SERMON XXIX. TRINITY SUNDAY. - ON THE LOVE OF THE THREE DIVINE
PERSONS FOR MAN.
"Going, therefore teach ye all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the
Son, and of the Holy Ghost." (MATT. xxviii. 19)
ST. LEO has said, that the nature of God is by its essence, goodness itself. ”Deus cujus natura
bonitas” Now, goodness naturally diffuses itself. ”Bonum est sui diffusivum." And by
experience we know that men of a good heart are full of love for all, and desire to share with
all the goods which they enjoy God being infinite goodness, is all love towards us his
creatures. Hence St. John calls him pure love pure charity. "God is charity." (1 John iv. 8.)
And therefore he ardently desires to make us partakers of his own happiness. Faith teaches
us how much the Three Divine Persons have done through love to man, and to enrich him
with heavenly gifts. In saying to his apostles ”Teach ye all nations, baptizing them in the
name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, ” Jesus Christ wished that they
should not only instruct the Gentiles in the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity but that they
should also teach them the love which the adorable Trinity bears to man. I intend to propose
this day for your consideration the love shown to us by the Father in our creation; secondly,
the love of the Son in our redemption; and thirdly, the love of the Holy Ghost, in our
sanctification.
First Point The love shown to us by the Father in our creation.
1. ”I have loved thee with an everlasting love, therefore have I drawn thee, taking pity on
thee." (Jer. xxxi. 3.) My son, says the Lord, I have loved you for eternity, and, through love for
you, I have shown mercy to you by drawing you out of nothing. Hence, beloved Christians,
of all those who love you, God has been your first lover. Your parents have been the first to
love you on this earth; but they have loved you only after they had known you. But, before
you had a being, God loved you. Before your father or mother was born, God loved you; yes,
even before the creation of the world, he loved you. And how long before creation has God
loved you? Perhaps for a thousand years, or for a thousand ages. It is needless to count years
or ages; God loved you from eternity. "I have loved thee with an everlasting love." As long
as he has been God, he has luved you: as long as he has loved himself, he has loved you. The
thought of this love made St. Agnes the Virgin exclaim: “I am prevented by another lover."
When creatures asked her heart, she answered: “No: I cannot prefer you to my God. He has
been the first to love me; it is then but just that he should hold the first place in my
affections. ”
2. Thus, brethren, God has loved you from eternity, and through pure love, he has selected
you from among so many men whom he could have created in place of you; but he has left
them in their nothingness, and has brought you into existence, and placed you in the world.
For the love of you he has made so many other beautiful creatures, that they might serve you,
and that they might remind you of the love which he has borne to you, and of the gratitude
which you owe to him. "Heaven and Earth," says St. Augustine, ”and all things tell me to
love thee. ” When the saint beheld the sun, the stars, the mountains, the sea, the rains, they all
appeared to him to speak, and to say: Augustine, love God; for he has created us that you
might love him. When the Abbe de Ranee, the founder of La Trappe, looked at the hills, the
fountains, or flowers, he said that all these creatures reminded him of the love which God
had borne him. St. Teresa used to say, that these creatures reproached her with her
ingratitude to God.
Whilst she held a flower or fruit in her hand, St. Mary Magdalene de Pazzi used to feel her
heart wounded with divine love, and would say within herself: Then, my God has thought
from eternity of creating this flower and this fruit that I might love him.
3. Moreover, seeing us condemned to hell, in punishment of our sins, the Eternal Father,
through love for us, has sent his Son on the earth to die on the cross, in order to redeem us
from hell, and to bring us with himself into Paradise. “God so loved the world, as to give his
only begotten Son”(John iii. 16), love, which the apostle calls an excess of love. "For his
exceeding charity wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sin, has quickened us
together in Christ." (Eph. ii. 4, 5.)
4. See also the special love which God has shown you in bringing you into life in a Christian
country, and in the bosom of the Catholic or true Church. How many are born among the
pagans, among the Jews, among the Mahometans and heretics, and all are lost. Consider that, compared with these, only a few not even the tenth part of the human race have the
happiness of being born in a country where the true faith reigns; and, among that small
number, he has chosen you. Oh! what an invaluable benefit is the gift of faith! How many
millions of souls, among infidels and heretics, are deprived of the sacraments, of sermons, of
good example, and of the other helps to salvation which we possess in the true Church. And
the Lord resolved to bestow on us all these great graces, without any merit on our part, and
even with the foreknowledge of our demerits. For when he thought of creating us and of
conferring these favours upon us, he foresaw our sins, and the injuries we would commit
against him.
Second Point. The love which the Son of God has shown to us in our redemption.
