were healed, having his mother look on as he marched to the crucifixion, and eventual death on the cross, Christ, Son of God, Messiah, transformed all reality by, with, and through his sacrifice that was offered to the Father, so that we could call God Father, so that we could be one with our brother, Jesus, so that we might, as we live in the individual seventy or eighty years we have to behold all of this, we could say YES to God in humility and truth that Jesus is Lord. That is a long sentence to say, The Divine Equation is not to be solved mentally, but with an act of our will that God’s will be done in my heart as it is in Heaven. And not only that, I can approach God now through, with, and in Jesus as heir to the Kingdom of Heaven, my destiny as a human, where I belonged from the beginning of when there was no time or matter. I am the only one who can transform living in my part of space and time to resonance from the dissonance of Original Sin and my personal sin (missing the center of what I was intended to be according to my nature).

As a Lay Cistercian who tries to be focused on having in me the mind of Jesus each day (Philippians 2:5), I have come to realize that I am the center of my time on earth but I must prefer nothing to the love of Christ because that allows God’s presence to fill me with His own energy. I can’t sustain myself without taking up my cross daily (whatever I face) and doing what Christ said. These Cistercian practices and the charisms that fall my way by of being in the presence of Christ through the Holy Spirit come not from me, but from the Divine Equation, One Reality with Three distinct dimensions, the template for tormorrow.

THOUGHTS ABOUT HOW THE TRINITY INFORMS MY SEEKING GOD EACH DAY

• I hold that contemplation is an art to be mastered not infused by our Baptism. Because of Original Sin, I must work for what I get in spirituality as well as the bread for my table.
• I realize that I must decrease and Christ must increase for me to increase the love of the Trinity in me. I depend on God to give me what I need, as a loving Father, the Son as my Advocate and mediator with the Father, and the Holy Spirit to provide me the energy I can accept to love others as Christ loves me.
• I realize that the Trinity is revealed by Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior.
• I realize that I don’t have the human capacity for knowing God as He is, but rather I have the capability of knowing God through contemplative practices. I must decrease, He must increase.
• I believe that entering the Kingdom of Heaven at Baptism, redeemed by the blood and death of Christ, my whole life is to learn how to have in me the mind of Christ Jesus. (Philippians 2:15)
• The Divine Equation does not exist on paper but is transmitted from the heart of Christ through the Holy Spirit to human hearts so disposed.
• The Divine Equation is not a problem to be solved that only a few may know but rather a key to how to love others as Christ loved us. It is open to all but not everyone either realizes it or wants it once they do know about it.
• The Divine Equation is to be lived depending on our disposition or capacity (capacitas dei) to receive energy, love, service, and knowledge from God. The Divine Equation is God sent to humans through Jesus Christ to give us grace.
• I believe that God the Holy Spirit took over as my advocate when He ascended to the Father to bring his mission to completion and be glorified by the Father for his sacrifice of love for humans, as a continuation of that same love He is between the Father and the Son.
• I begin each day by making the mark of the cross (the Trinity) to offer the day to the Father through the Son by the power of the Holy Spirit.
• The Divine Equation: One Nature, Three Persons. 1=3;
• The Rule of Threes: One Reality with three distinct universes or realities
• The myth of Perseus and the Trinity might seem far-fetched but in one of my Lectio Divina meditations, the Holy Spirit presented me with the idea that for humans, and especially for me, the Trinity was revealed by Jesus to help me through the challenges of living in the world but taking my values and energy from a source outside of me. I am not the spokesperson for the Holy Spirit. As such, I am just an end-user trying to move from my false self to my true self. To do that takes a source of energy outside of myself and even outside of the physical and mental universes. The Trinity is the kingdom (Father), the power (the Holy Spirit), and the glory (The Son, Jesus Christ) forever. God would not have made us orphans, left wailing and a victim to our own nature. Like Perseus, the Trinity left us three gifts at our baptism. We have a whole lifetime to learn how to use them. Jesus, Son of God, Savior even left the security of God to become human to SHOW us how to use this Divine Equation correctly. https://sites.google.com/site/basicgreekmythology/hero-s/perseus
  • Athena also left Perseus a magic shield and told Perseus not to look the ugly gorgon in the eye, to use the shield for his eyes. Then Athena left, the following night Perseus was visited by Zeus himself. Zeus gave his son a sword made from diamond and told the young hero that it was the strongest blade and was sure to cut the head off the beast. Zeus also handed Perseus Hades’ special helmet, the Helm of Darkness, which would make whoever wore the helmet invisible. That same night Perseus was also visited by Hermes, who loaned Perseus his winged sandals. Perseus armed with his new gifts set off to follow the advice of Athena.
  • The Father gives each person the helmet to enhance knowledge of how to love others as Christ loved us. This helmet is the energy of the Father to know as each of us can know what is good.
  • The Son gives each person a shield to protect the heart from the attacks of Satan and prevent us from being overcome by evil.
  • The Holy Spirit gives the gift of the fiery sword, perhaps the same one used by St. Michael to guard the Gates of Heaven. This sword is the double-edged blade of truth.
  • Altogether, they help us to know, love, and serve God each day and to prepare ourselves to live with the Trinity as we face the quandary of each day, trying to move from self to God.

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