JESUS LIVING IN MARY:
HANDBOOK OF THE SPIRITUALITY OF ST. LOUIS DE MONTFORT
TRINITY
Summary
I. Introduction: Some Problems in Approaching the Trinity.
II. Historical Background on Spiritual Meaning.
III. The Trinity in Saint Louis de Montfort: General Overview.
IV. The Trinity in Montfort as a Mystery of Love:
1. The Father;
2. The Son;
3. The Holy Spirit;
V. Relevance of Saint Louis de Montfort’s Trinitarian Doctrine:
1. Insistence on the Trinity;
2. Experience of the Trinity;
3. The missionary dimension;
4. The Marian dimension;
5. Understanding of community.
The Trinity is the most basic and at the same time the loftiest of
Christian mysteries. It is most basic because it underlies and
encompasses all other Christian mysteries: Creation, Incarnation,
Redemption, sanctification, and the Beatific Vision. It is loftiest
because it is the ultimate revelation of the inner life of God. It
reveals God’s inner life as divinely interpersonal: a life of mutual
giving and receiving of love, a love that simultaneously overflows
itself and is yet contained in its deepest intimacy. It is a life of
boundless creativity, producing within itself sublime expressions of
artistic beauty, a life so abundant that it overflows even the realms of
divinity and shares its fecundity with creatures, imparting to each and
every creature its Trinitarian reflection of love and creativity.
Saint Louis de Montfort experienced and preached the loftiness and
intimacy of the mystery of the Trinity. As in the case of many great
theologians and preachers before him, his own spiritual life and
mystical experience were focused on the Trinity, and the Trinity
provided the energy and the content of his preaching. For him the
Trinity was not primarily a formula showing God as distant from us and
beyond our comprehension. Rather, the doctrine of the Trinity reveals
the deepest dimension of the God of love and at the same time the
deepest dimension of human beings as Trinitarian images, and of all the
panorama of creatures as vestiges of the Trinity.
This article will (I) address some problems in approaching the
Trinity; (II) sketch some highlights in the history of Christian
theology and spirituality that form a background to Montfort’s own
theology and spirituality of the Trinity; (III) provide an over-view of
his teaching on the Trinity; (IV) study the Trinity in his writings as a
mystery of love; and (V) explore the relevance his Trinitarian teaching
for ministry and the spiritual life.
I. INTRODUCTION: SOME PROBLEMS IN APPROACHING THE TRINITY
Throughout history Christians have approached the Trinity from two major
perspectives: the formulation of the doctrine and its spiritual meaning.
Both are of paramount importance, for they mutually support and
presuppose each other. In teaching and preaching, however, often the
formulation of the doctrine has overshadowed its meaning for the
spiritual life of the faithful. In fact, teaching and preaching often
stop at the level of formulation without even opening the door to
spiritual meaning.
Awareness of the mystery of the Trinity emerged in the early Christian
communities through their contact with the person of Jesus of Nazareth
as the Christ. His very person as well as his teaching and preaching
revealed his relation to the Father and to the Holy Spirit. In the early
Church the names of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit appeared in prayers
and in the liturgy, for example, in the baptismal formula. The Gospel of
John, with its prologue and Jesus’ discourse at the Last Supper, became
a basic text for both a doctrine and a spirituality of the Trinity. In
this emerging awareness, Christians began to perceive in the OT the
symbolic foreshadowing of the Trinity, which led to later Trinitarian
theologies of history.
In a struggle against the Arian heresy, the foundational Trinitarian
creed was formulated at the Council of Nicea in 325. Christ as eternal
Logos was declared to be of the same substance as the Father. In 381 the
First Council of Constantinople added to the Nicene Creed a similar
affirmation about the Holy Spirit, thus solemnly establishing the
classical credal formula for belief in the mystery of the Trinity. Its
importance is attested to by the fact that to this day this Creed is
said at Mass.
The impact of the Nicene- Constantinople creed, as well as many other
creeds, has led to an almost exclusive focus on the Trinity from the
perspective of doctrinal formulas. Derivatives of this are visible in
the emphasis placed on Trinitarian formulas in catechisms and in
teaching and preaching the Trinity. This trend has also had an enormous
influence on both historical and speculative theology, especially in the
recent past. For an entire century before Vatican II, neo-scholasticism
focused on establishing Trinitarian formulas, either against various
heresies or in refining concepts within Christian belief. Whole
generations of priests were trained almost exclusively in this
perspective. Although the affirmation of belief, formulated with verbal
and conceptual precision, will always remain an essential element of
Christianity, it needs to be supplemented, especially at the present
time, by the perspective of the spiritual meaning of the doctrine of the
Trinity.
II. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND ON SPIRITUAL MEANING
In addition to formulating the doctrine of the Trinity, the Christian
community since ancient times has explored its spiritual significance.
In fact, the Trinitarian formulation in the Nicene Creed was explicitly
conceived as a technical expression of a spiritual experience.
Athanasius, the leading theologian at the council, began with the fact
that the Christian community had an experience of being divinized. Since
this experience of divinization was brought about through Christ, he
argued, Christ as Logos must possess the same substance as the Father.1
Having arisen, then, out of a spiritual experience, the credal formula
can be seen as an expression of this experience, and the creed can serve
as a point of departure to evoke this experience. The problem of the
Trinitarian formulas and the abstract theologies derived from them has
not been due to the formulas themselves but to the split between these
formulas and the spiritual experience they have expressed in the past
and can continue to express today.
In the West, Augustine responded to an Arian objection that
Christians, by affirming the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, really
believed in three divine substances and therefore three Gods. He
answered by using the distinction between substance and relation. There
was only one divine substance and the Persons were constituted by mutual
relation, each sharing in the single divine substance.2 This approach,
which focused on the problem of three and one, led to the formulation of
a major Trinitarian creed3 and laid the foundation for the very abstract
Trinitarian theology that flourished in the thirteenth and again in the
twentieth century.
At the same time that Augustine was developing this abstract formula,
he was meditating on the human soul as image of the Trinity.4 He himself
had mystically experienced the Trinity in the depths of his soul. As a
consequence, for him the Trinitarian God was more intimate to him than
he was to himself. It was this Trinitarian image that constituted the
dignity of each human person and provided the basis for the spiritual
journey that reaches its culmination in union with the Trinity.
In the twelfth century, theologians focused on the Trinity as the
perfection of love. Chief among these was Richard of St. Victor, who in
his treatise On the Trinity stated that there must be a plurality of
Persons in God in order for God to share in the highest form of love.
For we do not say that one possesses the perfection of love if one has
love only for oneself. The perfection of love requires that love flow
out of itself and into another who responds with mutual love. Finally,
love reaches another level of perfection in mutual love for a third. In
this perspective, human interpersonal love is a mirror of the Trinity.5
Bernard of Clairvaux applied to the Trinity the passionate language of
the Song of Songs. Like many other interpreters, he saw in this marriage
hymn from the OT a symbol of God’s passionate love for the human soul
and the soul’s passionate love for God. In eighty-six sermons, Bernard
plumbed this mystery of divine and human love, seeing the bridegroom as
the Logos, the Beloved of the soul, and perceiving the bride as the
symbol of the soul that has fallen deeply in love with the divine
Beloved.
Bernard begins with the image of the kiss found in the first verse of
the Song: “Let him kiss me with the kiss of the mouth.” As Bernard
proceeds, he describes a spiritual journey that begins with love,
proceeds through love, and culminates in the loving union of the soul
with the Beloved. It is not surprising, then, that Bernard sees the
inner life of the Trinity as a life of love. “The Father,” Bernard says,
“loves the Son and embraces him with a special love.” This love between
the Father and the Son is the Holy Spirit. Therefore the bride “asks
boldly to be given the kiss, that is, the Spirit in Whom the Father and
the Son will reveal themselves to her.”6
This love tradition flowed into the thirteenth century through the
early Franciscan school, especially through Bonaventure, its chief
theologian and spiritual writer. Inspired by Francis of Assisi, he
developed the metaphysics of love into a comprehensive system based on
the Trinity. In fact, in treating the Logos as the offspring of the
Father, he claimed: “This is our entire metaphysics, that is, emanation,
exemplarity, consummation: to be illumined by spiritual rays and led
back to the Highest Reality.”7 It is important to underscore the fact
that Bonaventure and others in this tradition did not abandon intellect
for affectivity nor treat love merely as the practical expression of a
purely speculative system. Quite the contrary: with their intellects
they penetrated into the depths and dynamism of divine and human love
and there found the principles for understanding all of reality.
Bonaventure focused on the fecundity of love, its inner dynamic to
share with the beloved its own richness and at the same time its desire
to be united with the beloved. This fecundity of love is found primarily
in the Father, who is the fountain-fullness of divinity (fontalis
plenitudo). In focusing on the Father in this way, Bonaventure situates
himself in the mainstream of the Greek Fathers’ approach to the Trinity.