5. Adam, our first father, sins by eating the forbidden apple, and is condemned to eternal
death, along with all his posterity. Seeing the whole human race doomed to perdition, God
resolved to send a redeemer to save mankind. Who shall come to accomplish their
redemption? Perhaps an angel or a seraph. No; the Son of God, the supreme and true God,
equal to the Father, offers himself to come on earth, and there to take human flesh, and to die
for the salvation of men. O prodigy of Divine love! Man, says St. Fulgentius, despises God,
and separates himself from God, and through love for him, God comes on earth to seek after
rebellious man. "Homo Deum contemnens, a Deo discessit: Deus hominem diligens, ad
homines venit." (Serm. in Nativ. Christ.) Since, says St. Augustine, we could not go to the
Redeemer, he has deigned to come to us. "Quia ad mediatorem venire non poteramus, ipse
ad nos venire dignatus est." And why has Jesus Christ resolved to come to us? According to
the same holy doctor, it is to convince us of his great love for us. ”Christ came, that man
might know how much God loves him."
6. Hence the Apostle writes: "The goodness and kindness of God our Saviour appeared." (Tit.
iii. 5.) In the Greek text, the words are: ”Singularis Dei erga homines apparuit amor :"“The
singular love of God towards men appeared." In explaining this passage, St. Bernard says,
that before God appeared on earth in human flesh, men could not arrive at a knowledge of
the divine goodness; therefore the Eternal Word took human nature, that, appearing in the
form of man, men might know the goodness of God. ”Priusquam apparet humanitas, latebat
beniguitas, sed undo tanta agnosci poterat? Venit in came ut, apparante humanitate,
cognosceretur benignitas." (Serm. i., in Eph.) And what greater love and goodness could the
Son of God show to us, than to become man and to become a worm like us, in order to save
us from, perdition? What astonishment would we not feel, if we saw a prince become a worm
to save the worms of his kingdom! And what shall we say at the sight of a God made man
like us, to deliver us from eternal death? "The word was made flesh." (John i. 14.) A God
made flesh! if faith did not assure us of it, who could ever believe it? Behold then, as St. Paul
says, a God as it were annihilated. ”He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant and in
habit found as a man. ” (Phil. ii. 7.) By these words the Apostle gives us to understand, that
the Son of God, who was filled with the divine majesty and power, humbled himself so as to
assume the lowly and impotent condition of human nature, taking the form or nature of a
servant, and becoming like men in his external appearance, although, as St. Chrysostom
observes, he was not a mere man, but man and God. Hearing a deacon singing the words of
St. John, "and the Word was made flesh," St. Peter of Alcantara fell into ecstasy, and flew
through the air to the altar of the most holy sacrament.
7. But this God of love, the Incarnate Word, was not content with becoming flesh for the love
of man; but, according to Isaias, he wished to live among us, as the last and lowest, and most
afflicted of men. ”There is no beauty in him, nor comeliness: and we have seen him despised,
and the most abject of men, a man of sorrows." (Isa. iii. 2, 3.) He was a man of sorrows. Yes;
for the life of Jesus Christ was full of sorrows. Virum dolorum. He was a man made on
purpose to be tormented with sorrows. From his birth till his death, the life of our Redeemer
was all full of sorrows.
8. And because he came on earth to gain our love, as he declared when he said “I am come to cast fire on the earth; and what will I but that it be kindled ?" (Luke xii. 49), he wished at the
close of his life to give us the strongest marks and proofs of the love which he bears to us.
"Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them unto the end." (John xiii. 1.)
Hence he not only humbled himself to death for us, but he also chose to die the most painful
and opprobrious of all deaths. "He humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even
unto the death of the cross." (Phil. ii. 8.) They who were crucified among the Jews, were
objects of malediction and reproach to all. “He is accursed of God that hangeth on a tree."
(Deut. xxi. 23.) Our Redeemer wished to die the shameful death of the cross, in the midst of a
tempest of ignominies and sorrows. “I am come into the depths of the sea, and a tempest
hath overwhelmed me." (Ps. lxviii. 3.)
9. ”In this” says St. John, "we have known the charity of God, because he hath laid down his
life for us." (1 John iii. 16.) And how could God give us a greater proof of his love than by
laying down his life for us? Or, how is it possible for us to behold a God dead on the cross for
our sake, and not love him? "For the charity of Christ presseth us." (2 Cor. v. 14.) By these
words St. Paul tells us, that it is not so much what Jesus Christ has done and suffered for our
salvation, as the love which he has shown in suffering and dying for us, that obliges and
compels us to love him. He has, as the same Apostle adds, died for all, that each of us may
live no longer for himself, but only for that God who has given his life for the love of us.
