While the person of God in the Old Testament is seen rather from the outside and from above, at a distance from man, on the other hand his paternal and friendly presence is expressly affirmed in him, as well as his spousal love for the chosen people. He strongly feels the Spirit of God as a force that acts in favor of the people through their chiefs and as the inspirer of the prophets. There is also no lack of prophetic voices of the messianic announcement of an even more intimate and permanent presence of God in the heart of man, as in Ez 36:25-5S, where a “new” spirit and heart are spoken of, as a gift and guarantee of God with our personal communion.
God will finally be Immanuel, God with us (cf. 1s 7,14), sending his liberating Servant to establish the kingdom of peace, justice and universal reconciliation, which becomes the apex of future messianic joy ( see 1s 40,42; 49; 53).
But the authentic indwelling of God in the heart of man, making him participate in his own Trinitarian life in the Holy Spirit, appears as the great novelty of the incarnation of the Son of God the Father, incarnated by the work of the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Maria. In this way, the creation and redemption of man as the image of the triune God, which was foreseen and – a in Gn 1, 26-27, is explained and deepened.
The New Testament clearly reveals the three divine persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. While the synoptics, especially Luke, illustrate the operation of the Holy Spirit in the Lord Jesus Christ, Paul and John more expressly deepen the Trinitarian indwelling in our hearts, as they open themselves to the gift of God and to his love. The apex of revelation is undoubtedly found in Jesus’ farewell speeches at the Last Supper (Jn 13-17), where the Lord asks “that all may be one as we are one” (cf. Jn 17:21- 23), namely, with the unity of the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit (cf. 1 Jn 1,4; 4,2-19. Eph 2,14-22; 3,419). Saint Ignatius of Antioch and Saint Irenaeus of Lyon make us understand how the first Christians lived and understood this mystery.
While the Fathers of the Church fight for the true faith in the Holy Trinity, particularly for the person of Christ, as true God and true man and for the divinity of the Holy Spirit in the various ecumenical councils of the 4th-6th centuries, the Eastern mystical masters such as Origen, Athanasius, Cyril of Jerusalem, Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa and others penetrate into the depth of our “divinization”, that is, into our intimate participation in the divine life that is born and develops in the soul of believers open to the grace offered in generous charity. The Song of Songs is frequently reread to explain this intimate Trinitarian union as nuptial love in the Holy Spirit, lived at the bottom or at the top of the soul in love. In the West, the Fathers and theologians do not explain indwelling so much in this profound perspective, but rather in its unitive and beatifying reality as the fruit of the continued incarnation, that is, in the permanent birth of Christ in us, Son of the Father, by the work of the Holy Spirit. On the other hand, the classical teachers of scholastic theology, such as Saint Thomas, Bonaventure and Scotus, strive, each according to his particular “angelic” genius.
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“seraphic” and “subtle” in penetrating the mystery in the light of science, wisdom and love. The mystics, such as Bernard, William of Saint Theodoric, Richard of Saint Victor, knowing that “love itself is science”, sing the beauty of the unity of the spirit in the spiritual marriage according to the Song of Songs, in love with the intimate experience of the Trinitarian life in the human heart. Among them there is a whole group of highly mystical women, such as Hildegard of Bingen, Clare of Assisi, Beatrice of Nazareth, Hedwig of Antwerp, Matilda of Magdeburg, Gertrude the Great, Angela of Foligno, Juliana of Liege, Catherine of Siena, etc. Since the end of the 13th century, a sublime and daring Trinitarian mysticism has flourished in Northern Europe, guided by Eckhart, Susón, Taulero, Ruusbroek, Herp, Margarita Porete, preached and explained especially to numerous religious or lay women, passionate about the search for love. of God. The vital center of this Trinitarian mysticism is precisely the birth of God, of Christ in the soul under the action of the Holy Spirit, losing himself and annihilating himself in the triune and one divine being, our All, in pure love and absolute poverty, leaving act and live only God, the All in our nothing.
Such an intoxicating experience of God in the soul, described in frequently difficult and obscure terms, and often criticized for it, permeated the sixteenth century throughout Europe, above all through the mystical publications of the Cologne Carthusians. In Spain it reaches its peak in the mysticism of Teresa de í vila and Juan de la Cruz.
After the sublime flowering of “European” Trinitarian mysticism, came, in the 16th and 17th centuries, a sudden and fanatical reaction, motivated among other things by the abuses inherent in daring Trinitarian mysticism. The consequence was a strong reservation about the mystical experience of God. But for several decades there has been a return to discussion about the role of each of the persons of the Trinity in the Trinitarian indwelling. The very experience of the Church has made it possible to recover and renew both the doctrine and the practice of the intimate Trinitarian life in the hearts of men. Indeed, the Trinitarian life is now once again proposed as the soul, the very substance of ecclesial life, starting from the Second Vatican Council and from the magisterium of John Paul II in his three Encyclicals: Dives in mercy, Redemptor hominis, Dominum et vivificantem.
O. van Asseldolzk
Bibl.: E. Llamas, Trinitarian Inhabitation, in DTDC, 691-710; G. Philips, Trinitarian Indwelling and Grace, Personal Union with the Living God, Trinitarian Secretariat, Salamanca 1974; B, Forte, Trinidad as history, Follow me, Salamanca 1988; A, Turrado, God in man. Fullness or tragedy, BAC Madrid 1971.
PACOMIO, Luciano, Encyclopedic Theological Dictionary, Divine Word, Navarra, 1995
Source: Encyclopedic Theological Dictionary