In the beginning was the Word and the Word was in God
and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God...

...And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us
and we have  contemplated the glory
that this Only-Begotten Son of the Father receives,
full of Grace and truth...
    From the fullness of His Perfection
we have all received, and grace upon Grace...
No man has ever seen God, but it is the Only-Begotten Son
Who is in the bosom of the Father, Who has revealed Him.  [Jn 1:1,14,16,18]²
 

NOT Two Natures, but One.
Not just One Person, but Two.
Equal by Nature,
Different through the personal relationships of [Their] begetting.
One single Being, while being two distinct Persons.
Therefore: the Father [is] God, as the Son [is] God, and forming only One God. The Father is eternal as the Son is eternal.
Almighty, infinite, most perfect the Begotten, as is the Begetter.

One single will, knowledge, power of the Two, though being reciprocally independent in action:  the Word—willing, knowing, able to do as He wills—knows and can know the Thought [the Father] Who has begotten Him [the Word], contemplating Himself in His most perfect Perfections, and understanding Himself: since only God can understand God, and exult in seeing Himself.

And in this exultation, He begets the Light, the Life, so these might exist and create:  multiplying the loving joy of God Who is radiant at being able to pour out His love on endless creatures, giving to all [His] Providence. And to the creature made in His image and likeness, giving Himself and His Kingdom in order to surround Himself with a people who are His sons, illumined by the Light during their [earthly] time, so that they may be able to know, serve, and love the Lord;  and that they may be gladdened by the eternal enjoyment of the beatific vision of God beyond time.

Nor is it by an inferior relationship that the Begotten Word is subject to the Begetting Thought. Rather He is spontaneously obedient solely out of the most holy love of this Divine Son for His Father Who has divinely Begotten Him.

Because it is Love which makes of the distinct Persons "One single Thing." The Unity of the Trinity is effected by the Spirit of God, that is, by the Charity which is the Spirit of the Lord:  the Most Holy Spirit of the Most Holy God.

The Son, exults in the bosom of the Father—Who exults in contemplating His Word and in seeing every creature in the Light He has begotten, and to Whom He has communicated His Own Life and all His other properties, save that proper to Himself as Father. In the same way, every creature endowed with spirit and with reason can know God his Creator sufficiently through the eternal begetting of the Word and through His Incarnation in Time: because in the Uncreated Word and in the Word Incarnate,  all the wondrous perfections of God the Father are visible.

Present in the Most Holy Word are all the unknowable truths of Heaven and the marvelous history of the destinies of man. And through the Word, man can know, can be made fit to love, and be predestined to possess, God—Who is the Incomprehensible One, but Whom the Light reveals in a suitable way, so that man may know God and be saved by loving Him, and through this love, have Life.

The Father is pleased with the willing exultation of His Son, image of His substance and splendor of His glory: Maker of all that is made, Author of man's regeneration for supernatural life.

And from this mutual exultation and pleasure of the One with the Other, of the One in the Other, and—from the beginning without beginning—God being with God, God in God:  from this mutual exultation and pleasure, proceeds Love:  He Who, at the right time, will give Flesh to the Eternal Word, and make of the Son of God:  the Christ [Messiah]—Who is always One  with the Father, but no longer one Nature in Two Persons, as it was at the beginning. But there will be two Natures in the one  Person of the Man-God:  true God in the substance of the Father from which He is never separated, and true Man through the substance taken from His Mother.

All things were made by means of the Word. For the Father willed that all things having life through the Word should all be put under Him, and that the heavens should sing His praises, the firmament crown Him with stars, the earth be a footstool and censer placed at His feet; that the waters be like a work of sapphire, as Moses and Ezechiel had seen under the throne of God [Ex 24:9, Ezech 1:26]; and that creatures endowed with a spiritual and rational soul should bless Him with grateful recognition for the double life they have had through Him.

In truth, the Word gave them not only temporal existence, but also eternal Life:  since He is the Living One and the Redeemer Who gave His life during His [earthly] time, so that all men would have the right to life in Eternity. It pleases Him to communicate this life. And by the almighty Will of the Father, He communicates it according to the nature and the purpose of the thing created.

He is infinitely pleased to be able to communicate this supernatural Life to men—and to communicate it in the right measure, so that this Gem be neither despised and lost, nor be scarce where man's good will brings him onto the way of perfection. And this supernatural Life is given with infinite and perfect Wisdom, so that every creature who tends instinctively toward his Creator may have, during his [earthly] time, an intuitive knowledge of the Word and the Law which leads to Him; and in Eternity, may have the reward assigned to those who lived in love and in justice.