“Christ died for all, that they also who live, may not live to themselves, but unto him who
died for them, and rose again." (2 Cor. v. 15.) And, to captivate our love, he has, after having
given his life for us, left himself for the food of our souls. “Take ye and eat: this is my body."
(Matt. xxvi. 26.) Had not faith taught that he left himself for our food, who could ever believe
it? But of the prodigy of divine love manifested in the holy sacrament, I shall speak on the
second Sunday after Pentecost Let us pass to a brief consideration of the third point.
Third Point. On the love shown to us by the Holy Ghost in our sanctification.
10. The Eternal Father was not content with giving us his Son Jesus Christ, that he might save
us by his death; he has also given us the Holy Ghost, that he may dwell in our souls, and that
he may keep them always inflamed with holy love. In spite of all the injuries which he
received on earth from men, Jesus Christ, forgetful of their ingratitude, after having ascended
into heaven, sent us the Holy Ghost, that, by his holy flames, this divine spirit might kindle in
our hearts the fire of divine charity, and sanctify our souls. Hence, when he descended on the
apostles, he appeared in the form of tongues of fire. "And there appeared to them parted
tongues, as it were of fire." (Acts ii. 3.) Hence the Church prescribes the following prayer:
”We beseech thee, O Lord, that the Spirit may inflame us with that fire which the Lord Jesus
Christ sent on the earth, and vehemently wished to be enkindled." This is the holy fire which
inflamed the saints with the desire of doing great things for God, which enabled them to love
their most cruel enemies, to seek after contempt, to renounce all the riches and honours of the world, and even to embrace with joy torments and death.
11. The Holy Ghost is that divine bond which unites the Father with the Son; it is he that
unites our souls, through love, with God. For, as St. Augustine says, an union with God is the
effect of love. "Charity is a virtue which unites us with God." The chains of the world are
chains of death, but the bonds of the Holy Ghost are bonds of eternal life, because they bind
us to God, who is our true and only life.
12. Let us also remember that all the lights, inspirations, divine calls, all the good acts which
we have performed during our life, all our acts of contrition, of confidence in the divine
mercy, of love, of resignation, have been the gifts of the Holy Ghost. ”Likewise the Spirit also
helpeth our infirmity; for we know not what we should pray for as we ought; but the Spirit
himself asketh for us with unspeakable groanings." (Rom. viii. 26.) Thus, it is the Holy Ghost
that prays for us; for we know not what we ought to ask, but the Holy Spirit teaches us what
we should pray for.
13. In a word, the Three Persons of the Most Holy Trinity have endeavoured to show the love
which God has borne us, that we may love him through gratitude. “When," says St. Bernard,
”God loves, he wishes only to be loved. ” It is, then, but just that we love that God who has
been the first to love us, and to put us under so many obligations by so many proofs of
tender love. “Let us, therefore, love God, because God first hath loved us." (1 John iv. 19.) Oh!
what a treasure is charity! it is an infinite treasure, because it makes us partakers of the
friendship of God. ”She is an infinite treasure to men, which they that use become the friends
of God." (Wis. vii. 14.) But, to acquire this treasure, it is necessary to detach the heart from
earthly things. “Detach the heart from creatures," says St. Teresa, "and you shall find God."
In a heart filled with earthly affections, there is no room for divine love. Let us therefore
continually implore the Lord in our prayers, communions, and visits to the blessed
sacrament, to give us his holy love; for this love will expel from our souls all affections for the
things of this earth. ”When," says St. Francis de Sales, ”a house is on fire, all that is within is
thrown out through the windows." By these words the saint meant, that when a soul is
inflamed with divine love, she easily detaches herself from creatures: and Father Paul
Segneri, the younger, used to say, that divine love is a thief that robs us of all earthly
affections, and makes us exclaim: ”What, O my Lord, but thee alone, do I desire ?"
14. ”Love is strong as death." (Cant. viii. 6.) As no creature can resist death when the hour of
dissolution arrives, so there is no difficulty which love, in a soul that loves God, does not
overcome. When there is question of pleasing her beloved, love conquers all things: it
conquers pains, losses, ignominies. ”Nihil tam durum quod non amoris igne vincatur." This
love made the martyrs, in the midst of torments, racks, and burning gridirons, rejoice, and
thank God for enabling them to suffer for him: it made the other saints, when there was no
tyrant to torment them, become, as it were, their own executioners, by fasts, disciplines, and
penitential austerities. St. Augustine says, that in doing what one loves there is no labour,
and if there be, the labour itself is loved. ”In eo quod amatur aut non laboratur, aut ipse
labor amatur."
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