This fountain-fullness wells up in the Person of the Father and
expresses itself in the generation of the Son, His perfect Image and
Word, the Art of the Father, as Bonaventure calls him, following
Augustine. The Son turns back to the Father in the love of union that is
the Holy Spirit. This inner circle of love, as Bonaventure calls it,
overflows in the outer circle of love, which is Creation. Since Creation
flows from the inner life of the Trinity, it manifests the Trinity and
leads back to the Trinity.8
In the growing awareness of divine and human love, there emerged in
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries a heightened awareness of the
meaning of person, both human and divine. Since the late patristic
period, the person had been seen through Boethius’ definition as “an
individual substance of a rational nature.”9 This formulation can lead
to a radical individualism. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,
theologians balanced this perspective with that of mutual relation with
another person. Developed eloquently in Richard of St. Victor, this
approach reached a high point in Thomas Aquinas’ definition of a divine
Person as “a subsisting relation.”10
In the twelfth century and reaching a high point in the thirteenth,
there developed another aspect of love—the love of compassion—which
flourished in devotion to the humanity of Christ. The self-communicating
love of the Trinitarian life responded in compassion for the plight of
the human race. This divine compassion expressed itself concretely in a
Trinitarian way: in the Incarnation of the Son, with his suffering,
death, and resurrection, along with the sending of the Holy Spirit.11
III. THE TRINITY IN SAINT LOUIS DE MONTFORT: GENERAL OVERVIEW
It is in the light of the tradition outlined above that one must
understand Montfort’s Trinitarian teaching. This does not imply that he
explicitly quoted these authors or made reference to them. Rather, they
are the classical writers who have given expression to the Trinitarian
tradition of which Montfort himself is a part. This tradition, which
sees the Trinity as the mystery of the fullness of divine love, flows as
a great river throughout Christian history, integrating into an organic
whole doctrinal formulations, speculative theology, and mystical
experience. It is in the context of this tradition, then, that we can
best appreciate Montfort and the contribution that he can make to our
own times.
The mystery of the Trinity is pervasive in Montfort’s writings.
Although love is at the center, he also presents the mystery in formulas
of faith that reflect the great Trinitarian creeds. Like many classical
authors before him, he often divides his work according to the Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit and, further, into many patterns of three, in a way
reminiscent of Bonaventure and Dante.
A summary of Trinitarian faith is found in his canticle on “The
Principal Mysteries of the Faith” (H 109:1-2). It represents his basic
teaching on the Trinity, which reflects the Trinitarian creeds and which
he put into hymn format so that it could be easily sung and remembered
by his people:
“Listen, Christian soul / What the faith teaches you; / In order that
you retain it, / Sing devoutly: / I believe in one only God, Father
exceedingly good, / The infinite Being, everywhere present, / And the
all powerful Creator / Of heaven and earth.
“In God there are three persons / Father, Son, Holy Spirit/ Three
infinitely Good, / I believe it, God has said it. / Three make only one
God for three have only one essence: / The Father is God, the Son is God
and the Holy Spirit is God, / All equal in substance.”
In SR the same thought is repeated: “Father . . . who dost beget a Son
like Thee, eternal, consubstantial with Thee, who is of the very same
essence as Thee; . . . the Holy Spirit who is God like Thee, three
persons adorable but one only God.” MR Montfort suggests that when we
pray the Rosary, the first Our Father should honor “the Eternal Word,
equal to his Father and who with him produces the Holy Spirit by their
mutual love,” and the third Hail Mary, “the Holy Spirit who proceeds
from the Father and the Son by way of love.”
The major works of Montfort are divided according to a Trinitarian
pattern. In addition to the approximately forty times that the term
“Trinity” occurs in his writings (e.g., LEW 13, 42, 208; SR 4, 11, 22;
TD 5, 22, 50, 262; H 40; H 90; H 109), the centrality of the Trinitarian
mystery in the life and teachings of Montfort is evident in his custom
of often dividing his material into the role of the Father, and of the
Son, and of the Holy Spirit. In the most theological section of TD (1-
37), there are seven sets of “threes” explaining the role of each Person
of the Trinity in relation to Mary: 4, 5, 6, 16, 17-21, 23-25, 29-36. In
this part of TD, the saint over and over again describes Mary’s union to
each Person of the Trinity to illustrate her greatness: “God the Father
gave his only Son to the world only through Mary. . . . The Son of God
became man for our salvation but only in Mary and through Mary. God the
Holy Spirit formed Jesus Christ in Mary but only after having asked her
consent; . . . God the Father gathered all the waters together and
called them seas. He gathered all his graces together and called them
Mary. . . . God the Son imparted to his mother all that he gained by his
life and death, namely his infinite merits and his eminent virtues. . .