The Word, Son of the Father of Lights and Himself the Most Divine Light, has received from the beginning of His generation without beginning, the property of being the Light for every man who comes into this world.  He enlightens every man so that he may see the Lord present in the multiple marvels of Creation, and recognize Him in the Voice resounding in man's interior:  in the mysterious law engraved by the Finger of God on the spiritual pages of the soul, in his conscience—the teacher that instructs, prods, restrains or rebukes: a merciful vestige left by God of the gift of perfect knowledge given to Adam, so that man might know how to distinguish Good from Evil; a bridle put on the I [ego], no longer fortified by the gift of integrity which, like knowledge, was lost at the foot of the fatal Tree. Thus, seeing [by his conscience] the Supreme Good in the ray of the loving Divine Light, man might know That Will and no other, and so have the glory of the sons of God.

The Word is Life, the Word is Light, being the Word of Grace.
And Grace is divine life which is grafted into human life: a supernatural life infused into that natural life in order to make men capable of living as sons of God, and therefore sharers of the divine life.

 Grace is a transient ray of the divine Light, coming directly from God, which penetrates and floods [man]. It enlightens him so he may know God intuitively, and inflames him so that he may love. Without the deification obtained through Grace, man could not comprehend that which so far exceeds natural things and the natural creature's capacity to comprehend the existence of the Incomprehensible. But in raising man to the supernatural order, Grace makes him capable of comprehending the Incomprehensible:  of knowing God intuitively, of loving Him Who wants to be called "Father", and Who wants to call "sons" those to whom He has given, as their last end, the enjoyment of the beatific Vision of Himself, and the inheritance of the peaceful Kingdom of Heaven.

Without the merciful and inexhaustible outpouring of the Light of Life, men who have lived in the thousands of years going from [Original] Sin to the Redemption, would have gotten lost, unaware of the certain existence of God; and they would have perished, being no longer moved by love.

But the vital, merciful Light, while keeping the memory of God awake and enlightened in souls, aroused in them the anxious yearning for the Good that had been lost. It helped [that memory] to grow, helped it to grow all the more as the soul thirsted instinctively to be joined again to the divine Source from whence it had come. And thus It [the Light] led and now leads the upright along the paths of Life: that is, the lovers of God—whether He is the God known to the Jewish People, or the unknown God of the Gentiles, or the divinity intuited by idolaters to exist and whom they worshiped then, and now worship, as best they can. But because of their adoring worship—which is faith in an existing God and love for Him, as also repentance for violations of the natural moral law—therefore they were not then, and are not now, denied that mysterious help from God.

The mysterious operations of God in the intimate depths of souls are known only to God and to those who receive them. Inspirations, impulses toward the good, ardent adoration, perfect contrition: through the mercy of God and man's good will, these mysterious operations of God create during earthly life and on the threshold of the Other Life, prodigies of divine sonship through which those who were just and loving—even though they had not belonged to the first chosen People, nor to the holy People (faithful Catholics) who came afterwards—can make up part of the multitude of the People of God, since they lived "as Christians" before and after the coming of Christ on Earth. They therefore make up part of the soul of Christ's Church, and hence of those "saved" by His merits.⁴

Let this not seem heresy. The Baptist was "pre-sanctified" before he was born, and had glory before Christ poured out His Blood. But this "pre-sanctification" was always in view of that outpouring of the divine Blood, of that perfect Sacrifice, of the holiness of the God-Man. The same could be said then of those souls moved by good will, and who followed the law of moral duty—not from fear of human chastisements, but from an impulse of spiritual love toward the Immense Spirit, which the ray of God recalled to the rational soul. These souls, on going forth from the darkness of earthly existence, from the bosom of the earth to be born to Life beyond earth, and passing from the darkness of this material world to the light of the spiritual world—have a right to eternal Life, and may enter into possession of It. Indeed, they cannot think that God—the Just, the Merciful, Infinite Charity, the Father of all men—could leave unrewarded those who have merited It.⁴

But the Light, shining with mercy during those thousands of years of waiting, was welcomed by only a few just; while it was misunderstood by too many who were "formless abysses, and empty voids wrapped in darkness" [cf. Gen 1:1]: that is, tombs of spirits killed by the wantonness of carnal man in whom the triple lusts⁵ had extinguished not only every divine light, but every rational light as well.

At the beginning of Creation, the darkness which covered the formless abyss and empty void of the Earth, did not comprehend the beauty, power and grandeur of the element of light, indispensable principle in the forming of Creation; and so was it also at the beginning of the Redemption—which began at the start of fallen man's human existence, even though it was truly and really begun with the coming of Christ on Earth; and it was more completely begun in the time of His preaching, but perfectly begun the day of the Parasceve.⁶  As at the beginning of the Creation, so also at the beginning of the Redemption, there was also the darkness:  men, darkened by lusts, had not comprehended the Light.

