THE SONG OF THE THREE LIGHTS

After a long investigation into the mystery of God, Saint Augustine wrote a famous treatise, the De Trinitate in which we read: “Behold, they are three: the Lover, the Beloved, Love”. Augustine understands that God is a mystery of love. It is the great achievement of the believer’s search for him; landing after which nothing is as before but everything is relived in the light of him: “In truth – continues Ours – you see the Trinity if you see love”. Here is the point: if you know how to recognize – the great bishop seems to tell us – love in you and around you you see God. The Trinity is therefore not a cold dogma, nor a theological or philosophical abstraction. So let’s try to approach this burning bush that attracts and inspires fear. We have said that God is love; what does it mean? That God is not a solitude. In fact, in order to love, there must be at least two. This mutual love between Father and Son is the Spirit, whose consecrating dynamism shapes the communion of the Lovers. Where love is true – we experience it daily – life is shared; where the gesture is chaste and not prehensile, the miracle of unity flourishes.
If our community, family, ecclesial life is in the image of the Trinity, the divine way of loving is reflected in some way in our human way of loving. So that this is not just a wishful thinking, I think it is urgent to re-learn to look more into the Mystery of God because, as Plotinus rightly said, “each person becomes what he contemplates”. There we will discover that in God love is above all a donum and not a dolum. Two terms donum and dolum with the same root but with opposite results. The donum is quality love, which arises from inner fullness, from emotional freedom, which is open to sharing, and which does not know calculation and which knows how to be discreet, humble and simple at the same time. The dolum on the other hand, which unfortunately affects our relationships, is a deceptive gift from a fake donor, who offers yes but to have a return and who in any case binds him to himself and puts his brand on his products … Nowadays, and there is no it is necessary to insist, everything is paid for what it is worth or for what it appears and the line between fiction and reality, between donum and dolum is very thin. Our reports back it up, and our faces reflect it. So looking into the Mystery, as we were saying, to re-learn to love with the heart of the Father, with a heart that is therefore patient, faithful, and creative; to love in the image of the Son, or rather in the gratitude of those who know how to welcome themselves every morning as a gift; to love in the freedom of the Spirit, that freedom which does not remain a prisoner in the face of rejection, and which does not retreat in the face of closures and hardships.

Commentary by b. Sandro Carotta, osb
Abbazia di Santa Maria – Praglia (Italy)

Translation by f. Mark Hargreaves, Prinknash Abbey