. God the Holy Spirit entrusted his wondrous gifts to Mary, his faithful
Spouse.”
IV. THE TRINITY IN MONTFORT AS A MYSTERY OF LOVE
That the Trinity is a mystery of love can be seen in Montfort’s teaching
on each of the divine Persons:
1. The Father
Echoing the Greek Fathers in the East and Anselm and Bonaventure in the
West, Montfort focuses on the Father as the fecund source of self-
communicating love. The very term “Father” “honors his fecundity . . .
for he engenders a Son from all eternity” (SR 41). It is “in his womb”
that the “only Son” rests from all eternity (LEW 14, 19), and it is from
the infinite Love who is Father that the Spirit flows (MR 16). It is
clear that the Father, the First Person of the Trinity, is, then, for
Montfort the “fons totius Trinitatis.” The Father is infinitely good (H
27:1), “loving to excess,” as Montfort so often repeats not only of the
Father but of Eternal Wisdom as well (LEW 45, 64, 108; SR 67; HD 8; H
128:6, H 158:5). It is this originating Love, this love source who is
Father, that clearly distinguishes the First Person of the triune God
(LEW 14, 31, 104, 107, 169, 223).
The Father is the loving source not only in the inner life of the
Trinity but in the economy of salvation as well. The Father is “the
essential source” from whom “all perfect gifts and all graces flow” (SM
9). He is the Father of lights from which every good gift originates”
(HD 49). The most striking insistence of Montfort about the First Person
of the Most Blessed Trinity in the economy of salvation is the term
“Father,” found extensively throughout his writings. In his commentary
on the Our Father, Saint Louis Marie writes: “We captivate the heart of
God by invoking him by the sweet name of Father” (SR 39). He is, first
of all, the Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ, who has come to us from the
Father’s bosom (LEW 14, 104, 107, 223; SR 72; H 81:2). In Jesus Christ,
the mighty God is also our Father, for “when we pronounce the name
Father, we remember that we receive our existence from God . . . who has
sent his only Son to be our Savior” (SR 43, 46).
The primary characteristic of God the Father, Who engenders the Son
from all Eternity and Who is our “ABBA, Father” (H 7:31), is his
goodness (H 27:1), tenderness (H 13:20; H 28:24; H 52:11). As seen
above, He is Love itself, and even His chastisements are proof of His
infinite love for us (H 98:1). His loving care for us “never fails” (L
2). Since we all have the same loving Father, we are all brothers and
sisters (H 148:5), and we are therefore to be apostles to each other, to
love the God hidden in our neighbor, especially the poor (H 148:16; H
149:1). The expressions “loving Father,” “good Father” are found on
almost every page of his writings.
Montfort boldly declares that the Father, Love itself, the source and
goal of all, shares with Mary His fruitfulness, inasmuch as a pure
creature is capable of it, so that she may generate the eternal Son in
time (TD 17). In an analogous way, Montfort sees the Father sharing life
with all His children who like Mary totally open themselves to His
yearning to love us.
God the Father, source and goal of all people, lovingly draws
everything to Himself in Christ Jesus. Montfort’s path of perfection,
found in the effects of Consecration (TD 213-225), is fulfilled in the
blazing light of the Father, God Alone (TD 151).
In this teaching, Montfort is giving expression to his own mystical
experience of the Father, an experience that radiated through his life
and writings. Although called a “fiery preacher”—for he would not
hesitate to call sin by its name and to describe its horrendous
repercussions—he nonetheless attracted hundreds to the confessional
where he was the loving Father welcoming home the strayed. The very name
given to him by the people, “the good Father from Montfort,”
demonstrates how intimately he “tasted” the goodness of the Father and
shared it with others.
2. The Son
Out of the Father’s fecundity, the Son is born. He is begotten of the
Father, united in being with the Father: “Father, thou who throughout
eternity dost beget a Son like Thee, eternal, consubstantial with thee,
who is of the very same essence as thee; and is of like power and
goodness and wisdom as thou art” (SR 41). “He was given out of love and
fashioned by love. He is therefore all love, or rather the very love of
the Father and the Holy Spirit” (LEW 118; cf. LEW 9, 117-132). He is
within the womb of Love itself, the Father (LEW 14, 31, 104, 107, 169,
223; SR 72; TD 6); he is the Beloved (LEW 19; FC 6; PM 23; H 65:16).