Those lusting for wealth and power did not want to comprehend the Light. And those overwhelmed by the senses could not  comprehend It.

But, more for the latter than for the former, God sent a man without sin: the one prophesied by the Prophets as an "angel heralding the Angel of the Covenant." Like a "voice shouting in the desert" of arid hearts where Grace had withered, he was sent as a Forerunner "to prepare the ways of the Lord" [cf. Mark 1:2-3] and to invite men to repentance, so that they might open the ears of their spirit to understand the Word, and the eyes of their spirit to see the true Nature of Jesus of Nazareth: the Christ [Messiah].

John the Baptist was not the Light. But through the Grace that he received while still in his mother's womb, and which he preserved with his innocence and the perfect penitence of his life, he was able to see the Light enclosed in the Flesh of the Man, and therefore to bear witness that that Man was the True Light descended from Heaven, sent by the Father to enlighten every man. And He was to be followed, believing in His Truth in order to have salvation; welcoming His Word, in order to be welcomed by Him as His disciples, and thus be reborn as sons of God.

But despite the testimony given by John to the world of Israel, and to the rest of the world represented by the [pagan] Gentiles, fortuitously present in Palestine in the fifteenth year of the empire of Tiberius Caesar,  the peoples who had been formed by means of the Word did not know Him for Who He was.

Only a few among so many accepted John's testimony, or the testimony of the events connected to the life of the Christ or the testimony of His Own life and His miracles, or the testimony of the Father and of the Holy Spirit. Most did not want to know Him.  And when He addressed Himself to those of His own House—His according to the Priesthood, because He had been constituted by the Father as High Priest after the order of Melchisedek; and His according to the Birth in Bethlehem Ephratha—He was not received. Rather, He was treated as a stranger, hated as an enemy, accused as one guilty, outlawed as a rebel, cursed like one possessed, and finally, imprisoned and sent to the [Roman] Proconsul so He might be judged guilty of death as a corrupter of the people and sacrilegious blasphemer. Then, like a murderous thief, He was handed over to die by the disgraceful torture of the Cross, outside the walls of the City which was no longer holy.

But to those who welcomed Him then, and over the centuries:  the poor in spirit, the meek, those who weep, those who desire justice, the merciful, the pure of heart, the peacemakers, the persecuted, the little ones, the repentant; to those who love Him, believing in His true Name, and who welcomed His Word and His Law in their hearts: to these He revealed the Father and the Kingdom, and what must be done in order to possess them. To these He taught the Truth, He communicated Life, He infused Grace and the Virtues; He restored in them the luminous Kingdom of God whereby they might again be sons of God, and with full right be called such.

And for these, the Word, after making Himself their Brother in Humanity, made Himself a fertile womb: welcoming them into His loving and fertile immensity, incorporating them into Himself, so that being in Him, they would be in the Father.

And after having thus recreated these new sons of God, He gives birth to them with a loud cry, with the tears and pain of His Humanity, with the exultation of His Divinity, and to the Father He addresses the perfect words of His prayerful and perpetual offering: "Here, O My Father, this is Your new family, Your holy people. They are Mine, because You entrusted them to Me, but I give them to You, because all that is Mine is Yours and all that is Yours is Mine. I give them to You so that they may glorify You, just as they have glorified Me by recognizing Me for what I am, by welcoming Your Word, believing that I come from You and that You have sent Me. But I still keep them in Myself so that You may see them in Me: Jesus Christ, just as You already saw them from the beginning in Me, the Uncreated Word. And being in Me, let them again be one with You, just as I am in You, and as We Two are one" [cf. John 17].

This, then, is the generation of the sons of God.

They are not sons by being conceived, formed and being born through the will of the flesh and blood of man. But they have been begotten by the Spirit, and spiritually, through faith, charity, through life in the Christ-Life.

The Word Incarnate, Jesus, Light of the world, gave birth to them. Therefore they are born of God, since the Word is One Thing with the Father Who begets through the power of infinite love.

So, then, just as in the eternal begetting of the Word and in His Incarnation in Time, the generating Factor was Love: the first of all His Perfections—His Perfection of Nature after which all the others then come—so also in man's regeneration, Love is again the power which effects man's re-creation as a son of God, which creates that life of man in God, and the Kingdom of God in man. Because without divine love, there would have been no redemption; and without the love of man for God and for His Law of charity, there cannot be union with God—God in man and man in God.

Before the coming of the Word, the mystery of God was so hidden as to obstruct man's ability to love. But when the eternal Word of the Father left Heaven to dwell with His brothers as Man among men, the obstacle was removed, because the splendor of God, the truth of His Being, His power, His infinite perfections, His mercy and His love, shown radiantly for the eyes of men to see. These attributes were gloriously manifested in the Only-begotten Son of the Father Who had received all from the Father, and Who manifested them all with the fullness of Grace and of Truth.

