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The Holy Trinity in
Christian Life
The new commandment of Christian life is "to be perfect as your heavenly Father
is perfect" (Mt 5:48). It is to love as Christ himself has loved. "This is my
commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you" (Jn 15:12). Men
cannot live the Christian life of divine love in imitation of God's perfection
without the grace of the Holy Spirit. With the power of God, however, what is
impossible to men becomes possible. "For with God all things are possible." (Mk
10:27)
The Christian life is the life of God accomplished in men by the Spirit of
Christ. Men can live as Christ has lived, doing the things that he did and
becoming sons of God in Him by the power of the Holy Spirit. Thus, once more,
the Christian life is a Trinitarian life.
By the Holy Spirit given by God through Christ, men can share the life, the
love, the truth, the freedom, the goodness, the holiness, the wisdom, the
knowledge of God Himself. It is this conviction and experience which has caused
the development in the Orthodox Church of the affirmation of the fact that the
essence of Christianity is "the acquisition of the Holy Spirit" and the
"deification" of man by the grace of God, the so-called theosis.
The saints of the Church are unanimous in their claim that Christian life is the
participation in the life of the Blessed Trinity in the most genuine and
realistic way. It is the life of men becoming divine. In the smallest aspects of
everyday life Christians are called to live the life of God the Father, which is
communicated to them by Christ, the Son of God, and made possible for them by
the Holy Spirit who lives and acts within them.
The Holy Trinity in Eternal Life
At the end of the ages Christ will come in the glory of God the Father, He will
make the Father known throughout all creation. The Holy Spirit will fill all
things and enable all to be in union with God through Christ for eternity. Again
we have the presence and action of the Holy Trinity.
What we know and experience now in the world as members of the Church will be
manifested in power in the life of the kingdom to come. The essence of life
everlasting is the life of the Holy Trinity, the same eternal life given to us
already in the mystery of faith.
And I saw no temple in the city, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb (Christ)
are the temple of it. And the city had no need of the sun … for the glory of God
did lighten it, and the Lamb (Christ) is the light thereof…
And the throne of God and the Lamb (Christ) shall be in it, and his servants
shall see him … and they shall see his face…
And the Spirit and the Bride (the Church) say Come!
(Rev 21:22; 22:3, 17)
In the eternal life of the Kingdom of God, the Holy Trinity will fill all creation: the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit. Every man enlightened by Christ in the Spirit will know the invisible Father.
"And this is eternal life, that they may know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent" (Jn 17:3).
Such knowledge is possible only by the indwelling
of the Spirit of God, "the fullness of Him who fills all in all" (Eph 1:23;
2:22).
Come O Ye People! Let us adore the Three-Personal Godhead, the Son in the Father
with the Holy Spirit.
For before all time the Father gave birth to the Son, co-eternal and
co-enthroned with Himself.
And the Holy Spirit was in the Father, glorified with the Son.
Adoring One Power, One Essence, One Divinity, let us cry:
O Holy God who made all things by the Son through the cooperation of the Holy
Spirit!
O Holy Mighty through whom we know the Father and through whom the Holy Spirit
comes into the world!
O Holy Immortal, the Spirit, the Comforter, who proceeds from the Father and
rests in the Son!
O Most Holy Trinity! Glory to Thee! Source: OCA
(The Vespers of Pentecost)
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