In a striking image reminiscent of the Greek Fathers, Saint Louis de
Montfort describes the Son as the “mamilla Patris,” “the breast of the
Father” (LEW 10; SR 144; LCM 3): “If only we knew the pleasure a soul
tastes who knows the beauty of Wisdom, who sucks the milk of this breast
of the Father, we would cry out with the Spouse: ‘meliora sunt ubera tua
vino: the milk of your breasts is sweeter than delicious wine and all
the sweetness of creatures’” (LEW 10).
It is not surprising that Montfort should develop the theme of Divine
Wisdom as the beautiful expression of the Father, for love does not
remain silent but expresses itself in beautiful words and images. This
expressive aspect of love is developed in the classical Trinitarian love
traditions of Augustine, Anselm, and Bonaventure. In this tradition,
theologians speak of the Son as the Art of the Father, the unsurpassably
beautiful expression of the Father. Montfort echoes this tradition when
he writes that the Son as Eternal Wisdom is “the substantial and eternal
idea of divine beauty” (LEW 17). “God the Father was well pleased with
the sovereign beauty of Eternal Wisdom, his Son, throughout time and
eternity” (LEW 19). Montfort’s own life can be seen as a reflection of
this aspect of the Trinitarian mystery. He was indeed inspired and
inflamed by the creativity of the Father’s artistic expressiveness, and
he produced his own expression of this in preaching, composing poetry
and songs, and staging productions to dramatize the message of love that
was at the heart of both his preaching and his mystical experience.
The Son is the Eternal Wisdom of the Most Blessed Trinity:
“Substantial or uncreated Wisdom is the Son of God, the second person of
the most Blessed Trinity. In other words, it is Eternal Wisdom in
eternity or Jesus Christ in time” (LEW 13). Again, as LEW forcefully
teaches, it is love, gentleness, that characterizes Eternal Wisdom:
“[Incarnate Wisdom] is a gift sent by the love of the Eternal Father and
a product of the love of the Holy Spirit (LEW 118). Montfort considers
the Eternal Wisdom the personification of Wisdom as found in the
Sapiential books of the OT— “a pure emanation of the glory of the
Almighty . . . the reflection of eternal light, the spotless mirror of
God’s majesty, the image of His goodness” (Wis 7:25-26; LEW 16)—and
repeats the beginning of the Gospel of John, adding a short commentary:
“In the beginning was the Word—the Son of God, or Eternal Wisdom—and the
Word was in God and the Word was God” (Jn 1:1-2; LEW 17).
It is out of love that the Son as Wisdom becomes incarnate for us.
Since the Incarnation is the central and “compendium” mystery (TD 243-
248), the references to the Son of God are understandably found
throughout the writings of the missionary. It is at the Annunciation
that God the Son forever enters the human family, that redemption
becomes a reality—by becoming truly Mary’s child through virginal
conception—thanks to her active and responsible consent. Jesus and Mary
become “one heart” (H 40:37; TD 263, 47; H 87:9). It is in her that he
continues his “dependence” on the Father—without any hint of
subordinationism—inasmuch as he is constantly “being generated” by the
Father (cf. H 81:2; TD 157). Moreover, this “dependence” is expressed in
an analogous way in his “dependence” on Mary (TD 27). Finally, the Son
shares his divine life with Our Lady, thereby “divinizing” her, making
her “his inseparable companion” (TD 74; cf. H 87:6; TD 247, 63). He
communicates to her his total surrender to the Father so that she, too,
may be “the slave of the Lord” (Lk 1:38, TD 72). Jesus is “for Mary” so
that she may fully be “for Jesus” (TD 225) and thereby, in the power of
the Spirit, totally for the Father.
The Incarnate Son is the Son of God who reposes in the bosom of the
Father from all eternity (LEW 14, 31) and in the bosom of Mary from the
time of the Incarnation (LEW 233). Sent by the God of love, the
Incarnate Wisdom is “all love” (LEW 118), so approachable and yet our
awesome God. He is the highest point in the cosmos, for he is the God-
man (SR 82; TD 68), the Savior of all (H 10:5), the Beloved of the
Father (FC 6), the only Way, Truth, and Life (LEW 89; FC 6). The evident
conclusion is that our entire life must be centered on Jesus, for it is
only through the Incarnate Second Person of the Trinity that we enter
the glory of the Father (TD 63, where the Christocentrism of Montfort is
so strongly expressed). To turn away from the Incarnate Wisdom is to
fall into the foolishness of sin, which brings about eternal damnation.
Centering our life on Christ through total surrender is, then, to be
“divinized,” to become inheritors of eternal life. In this sense, Jesus
becomes “incarnate” within us, since our entire being is molded into him
(TD 219).
