Considering the Most Holy Trinity with affection
1. The mystics know the Most Holy Trinity as a verb more than a noun, like Lady Julian of Norwich, "Greatly ought we to rejoice that God dwells in our soul..." And, St. Elizabeth of the Trinity, a Carmelite nun: “God loves us,… to the point of making the center of our being "another heaven"--the place where God dwells, always present, always accessible and longing for intimate relationship with us; And Margery Kempe, “God the Father sits on a golden cushion, in honor of his might and power; Christ sits on a cushion of red; and the Holy Ghost,” the sanctifier, “sits on a white cushion, because He is full of love and cleanness.” (The Book of Margery Kempe, 188).
These mystics use the affective mode of mediation stemming from their God-given insights; it’s the level of feelings; an emotionalization wherein the worshipper seeks to imagine the sights, sounds, tastes, movement, and touch of specific scenes from the Gospel in order to engage and reinforce learning, and compassion, and to highlight that God is loving and accessible.
e.g. from Our Gospel today on John 3:16-- a banker in New York had a great desire to encourage some soldiers who were fighting during World War II. But, he could not get permission to visit the war zone personally. But his longing desire to help these men was not to be easily thwarted, so he called on a firm which manufactured advertising novelties and had them make several thousand small mirrors about three inches in diameter. On the celluloid back of each of these mirrors he had printed the words of John 3:16. Beneath the words of this inscription was written, "If you want to see who it is that GOD loves and for whom He gave His Son, look on the other side." These mirrors were distributed among the soldiers with the permission of the officers, and thus each man looking into the mirror would see the object of GOD's love and the one whom the SAVIOUR came to save.
I could not find the exact mirror as described on the internet but I did find a compact mirror that flips open with the John 3:16 verse printed on the outside. I have it with me if you want to see if after Mass.
2. Another example of using Affective Meditation on the Most Holy Trinity as a tool for helping train the mind and heart to generate thoughts comes from Father Richard Rohr. The technique is to imagine that for every problem, there are always THREE elements at work, called The Law of Three.
An example comes from Canada, from a woman who is the director of a small government-subsidized service agency. She had to appear before a provincial board each spring to orally defend her budget and make her request for the next year’s funds.
As she waited her turn in a seemingly endless litany of petitions from the heads of other agencies, she pictured the situation according to the Law of Three. First force was clearly held by the presenters, with their legitimate need and desperation for funding. Holy denying was quite literally held by the board, which seemed of a mind to throw out a certain number of requests altogether and substantially trim back the rest. She realized that in this configuration the two opposing forces were colliding on an energetic ground of scarcity—the assumption that there was not enough to go around. There was no third force. Could she do anything to create it?
Suddenly an inspiration arrived. She threw away her prepared speech, smiled warmly, and began, “I want to thank you all for the generous funding we received from you last year. Here’s how we spent it.” She then went on to detail all the good work they had managed to accomplish on what was actually a very small subsidy. As she spoke, she could sense the board members visibly relaxing and her colleagues staring in amazement. She concluded, “We are not asking you for a single additional penny this year, and if we need to cut back, this is the strategy we’ve put in place to do so with minimal impact on our service.”
It almost goes without saying that she received the full amount requested. By introducing gratitude as the missing third force, she managed to shift the energetic field from a sense of scarcity to a sense of abundance. And from that field of abundance she did indeed receive her daily bread.
3). At Fatima, the angel taught the three children this prayer to the Most Holy Trinity:
Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
I adore Thee profoundly.
I offer Thee the most precious Body, Blood, Soul
and Divinity of Jesus Christ,
present in all the tabernacles of the world,
in reparation for the outrages,
sacrileges and indifferences whereby He is offended.
And through the infinite merits of His Most Sacred Heart
and the Immaculate Heart of Mary,
I beg of Thee the conversion of poor sinners.
We were made to be happy; the human heart has a capacity for the infinite; only God can fully satisfy us. Without adoration, and reparation, we are less useful to others, and for their salvation.
e.g. A joke that brings this out is about a pilot and three passengers—a boy scout, a priest, and an atomic scientist—they were all on a flight on a small private plane. Suddenly, the plane developed engine trouble. In spite of the best efforts of the pilot, the plane started to go down. Finally, the pilot grabbed a parachute and yelled to the passengers, “the plane is going down! We only have three parachutes, and there are four of us!
Then the pilot adds, “I have a family waiting for me at home. I must survive!” With that, he puts one of the parachutes and jumps out of the plane.
At this point, the atomic scientist jumps to his feet and declares, “I am the smartest man in the world. It would be a great tragedy if my life was snuffed out!” With that, he also grabs a parachute and exits the plane.
With an alarmed look on his face, the priest says to the Boy Scout, “My son, I have no family. I am ready to meet my Maker. You are still young with much ahead of you. You take the last parachute.”
With this, the Boy Scout interrupts the priest, “Relax, Father. Don’t say anymore. We’re all right.”
The priest asks, “How in the world can you say that we are all right?”
The Boy Scout replies, “The reason we’re all right is that the world’s smartest man just jumped out of the plane wearing my knapsack!”
The Trinity doctrine tells us that there is one God who eternally exists as three distinct Persons. God is both one and three at the same time. The distinction between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit doesn’t rest on their autonomy, but in the “relationship of each Person to the others” (Catechism, 252). We are created in his image and likeness. This means that he created us to be relational too.
"Our God in his deepest mystery is not solitude, but a family..." says St. Francis, quoting St. John Paul II, AL 11.
Here are some concluding thoughts for your Affective Meditation on the Most Holy Trinity:
According to the order indicated by Christ Himself in the baptismal formula, the Father is first. The Father is eternity. The Principle. The Source of all life. The Word and Holy Spirit proceed from Him, and all creation comes from Him through the Word, in the Holy Spirit.
We honor the Father as the First Cause by laying down at his feet our whole being, our plans, or desires, in order that he may take the initiative in everything concerning us. In this way, we imitate Jesus.
The Holy Spirit is the inward evidence, the indwelling presence, that which allows us to organize and prioritize our lives. It is the Holy Spirit that gives us the peace and assurance to cope daily with life’s varied demands. The Holy Spirit enables us to experience God; He is there at the Mass in the invocation over the gifts. O taste and see that the Lord is good.
