In Nomine [In the name]

The Most Holy Trinity

15 June, 2014

IN THE NAME of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. 

The simplest and yet most profound; the most spoken and yet most overlooked prayer. We begin each act of devotion with this invocation, yet it is often rushed and barely enunciated rather than prayed. And yet it is the very core of our faith. 

These few words encapsulate the mystery of our creation, our salvation and our relationship with God. They are both divine revelation and commission, urging us to understand the very nature of God and to go out in his name, in fulfilment of our calling to be God’s countenance to the world in order to participate in God's communion of love for all eternity.

To pray these words is to invoke the power of love-perfected, which unites and emanates from the one true God who has revealed himself in love as the Father of all creation, the architect of the loving gift of life brought into existence by the Word, his only begotten Son, who was made man for our salvation, and the Holy Spirit who proceeds from them both as the eternal manifestation of their love and as the giver of true life, uniting our immortal souls with that divine love from which we were made. 

To live these words is to blur the lines between praying and living, by dedicating every thought, word and action to the love of God. For the Trinity is not some philosophical idea of God; it is the very pulse of life that animates creation. The love that is the very nature of the Godhead is not intangible and confined, but overflows through the Father’s gift of the Son and their sending of the Holy Spirit to wake our hearts from the slumber of self-love to the love of self-giving.

For we were made in the image of God, in the image of love-perfected, with a vocation to love as we ourselves have been loved by God. And God loves in the selflessness of complete self-giving. So let it be that our whole life is lived in this fervent prayer to the most holy Trinity, that our vocation may be brought to perfection:

In the name of the Father – may we love with generosity and justice, with wisdom and truth, with patience and benevolence, and with the designs of the creator as the blueprint for all our relationships.

In the name of the Son – may we love with obedience and humility, with openness and forgiveness, with purity and simplicity, and with sacrifice as the heart of our service of God and neighbour.

And in the name of the Holy Spirit – may we love with consolation and counsel, with insight and inspiration, with zeal and valour, and for the sake of love itself, for “by this we know that we abide in him and he in us”.

And may the love of God; Father, Son and Holy Spirit, be with us and radiate from us in all its glory as we seek to perfect in ourselves the self-giving love that is our divine inheritance.