Feast of Holy Trinity VI

[I]f we bear the image of the Word humiliated upon earth, and if we follow the impulses of the Holy Ghost, this union of our mind with the Word of the Father,and with the love of the Father and the Son, will be reestablished and made indelible. We shall be like God if we are like the God-man. Finally, God will be entirely in us, and we in Him in a way much more perfect than that by which we must be in Him and He in us that we might subsist.

Nicolas Malebranche, The Search After Truth 3.2.6 (LO 235).

Feast of Holy Trinity V

There are two reason why the knowledge of the divine persons was necessary for us. It was necessary for the right idea of creation. The fact of saying that God made all things by His Word excludes the error of those who say that God produced things by necessity. When we say that in Him there is a procession of love, we show that God produced creatures not because He needed them, nor because of any other extrinsic reason, but on account of the love of His own goodness. So Moses, when he had said, "In the beginning God created heaven and earth," subjoined, "God said, Let there be light," to manifest the divine Word; and then said, "God saw the light that it was good," to show proof of the divine love. The same is also found in the other works of creation. In another way, and chiefly, that we may think rightly concerning the salvation of the human race, accomplished by the Incarnate Son, and by the gift of the Holy Ghost.

St. Thomas Aquinas, ST 1.32.1 ad 3

Feast of Holy Trinity IV

In the administration of all things there is authority to establish, law to direct, and justice to execute. There is first the source of all perfection, or fons deitatis, secondly the supreme Reason, order, or LOGOS, and lastly the Spirit which quickens and inspires. We are sprung from the father, irradiated or enlightened by the son, and moved by the spirit. Certainly, that there is father, son, and spirit; that these bear analogy to the sun, light, and heat; and are otherwise expressed by the terms, principle, mind, and soul; by one or TO HEN, intellect, and life; by good, word, and love; and that generation was not attributed to the second hypostasis, the NOUS or LOGOS, in respect of time, but only in respect of origin and order, as an eternal necessary emanation; these are the express tenets of Platonists, Pythagoreans, Egyptians, and Chaldaeans.

George Berkeley, Siris, section 362.

Feast of Holy Trinity III

To this it must be said, that in eight ways the plurality of the Persons is insinuated to us in Scripture. In the first way by signification in the last (chapter) of Matthew (Mt 28:19): In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. In the second way by consignification at the beginning of Genesis, where we have "God", the Hebrews have "Elohim", which is the nominative plural of the singular "El". In the third way by supposition, as when it is said God begot God in the eighth (chapter) of Proverbs: Before all the hills the Lord has generated Me (Pr 8:25). In the fourth way by appropriation, as so (Gn 1:1): In the beginning God created etc. For there "God" is appropriated to the Father and The Beginning to the Son. In the fifth way by iteration, as in the sixth (chapter) of Isaiah (Is 6:3): Holy, Holy, Holy the Lord God Sabaoth. In the sixth way by the order of words, (as in) the Psalm (Ps 67:6-7): May God bless us, our God, may God bless us. In the seventh way by connotation in the act of mission, as when there is said in the fourth (chapter) to the Galatians (Gal 4:4): God sent etc. In the eighth way by apparition, just as the three men appeared to Abraham in the eighteenth (chapter) of Genesis.

