The
following is an excerpt from the prayer “Eternal Trinity, Deep Mystery” by St.
Catherine of Siena, Doctor of the Church:
O Eternal Trinity, I have tasted
and seen the depth of your mystery and the beauty of your creation with the
light of my understanding. I have clothed myself with your likeness and have
seen what I shall be. Eternal Father, you have given me a share in your power
and the wisdom that Christ claims as his own, and your Holy Spirit has given me
the desire to love you. You are my Creator, eternal Trinity, and I am your
creature. You have made of me a new creation in the blood of your Son, and I
know that you are moved with love at the beauty of your creation, for you have
enlightened me.
Wherever the Trinity is, there is
spaciousness and graciousness. Like the humble stable in C.S. Lewis’s book “The
Last Battle”, the Trinity is far bigger on the inside than it appears on the
outside and should you ever enter into the ‘tower’ where True Self dwells with
the Trinity, you will begin to discover light and life that the Wounded Warrior
would find unbearable.
Why unbearable? What could Jesus have
said to his Disciples that they would not have been able to bear before the
Spirit came to them to lead them to their real and true selves and to open a
door revealing (declaring) all that belongs to the Father and the Son? Jesus
didn’t say, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot understand them now.” He said, “…but you
cannot bear it now.”
When we live with the Wounded Warrior,
we have little capacity to bear the reality of the light inside the circle of
the Trinity because the Warrior is self-oriented, self-defined and self-circling
even though in its spiritual quest it tries to be otherwise. However, no matter
how hard it tries, everything comes back to its self and the question of how it
is succeeding or failing. Even the disciples, who lived with Jesus for three
years, needed the Holy Spirit to break through the defensive walls of their
flesh and create within each of them the capacity to see a circle of light much
larger and more powerful than they could ever have imagined. Without the
Spirit, they would have shut down in the face of it.
Can anything be too big, too free, too
delightful, too powerful, too abundant or too loving for us to be able to bear?
Absolutely. The inside of the Trinity will always be too much for us to bear if
our image of God is a dark reflection of our own insecurities, fears,
self-doubts and our ineffable need to be right. Not only do we always want to
be right when we are challenged by other people but we are continually
scrambling to make sure we are right with God and that we have the right
beliefs, the right faith, the right prayer system, the right directions, the
right track, a right mind…
All these things have to do with the
Warrior’s security system and very little to do with life inside the Trinity.
For us, being right means being safe and safe is good even if it means living
in cramped and dark quarters. If we ‘get it right’ then nobody can blame us for
whatever, especially and hopefully not God. Meanwhile, the Trinity constantly invites
us to live in the light of a relationship where rejoicing is the first language
and ‘blame’ is a word from an ancient dead language.
In the second reading for this Sunday
Paul says, “Since we are justified by
faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we
have obtained access to this grace in which we stand…”
Have you ever noticed that the Wounded
Warrior, the false self, never ever feels spiritually justified? So, then it concludes that
its faith is faulty. It determines that when it doesn’t feel at peace with God
or with itself (which is most of the time), it’s because it hasn’t done all the
right things.
True Self, at home with the Trinity,
has let go of the need to be right and righteous. It knows that in itself it
has absolutely no capacity to form itself into something that deserves the
unbearable freedom of the Trinity. It knows that the only thing left to do is
rejoice in the Resurrection that opened the portals of the Kingdom to all who
desire to walk through. True Self allows itself to be soaked by the Spirit’s
anointing so that it can bear all that Trinitarian love which, to the Warrior,
is unbearable and unimaginable. It is unbearable to the Warrior because to
fully receive it means letting go and losing control. It is unimaginable because
letting go and losing control of everything it thinks is ‘right’ is
frightening.
In the last
reflection I spoke of being with your True Self and allowing the Trinitarian
light to shine on the Warrior by recognizing and observing, through and with
the Trinity, the Warrior’s struggles and challenges. This is truly “dying to
self” for it always feels like death and crucifixion to choose to leave the
Warrior and seek out the dwelling place of True Self. Even when one has experienced the peace and
healing that comes from allowing the Trinity to shine its compassionate light
on the Warrior, it is still difficult to stay in the Tower and allow the
Warrior to be diminished by the light. We are all addicted to our Warriors’
needs, perceptions, battles and control systems and once we allow ourselves to
go back to the war zone, we forget who we really are. We forget that we have a
choice. We forget that God’s Truth, in the person of Christ, came through the
power of the Spirit to set us free. We forget that the Warrior can never gain
us that freedom. We forget the reality of True Self and we settle back into a
life of aching and yearning for more than we have while strenuously defending
the little we think we have.
I am always
amazed at how difficult I can find it to make the simple decision to move to the
Tower and stay with my True Self and stay within the gentle, compassionate wideness
of the Trinity. I am amazed at how easily I slip back to the Warrior’s compound
at the first sign of trouble in order to join the battle and add to the wounds
and scars of my own self-rightness.
Is this not the
original sin, the original and ongoing struggle, challenge and brokenness in us
all? While the Trinity invites us to live and flourish within the warmth its
freedom and love…
…we prefer to stay
on the outside and shiver in the cold.
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