In the previous article, we studied some elements of what God has revealed to us about His Triune Being, as well as the footprint that He left in us concerning that reality. Yet, sublime as that reality is, man fell to the lies of the devil, and in a moment of insanity wished to worship his own heart, just like the author of evil had decided to worship his own. In this way, and with the shame of a concupiscent heart, our first parents left Eden by the doors of the East, leaving behind a desecrated tree, whose shadow would descend upon the labyrinths of history, and whose wood would one day make the cross of the Fulfilled Promise of Israel.
Evil had its hour, but the Heart of the Loving Father would have the last word, thus His Son would descend into the world by the agency of the Holy Spirit to set His children free. Nevertheless, this act of majesty was preceded by a set of subtle elements that began much before.
The Altar of the Human Heart
In His Infinite knowledge, the Trine God knew that man would fall, and that when he did, the Heavens would have to open in order to bring about the redemption of the world. Yet, unless there were something extraordinary in mankind, man would never call for help amidst the traps set for him by an intellect that was once prince amongst the angels. Thus, God would do nothing less than to breath into the nostrils of His creation, and infuse in man an instinct of God.
With this in mind, we can boldly say that every human being is actively looking for God, and it is possible to go as far as to say that every individual is a religious being.
St. Thomas Aquinas, in his monumental work of the Summa Theologiae, mentions eight attributes of God:
Simplicity: God has no parts, which means that His essence is His existence. Unlike man, who is both body and spirit, God is all Oneness in Spirit, and pure act. God is being itself, who shares His existence to all being. We are, and everything is, because He Is.
Perfection: God is all good, lacks nothing, and is full actuality, which means that in Him there is no room for improvement, because the flawless cannot be improved.
Goodness: God is the ultimate good, and goodness itself descends from Him who has authored the world, because goodness and being are equivalent.
Infinity: God has no limits or impossibilities. To the originator of possibility, everything is possible and nothing is out of reach.
Ubiquity: God is omnipresent, which means He is everywhere. Just as the human soul covers every inch of the body, so too, in a superior fashion, does the presence of God cover the entirety of existence.
Immutability: Due to His immaculate perfection, God does not change. He remains the same as He was and will be forever as He is.
Eternality: Unlike everything in creation, from the Angels all the way down to the rocks, God had no beginning and will have no end. He is the prime cause and the unmoved mover from whom everything that is finds its ultimate origin.
Unity: God is one and has no parts. He has full unity of being, and in His Divine Self there are no segments.
By looking at reality in honesty of spirit, it will become evident that every human soul is looking for an absolute, wholesome, perfect, eternal, never-changing, perfectly good, all-present, and perfectly united happiness: the Holy Trinity Itself.
Further, in every human heart, there is a code of expectation and awaiting of the Messiah. We see it in every story, because every person is waiting for a savior. Nevertheless, ignorance and sin deform the clarity of this anticipation.
If someone were to take an X-Ray of the modern world, the picture would show that every man is waiting for something. The atheist is waiting for science to solve the problem of suffering and death, even if it comes by the hands of the aliens. All religions are waiting for their version of final judgement, and we await the Second Coming of Christ, because we know He is coming. Be that as it may, and whether they know it or not, every heart that has ever existed has one word written in it: Maranatha (“Our Lord has come!”).
Semina Verbi
As stated previously, God infused in man an instinct for his Creator; however, due to His knowledge of the weakness of the human heart, He did not stop there and thus intervened in different ways.
Of all people in the history of the world, God chose Abraham and his descendants as a channel of grace and direct revelation to make Himself known. He did not limit His grace to one vector alone. Instead, God divided His revelation in two dimensions: one direct, to His people Israel, and another indirect, to the entire world, not only at the level of the heart, but also at the level of culture. In Genesis 2:10-14, Holy Scripture speaks about a river that flowed from Eden and split into four different branches, nurturing all the lands in the vicinities. We see that the first branch, called Pishon, flows into the land of Havilah, which is rich in gold, bdellium, and onyx stone. The other three branches have only the flowing waters, but no gold or precious stones. Analogously, God spoke to the four corners of the world, but communicated directly only to one, His people, from whom sprang the gold of His Word.
In the second century, St. Justin Martyr (90-165 AD) spoke about God having sown seeds of His light in the heart of many cultures of the world, a phenomenon that in Greek he called Logos Spermatikos, later latinized into Semina Verbi. Regardless, the great martyr made it clear that while other cultures were given some seeds of light, salvation and full revelation comes only through the children of Abraham.
Light for All Men
Love requires knowledge, and knowledge requires experience, because the unknown cannot be truly loved. As a result, the Eternal Wisdom planted a sea of seeds across the cultural landscape of the world, each containing particles of the Trinitarian Truth, in order that men and women of good might recognize it when the word of the True Religion arrived.
In part three of this article, we will explore the seeds of light that fell in Ancient Greece, as well as the heralds of their power who unknowingly prepared the intellect of the Hellenic world to receive the Holy Trinity half a millennia before the Alpha Point of History, when an Archangel besought a Virgin maiden to bear God incarnate.
Editor’s Note: This article is part of a CE original series on the Beauty of the Holy Trinity. Click here for more.
Image from Wikimedia Commons