St. Bonaventure, Commentary on the Sentences, bk. 1 d. 2 dub 8

Feast of Holy Trinity II

And here, let it be observed, that we have a sort of figure or intimation of the sacred Mystery of the Trinity in Unity even in what has been now said concerning the Divine Attributes. For as the Attributes of God are many in one mode of speaking, yet all One in God; so, too, there are Three Divine Persons, yet these Three are One. Let it not be for an instant supposed that I am paralleling the two cases, which is the Sabellian heresy; but I use the one in illustration of the other; and, in way of illustration, I observe as follows: When we speak of God as Wisdom, or as Love, we mean to say that He is Wisdom, and that He is Love; that He is each separately and wholly, yet not that Wisdom is the same as Love, though He is both at once. Wisdom and Love stand for ideas quite distinct from each other, and not to be confused, though they are united in Him. In all He is and all He does, He is Wisdom and He is Love; yet it is both true that He is but One, and without qualities, and withal true again that Love is not Wisdom. Again, as God is Wisdom or Love, so is Wisdom or Love in and with God, and whatever God is. Is God eternal? so is His wisdom. Is He unchangeable? so is His wisdom. Is He uncreate, infinite, almighty, all-holy? His wisdom has these characteristics also. Since God has no parts or passions, whatever is really of or from God, is all that He is. If there is confusion of language here, and an apparent play upon words, this arises from our incapacity in comprehension and expression.

Ven. (in a few months to be Bl.!) John Henry Newman, "The Mystery of the Holy Trinity"

Feast of Holy Trinity

Why is the mystery of the Holy Trinity shown forth when man is formed and also when he is formed anew? Not just because man is, on earth, the only initiate into this mystery and the only creature to venerate it, but because he alone is in the image of the Trinity. Sensible and irrational animals have only a living spirit, which is incapable of independent existence, and is completely devoid of mind or reason. But the perfectly suprasensible angels and archangels, as they are intelligent and rational, have a mind and reason, but no quickening spirit, since they also lack bodies which would need to be animated by such a spirit. Man is the only creature who, in the image of the tri-hypostatic Being, has a mind, reason, and a spirit which gives life to his body, inasmuch as he also has a body which needs to be infused with life. When our nature was re-made in the Jordan, the most sublime and all-accomplishing Trinity was made manifest, as the archetype of the image in our soul.

St. Gregory Palamas, Homily Sixty, Saint Gregory Palamas: The Homilies. Mount Thabor Publishing (2009) p. 495.

The Glad Lilies Rocked in the Ripples that Rolled

The Old Swimmin'-Hole
by James Whitcomb Riley

OH! the old swimmin'-hole! whare the crick so still and deep
Looked like a baby-river that was laying half asleep,
And the gurgle of the worter round the drift jest below
Sounded like the laugh of something we onc't ust to know
Before we could remember anything but the eyes
Of the angels lookin' out as we left Paradise;
But the merry days of youth is beyond our controle,
And it's hard to part ferever with the old swimmin'-hole.

Oh! the old swimmin'-hole! In the happy days of yore,
When I ust to lean above it on the old sickamore,
Oh! it showed me a face in its warm sunny tide
That gazed back at me so gay and glorified,
It made me love myself, as I leaped to caress
My shadder smilin' up at me with sich tenderness.
But them days is past and gone, and old Time's tuck his toll
From the old man come back to the old swimmin'-hole.

Oh! the old swimmin'-hole! In the long, lazy-days
When the humdrum of school made so many run-a-ways,
How plesant was the jurney down the old dusty lane,
Whare the tracks of our bare feet was all printed so plane
You could tell by the dent of the heel and the sole
They was lots o'fun on hands at the old swimmin'-hole.
But the lost joys is past! Let your tears in sorrow roll
Like the rain that ust to dapple up the old swimmin'-hole.

There the bullrushes growed, and the cattails so tall,
And the sunshine and shadder fell over it all;
And it mottled the worter with amber and gold
Tel the glad lilies rocked in the ripples that rolled;
And the snake-feeder's four gauzy wings fluttered by
Like the ghost of a daisy dropped out of the sky,
Or a wounded apple-blossom in the breeze's controle
As it cut acrost some orchurd to'rds the old swimmin'-hole.

Oh! the old swimmin'-hole! When I last saw the place,
The scene was all changed, like the change in my face;
The bridge of the railroad now crosses the spot
Whare the old divin'-log lays sunk and fergot.
And I stray down the banks whare the trees ust to be -
But never again will theyr shade shelter me!
And I wish in my sorrow I could strip to the soul,
And dive off in my grave like the old swimmin'-hole.