Trinity Sunday Nicholas Cabasilas

 

Trinity Sunday, from the Night Office first Nocturne Reading to Vespers and Benediction enriches our whole day.

 

From: Donald - - -
To: nunraw - - -
Sent: Sunday, 3 June 2012, 20:45
Subject: Trinity

TRINITY SUNDAY 

Yr. B p274-273.

From The Life in Christ
by Nicholas Cabasilas

(Lib. 2: PG 150, 532-533).

The Life in Christ,  a Greek theological classic written some time after 1354, was intended not for monks or theologians, but for ordinary living in the world. Our extract shows the part played by each Person of the Blessed Trinity in our redemption , and explains why is fitting for each of the divine Persons to be invoked when baptism is conferred.

 

Although it was by a common benevolence that the Trinity saved our race, each one of the blessed Persons played his own part. The Father was reconciled, the Son reconciled. And the Holy Spirit was the gift bestowed upon those who were now God’s friends. The Father recreated us through the Son, but it is the Spirit who gives life.

Even in the first creation there was a shadowed indication of the Trinity, for the Father created, the Son was the Creator’s hand, and the Paraclete was the Life-giver’s breath. But why speak of this? For in fact it is only the new creation that the distinctions within the Godhead are revealed to us.

God bestowed many blessings on his creation in every age, but you will not find any of them being ascribed to the Father alone, or to the Son, or to the Spirit. On the contrary, all have their source in the Trinity, which performs every act by a single power, providence, and creativity. But in the dispensation by which the Trinity restored our race, something new occurred. It was still the Trinity that jointly willed my salvation new providentially arranged the means for its accomplishment, but the Trinity no longer acted as one. The active role belonging not to the Father, or to the Spirit, but to the Word alone. It was the only-begotten Son alone who assumed flesh and flesh and blood, who was scourged, who suffered and died and rose again.

Through these acts of his our nature received new life; through these acts baptism was instituted – a new birth and a new creation. Only in this new creation and the distinctions within the Godhead revealed. Therefore, when those who have obtained this holy re-creation call on God over the sacred bath, it is fitting that they should distinguish between the persons by invoking them as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

 

Responsory           Matthew 28: 18-19

  

To me has been given all power in heaven and on earty.
- Go and teach all nations.
Baptize them in the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
- Go and teach . . .