The life of the Eternal and Incarnate Wisdom is “for us,” thereby
revealing that God-Trinity is for us. He is born for us (H 58:1), dies
for us (LEW 54), rises for us (H 84:3) so that we may conquer in him and
through him. He awaits our petitions so that he may answer. His gift is
to reconcile us with the Father. “Wisdom is for man and man is for
Wisdom” (LEW 64).
The Son of God, the New Adam, is, then, the source of eternal life
(LEW 11). For through the victorious Cross he wins for us a share in his
own divine life. Montfort appears to be stunned that this mighty God,
the radiance of the Father (LEW 126), is also our brother and our spouse
(H 87:12). It is by taking up our cross daily and following Jesus, as
Mary did, which calls for a total surrender, a constant living of our
baptismal vows, a Consecration to Jesus the Incarnate and Eternal
Wisdom, that we arrive at the fullness of the glory of God Alone. We
must be one with Eternal and Incarnate Wisdom, thereby becoming fools
for Christ’s sake, so that we conquer the foolish sinfulness of the
world.
This Trinitarian/Christocentricity of Montfort spirituality is highly
pronounced. Mary, in herself a “nothing” (TD 14), is integral to
salvation history because of the Trinity’s inscrutable will that she be
hypothetically necessary (TD 39) in God’s plan of leading all through
Christ Jesus to the Father.
3. The Holy Spirit
Montfort’s preaching on the Holy Spirit is so important and so pervasive
in his writings that it is detailed elsewhere in this Handbook (cf. God,
Holy Spirit, and Mary). A brief overview of the Spirit in the life of
the Trinity will suffice.
Saint Louis Marie’s doctrine on the inner life of the Trinity includes
two central statements on the Holy Spirit. First, God the Holy Spirit,
one in being with the Father and Son (H 109:2), is the infinite
relationship of divine love binding Father and Son: “The substantial
love of the Father and the Son” (TD 36); “Father and Son, who from your
mutual love produce the Holy Spirit who is God like unto you” (SR 42);
“Glory to the Eternal Father, Glory to the Adorable Word! / The same
glory to the Holy Spirit / Who by his love joins them with an ineffable
bond” (H 85:6). The Holy Spirit is also depicted as the infinite “fire,”
“flame” of love within the Trinity: “Come Holy Spirit, God of flame” (H
98:21); “Come, Father of Lights / Come, God of Charity, / . . . Let
there descend into my soul / a coal of your fire / which penetrates it
with flame / and fills it with God” (H 141:1).
Second, Montfort in a celebrated passage of TD 20-21 attempts to
clarify the role of the Spirit within the Godhead: “God the Holy Spirit
who does not produce any divine person, became fruitful through Mary
whom he espoused. . . . This does not mean that the Blessed Virgin
confers on the Holy Spirit a fruitfulness which he does not already
possess. Being God, he has the ability to produce just like the Father
and the Son, although he does not use this power and so does not produce
another divine person. But it does mean that the Holy Spirit chose to
make use of Our Lady, although he had no absolute need of her, in order
to become actively fruitful in producing Jesus Christ.” Saint Louis
Marie repeats this teaching in PM 15: “Holy Spirit . . . within the
Trinity, none of the divine Persons is begotten by you. Outside the
Trinity, you are the begetter of all the children of God. All the saints
who have ever existed or will exist until the end of time, will be the
outcome of your love working through Mary.”
This thought, borrowed and critically adapted from d’Argentan, makes
two assertions about the Holy Spirit within the Godhead: the Spirit does
have the same ability to produce like the Father and the Son, for the
Spirit is of one substance with them. Here Montfort is repeating Saint
Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae I, 41, 5). The missionary also declares
that the Spirit does not produce another divine Person within the
Trinity, for the relationship which constitutes the Spirit is pure
reception, pure gift. The Father through the Son and with the Son is the
giver, the Holy Spirit is pure recipient. Montfort is echoing and
simplifying the rather awkward words of Cardinal de Bérulle: “The
sterility of the Holy Spirit is a sterility that, because it flows from
the fertility of God, ends in the fertility of God, i.e., in the
fecundity of a Divine Person, operating outside itself. . . . It is
unique to the Holy Spirit to be sterile and fertile at the same time. It
is sterile in itself and fertile outside itself.” 12
Montfort has captured the mystery of the Trinity as community. This is
called perichoresis, or, as the Latins term it, the circuminsessio, of
the three Persons of the Trinity. Echoing Richard of St. Victor,
Montfort perceived that one Person is inconceivable without the others,
since they are love relationships. The Father, as pure loving self-
giving, cannot exist without the Beloved and the Loving; the Spirit, the
Loving uniting the Father and the Son—or the Love poured out from the
Father through the Son—cannot exist without the other two Persons. We
deduce, then, from Montfort’s teaching on the Incarnation that the one
God is the Lover (Father) and the Beloved (Son) and the Loving (Spirit).