But because the example of the Most Holy Word, together with His works—those works which He accomplished because the Father had commissioned Him to accomplish them—because these still did not suffice to totally demolish the obstacle of uncertainty about the truth of God; and because the testimony of the Father given with His Voice and with the blessing of His consent to every action or request of the Son, was also insufficient:  thus there was given the word of the man so venerated by Israel as a great Prophet, that he was thought to be the Christ [Messiah]: "This is He Who, though coming after me, has preceded me, because He is before I was." [John 1:15].

And truly "before" every creature the Word is, being begotten before any of the creation, and having supremacy—even as Son of Man—in every natural and supernatural perfection:  He is perfect as God and perfect as Man, superior to the Angels, equal only to His Father.

Through this double perfection of His as God and as Man, all men have received and will receive till the end of the ages, graces of every kind, besides that Grace necessary to attain the glory to which the loving desire of God has predestined man.

How infinitely surpassing what Moses obtained for men, is that which the Most Holy Light, the Word, gave to men. Because through Moses, man obtained the Law, but from Christ, men obtained the power to practice the Law: not through fear, but through love; thus adoring God in spirit and in truth [John 4:24].

It is the Grace and Truth spread by Jesus Christ which made men wise about God, and therefore able to love Him as sons. Because one loves more as one's knowledge is more certain. One cannot love someone of whom it is uncertain that he exists and receives the love that is offered to him. One loves all the more when one is certain that he who is loved, loves us: not twofold, not a hundred fold, but without measure.

By tradition, the man of Israel, and the just man in every people, felt by supernatural illumination that there existed a Divinity: provident, all-powerful, eternal, creator of all natural things, as well as of the immortal soul. And the man of Israel was futhermore also awaiting in faith the Messiah promised from the beginning of Time.

But the carnality of man fallen from grace had changed the messianic idea, and instead of the spiritual idea which it was, had made of it a purely human idea. For this reason, even the best in Israel had a very partial knowledge of God. Knowing little, they loved little. The best excessively feared the terrible God of Sinai. The worst mocked Him and His Law, despite the pompous exhibitions of a wholly external cult.

And since they loved little, they little felt the presence of God in their hearts, and therefore believed that they were little loved. In so believing they were little loved, they little dared to go toward that Love, which they believed was only the Severity of infinite Majesty.  Their mind could not conceive of a divine love so great as to immolate itself out of love for man and for his supernatural good.

But Jesus Christ, the Only-Begotten Son of God had, with His Word and His actions, with all of Himself, revealed the Lord in His Truth.

He, Who knows God perfectly because He is in the Bosom of the Father, unveiled the infinite love of God that had reached the point of giving His Only-Begotten so that He might be immolated in order to restore Grace: that is, to give Himself to men in order to re-integrate men—fallen from the natural order—into the supernatural order.

 Through Grace and through His Word, they had all been taught. Taught by the Lord, as is said by the prophets [Is 54:13], so that all might know the ALL. And He taught with all His life as Son of Man, Master, and Redeemer, so that all might know the Father, Who is God and the universal Father.

To all those of good will Jesus revealed the incomprehensible mystery of God. All that is hidden of the incomprehensible Nature, and the super-omnipotent divine perfections, Jesus made visible and known in Himself and through Himself.

After the final manifestation of the Man-God, only those obstinate in their impenitence and rebellious pride were, and are, still able to deny having known God. To their sarcastic question He always answers: "I am the Beginning Who speak to you," assuring them: "By lifting up the Son of Man you know Who I am."  And this assurance has its confirmation in the terrifying signs which accompanied His Death, and His Resurrection.

Humanity has no more excuse for persevering in its incredulity and ignorance, born of hate.

For the Light has now flashed with all Its power of God, revealing the One and Triune God in all His most perfect omnipotence, wisdom and most perfect goodness; nor will that Light ever be dimmed for eternity.⁷

 

 

The Holy Spirit is the Most Holy Spirit of the Most Holy, Uncreated, Most Pure Spirit Who is the Lord. The essence of God, His principal attribute, is Charity. Thus: the Fire of Divine Charity, the immense, most perfect Fire of Divine Charity which begets the Son, and through the Son, all created things—be they mortal or perishable, or immortal (our spirit and the angels)—the Fire of Divine Charity which sees all in Charity and provides for all, is the Holy Spirit of God.

As in us, the soul is our spirit; so the soul of God (if I may be allowed this comparison) is love. It is love which animates ["ensouls"] God in all His actions, just as in us it is our spirit which animates ["ensouls"] our flesh and gives us our likeness to God.

Without His Holy Spirit, God would no longer be God, because He would no longer be Love.

(This is what the Light has made me understand.)

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