Book Description

n France this small work by the Reverend Father Bernadot O. P.: treating of the relation between Holy Communion and the indwelling of the Blessed Trinity in the soul, has had a large circulation. We may hope in consequence that it has effected considerable good, by making its readers realize more fully and deeply one of the most consoling and helpful doctrines of our Faith, e.g., the indwelling not only of the Holy Ghost, but of the Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity in the souls of all those in a state of sanctifying grace. This great fact is realized by comparatively few lay Catholics, and, may we not also say, insufficiently inculcated from our pulpits? All the saints have insisted that progress in holiness depends on a growing realization of the Divine Presence. "All sins are committed," says St. Teresa, "because we do not think of God as really present, but imagine Him as very far off." St. Francis of Sales rernarks: "Most of the failures of good people in the discharge of their duty come to pass because they do not keep themselves sufficiently in the Presence of God." This Presence of God we should try and realize, is not only that of His creative and conserving action, which is common to all being, but the indwelling of the Blessed Trinity in the souls of each of us provided we are free from mortal sin. This mode of God's Presence is frequently referred to by St. John in both his gospel and first epistle, and in the epistles of St. Paul; in fact to read St. Paul keeping this fact in view seems to reveal his epistles in a new light. What each of us should try and do is to cultivate by frequent acts of our will the realization of this indwelling presence of the Blessed Trinity, as the Carmelite Sister Elizabeth of the Trinity wrote: "To attain to the ideal life of the soul we must live in the supernatural, realizing that God is in our inmost being; then nothing is commonplace, not even the most ordinary actions, for one does not live in thenl but above them." Thus we may hope to arrive at that "familiaritas stupenda nimis " -" wonderful companionship" of which the author of the Imitation speaks. (Book II, Ch. I.)