The Blessed Trinity and the Eucharist: A Free Gift

I realize that I have forgotten for some time to put up our parish's bulletin inserts that have been running with excerpts and commentary about Sacramentum Caritatis. Here is insert #5.

The Blessed Trinity and the Eucharist

A free gift of the Blessed Trinity

8. The Eucharist reveals the loving plan that guides all of salvation history (cf. Eph 1:10; 3:8- 11). There the Deus Trinitas*, who is essentially love (cf. 1 Jn 4:7-8), becomes fully a part of our human condition. In the bread and wine under whose appearances Christ gives himself to us in the paschal meal (cf. Lk 22:14-20; 1 Cor 11:23-26), God’s whole life encounters us and is sacramentally shared with us. God is a perfect communion of love between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. At creation itself, man was called to have some share in God’s breath of life (cf. Gen 2:7). But it is in Christ, dead and risen, and in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, given without measure (cf. Jn 3:34), that we have become sharers of God’s inmost life. (16) Jesus Christ, who “through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God” (Heb 9:14), makes us, in the gift of the Eucharist, sharers in God’s own life. This is an absolutely free gift, the superabundant fulfilment of God’s promises. The Church receives, celebrates and adores this gift in faithful obedience. The “mystery of faith” is thus a mystery of trinitarian love, a mystery in which we are called by grace to participate. We too should therefore exclaim with Saint Augustine: “If you see love, you see the Trinity.” (17)

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If we will truly pause to reflect after receiving the Eucharist, we are drawn into contemplating the special intimacy with Jesus to which we are invited when we receive His Body and Blood. This is a true and fair reflection for we receive the whole Christ — Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity. Pope Benedict asks us to open our minds and hearts to be led through intimacy with Christ into a deeper and more real relationship with the Triune God through Jesus Himself. Here the Holy Father reminds us, “God is a perfect communion of love between Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”

As this is the case, we come unfailingly with Pope Benedict to the understanding that, when we par­take of the Eucharist, we participate, not simply in the life of Christ, but we are partaking in that very life possessed by the Triune God. “Jesus Christ, who “through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God” (Heb 9:14), makes us, in the gift of the Eucharist, sharers in God’s own life.”

This gift, this grace, this life is ours — freely given and unmerited — the participation and sharing in uncreated, that is, God’s own life. It is what we grew up calling Sanctifying Grace. This grace is ultimately relationship with the Trinity, life-sharing with God, motivated by and producing, bearing fruit in Love.

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(16) Cf. Propositio 4.
(17) De Trinitate, VIII, 8, 12: CCL 50, 287.
* Deus Trinitas: Triune God. In other words, God as Trinity, a single being existing simultaneously as three distinct persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
This is one of a series of excerpts from Pope Benedict XVI’s Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis. You are encouraged to read the entire document. The Vatican link to that document as well as to Pope Benedict’s first encyclical can be found on the website, www.stthomasaquinas.org.