For Montfort, God is not a solitary God; God is community.
Montfort’s mysticism appears to reach its most profound depth in his
contemplation of the Holy Spirit’s union with Mary at the Incarnation.
The Spirit communicates Himself to Mary precisely as the infinite Loving
Who binds together the Father and the Son, Who then takes possession of
Mary for the Father and the Son. The overshadowing Spirit draws Mary—who
actively and responsibly lets herself be drawn—into the intimate life of
the Trinity itself. Mary herself becomes then a “mirror of the Divinity”
(H 90:40). Living the Trinitarian life in the Holy Spirit, she is the
“paradise of the Trinity” (H 90:58; LEW 208), sharing as a creature in
the holiness of God in a manner incomprehensible, which reaches its
fulfillment in her final “fiat” as she is assumed into heaven. The term
that would summarize Montfort’s profound understanding of the Spirit’s
relationship with Mary is “faithful and indissoluble spouse” (TD 85).
Moreover, Mary, whom the Spirit has espoused in order to produce Jesus
Christ (TD 36), shares in a unique manner in the formation of the
saints, since she is called upon to share in the formation of the Saint
in whom all the saints form one Body. Since the sanctification of the
greatest saints, especially those of the end times, is the work of the
Holy Spirit (TD 55-58), Mary, “the inseparable companion of the Holy
Spirit in all the works of grace” (TD 90), is integral to the Spirit’s
task of leading all to the fulfillment of the kingdom of God (TD 59).
Therefore, the Spirit—“the deluge of fire” (PM 16)—renews the face of
the earth together with His spouse, who is joined to him in all the
works of grace by an inexplicable, eternal union.
In an analogous way, as the Spirit espouses Mary, so too with all the
redeemed. In the light of Montfort’s theology of the Incarnation, the
espousal takes place in Mary and through Mary. The wonders of the Holy
Spirit, the vigor of the continual Pentecost, then, are intensified to
the extent that the Holy Spirit sees his inseparable spouse, Mary, in a
soul: “Rest assured that the more you turn to Mary in your prayers,
meditations, actions and sufferings, seeing her, if not perhaps clearly
and distinctly, at least in a general and indistinct way, the more
surely will you discover Jesus. . . . Mary is far from being an obstacle
to good people who are striving for union with him” (TD 165).
It is the Holy Spirit Who, then, draws the soul into the intimacy of
the Trinity itself; it is the Spirit Who divinizes a soul by making it
his “temple” and forming that person into the very image of Christ. It
is the Holy Spirit Who pours forth dynamic Love into our hearts.
Because of the never-to-be-repealed law of the Incarnation, the great
saints of the end times, called to bring about the ultimate fulfillment
of God’s victory, are formed by the Spirit with Mary. It is the Spirit
Who lures us out of the Cenacle into the proclamation of the glories of
God, Who forms us into “true apostles” (TD 58). The apostolate,
especially the final burst of God’s liberating, healing power
culminating in the reign of Christ through the reign of Mary, is carried
out by people—especially by the members of the Company of Mary—“filled
with the Holy Spirit.” These apostles will be imbued with the spirit of
Mary, for “when the Holy Spirit, her spouse, finds Mary in a soul, he
hastens there and enters fully into it. He gives himself generously to
that soul according to the place it has given to his spouse. One of the
main reasons why the Holy Spirit does not now work striking wonders in
souls is that he fails to find in them a sufficiently close union with
his faithful and inseparable spouse” (TD 36).
It is evident, then, that in the order of redemption, the three
Persons of the Trinity, having willed her consent to the Incarnation,
also will her active presence in the full flowering of the Incarnation,
culminating in the glorious Second Coming of the Savior. Mary is also
the model of how the Trinity works with us—who, like Mary, actively and
responsibly release ourselves into the infinite light of the Trinitarian
God—for the greater glory of God Alone.
V. RELEVANCE OF SAINT LOUIS DE MONTFORT’S TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE
In his preaching and his life, Saint Louis de Montfort opened to others
the mystery of Trinity as fullness and perfection of divine love. As a
creative channel of this classical love tradition, he has much to offer
to our times.
