The first thing our Constitutions say about communication is that God communicates. He communicates His grace, communicates His goods … He communicates Himself to the person (CFI 4). That is also the principle of the Spiritual Exercises in the 15th annotation: “… in the Spiritual Exercises, it is more fitting and much better, when seeking the divine will, that the Creator and Lord Himself should communicate Himself to His devout soul, inflaming it with His love and praise, and disposing it for the way in which it will be better able to serve Him in future” (S.E. 15). It is this communication of God and this availability of the person for God’s communication that is the foundation of the spiritual life.
GOD COMMUNICATES HIMSELF
Christianity is one of the monotheistic religions, but what characterizes the Christian faith is that, being monotheistic, it is not ‘monistic’. Christianity confesses one God, but not a God who is alone, solitary, closed in on Himself. Christianity confesses that God is perfect communion of three different persons, i.e. is, in Himself, communication.
When we were taught the dogma of the Trinity we received the explanation, perhaps we have already forgotten it, of the “processions” of the Trinity: The Son who proceeds from the Father and the Spirit who proceeds from the Father and the Son. They explained and maybe we even prayed it sometimes, how relations between the three divine persons, different, are: full openness, acceptance and donation, transparency, whence comes perfect communion. And they made us memorize the characteristics of the intra-trinitarian relations: without fusion, without absorption, without separation.
By Pilar de la Puerta FI
