The reflections offered here have properly to do with the theology of the Holy Trinity rather than with the Trinity itself; their purpose is to consider how we advance in our theological understanding of the revelation of the Holy Trinity communicated to us by Scripture and Tradition, by pointing to those movements of our spp iritual life which are especially relevant to our theological understanding of the faith. St Augustine, in the later books of his de Trinitate, was the first to dopt this procedure explicitly; and his has been the determining influence in all Latin theology after him. But the later theology so much took his Preliminary investigations for granted that it is not easy for the reader of a moderm dogmatic treatise dealing with the Holy Trinityto understand the truly religious and spiritual interest of the theology of the Trinity: he may admire the technical Ingenuity of the solutions proposed, the sustained intellectual effort and the scrupulous integrity required to present within manageable limits the essential Catholic doctrines, but he may fail to enter with a quick sympathy into the inner life of such and investigation.

God is too good to be used or fitted into our human schemes, and loving him above all means a complete outgoing from the frets of our creaturely condition. Nevertheless it does not follow that the workings of grace in us have to material or texture, or, if these are present, then that they hold no theological interest. Hence the title is chosen deliberately.

I suppose one of the hydras haunting the spiritual life comes from misunderstanding the all-or-nothing principle. God is recogized as the infinite good, which indeed he is, but this infinity in made both so big and individualized that it elbows out all other goods. This emphatically God does not do, otherwise when we called him creator it would be only of a shadow world. Again, it is feared that if you love things, and especially if you enjoy doing so, you dissipate what should be reserved for him alone.

The Christian sacrament is at once cause and sign. Each sacrament is a cause which signifies the kind of grace it produces and a sign which causes what it signifies. In the sacrament we have a perfect coincidence of sign and instrument, for in performing the signifying action we are also constructing an instrument used by God to confer grace. Now it is obvious that the causing of grace is something much more mysterious and much more important than its signification, and in the face of a Protestant criticism which denied all efficiency to the sacraments and saw them simply as symbols or memorials of Christ's life, it is not suprising that Catholic apologetics should have emphasized this causal character of the sacraments. The Christian sacrament is a genuine cause of grace, operating not only dispositively or ‘morally’, but directly causing what it signifies.

In a time as overshadowed as our own by the angst of the day and its despair, there has recently been published, among many inspiring Catholic works, one which in a sense is unique, antidote, it might be termed a counterblast, to anguish. A paris journal announces its sale up-to-date of sixty thousand copies.

By the late Auguste Valensin, S.J., famous abroad if scarcely known to the general public in this country, by no means the least of the facets of its unique quality is the fact that the book consists of the personal meditations, without ‘points’ or formalities of any kind, written day by day, by someone of obvious holiness and culture, published since his death in 1953.

To those of us nurtured in any degree on the too-usual style of much of earlier French spiritual writing, this may be far from an alluring introduction.

And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended all these words, he Said to his disciples: You know that after two days shall be the pasch, and the Son of man shall be delivered up to be crucified. This was a good opportunity for him to speak of die Passion. He Had been reminding them of the Kingdom and its reward, and of everlasting punishment; and he seemed to be saying: Why be afraid of sufferings which pass away so quickly when the good things of heaven await you? Notice, too, how he led up gradually to what he knew would grieve the disciples, and softened its impact upon them. Instead of saying: You know that after two days I am to be betrayed, he said: You know that after two days is the pasch; and then added that he would be betrayed and crucified.