1. Insistence on the Trinity
Perhaps the most vital effect of Mont-fort on today’s work of
evangelization is the saint’s clear insistence on the Trinity. In an age
where it appears that the majority of Christians either ignore the
Trinity or misunderstand it, Saint Louis de Montfort challenges us by
permeating his doctrine with solid Trinitarian teaching.
2. Experience of the Trinity
Montfort proclaims solid Trinitarian thought, however, not for the sake
of abstract intellectual learning. His purpose is to lead the people
into a deeper understanding: into a profound, experiential, mystical
experience of the Trinitarian life within them. It is impossible to
enter Saint Louis de Montfort’s spirituality without being drawn to a
life within the Trinity itself. Montfort recalls to us that this
profound experience of the Trinity is the calling of every Christian.
3. The missionary dimension
His Trinitarian doctrine, however, is not turned in to itself. Just as
the Incarnation—the masterpiece of the Trinity—is essentially
“missionary,” so too the Trinitarian mystic, in the eyes of Montfort, is
essentially missionary. Integral to the formation of the great apostles
of the end times is their deepening knowledge and experience of the
Trinity, the ultimate source and the ultimate goal of their proclamation
of the kingdom. Christian missionary endeavor is essentially
Trinitarian.
4. The Marian dimension
In many ways distinctive of Saint Louis de Montfort is his insistent
teaching on the divinely willed role of Mary in the Trinity’s
divinization of creation. He boldly tells us today that if faith is
weak, if the indwelling of the Trinity is not truly alive and central in
our experience, it is because Mary—the Trinity’s companion in all works
of grace—is not sufficiently united to souls. With Gospel logic he
proclaims to our age that forgetfulness of Mary can only lead to a
weakening of the living of the Trinitarian mystery with all the
consequences involved. Is it possible that this “secret of sanctity”—a
life lived in Mary—is the fundamental reason for the weakness of
Trinitarian awareness and experience in so many Christians? Montfort
would never doubt it.
5. Understanding of community
Saint Louis de Montfort’s Trinitarian doctrine paves the way for a
deeper understanding of community, for not only does he insist that the
Trinity refers to love relationships but he also affirms that human
beings are created to the image of the Trinity (LEW 35, 64; SM 3).
If God is community, if God is dialogue and we have been made to God’s
image, then it follows that we are meant for community. In fact, since
the Persons of the Trinity are pure relationality, then it could be said
that relationship is, in the concrete order, essential to the full
understanding of the human person: persons are made for community.
Since, as Montfort asserts, the Trinity is the community of love
relationships, human communities must mirror within and outside the core
group not hatred but love. Dialogue, depth sharing—applied differently
in diverse cultures—must characterize human community, for they are
intrinsic to the community called God-Trinity. Moreover, since the
triune God wills to be “for us,” as Father de Montfort repeats, so too
should the human community not be turned within itself but reach out
“for others.” Community “at a distance” through fax, phones, and
computers is hardly the full imaging of the inter-relationality and
inter-personality of the Trinity and can never, therefore, be considered
the ideal of family or community life.
The important practical dimensions of a spirituality flowing from the
knowledge and experience of the triune God are many. Montfort’s
Trinitarian teaching in the classical love tradition can be as vital for
us today as it was when he preached so dynamically and profoundly in his
own time.
Notes:
(1) St. Athanasius, Against the Arians. (2) St. Augustine, On the
Trinity, 5. (3) See the Athanasian Creed, which in fact is not derived
from Athanasius but Augustine. (4) St. Augustine, On the Trinity, 5-
15. (5) Richard of St. Victor, On the Trinity, 3. (6) St. Bernard of
Clairvaux, On the Song of Songs, 8, 1 and 2. (7) St. Bonaventure,
Collations on the Six Days, 1, 17. (8) St. Bonaventure, Disputed
Questions on the Mystery of the Trinity, q. 8. (9) Boethius, On the
Person and Two Natures, 3; for a critical treatment of Boethius’
definition, see Richard of St. Victor, On the Trinity, 4. (10) Thomas
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, q. 29, a. 4, corp. (11) See St.
Bonaventure, The Tree of Life. (12) William M. Thompson (ed), Bérulle
and the French School: Selected Writings, Paulist Press, Mahwah, N.J.,
1989, 132 (Discourse on the State and Grandeurs of Jesus, Fourth
Discourse on the Unity of God in this Mystery).
Taken from: Jesus Living in Mary: Handbook of the Spirituality of St.
Louis de Montfort (Litchfield, CT: Montfort Publications, 1994).
Provided courtesy of the Montfort Fathers © All Rights Reserved.
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