-fr Philip-Thomas, St Patrick’s Soho
There can be seasons of our life where one of the divine persons of the Trinity occupies centre stage in our prayer. Perhaps a charismatic experience opens our eyes to the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, and we feel we need to make more space for him after many years of neglect. Or it’s like the face of the Father is unveiled to us – often this can come at a time in our life when we have dared to descend into our wounded heart and encounter our inner child, who longs to know and be known by a father. For some time, the focus of my own Christian life had very much been the Father, but then recently the figure of the Son loomed large once again in my prayer and my meditations: how he remains present in the Church through his Word and the sacraments. There is a beauty in the changing of the seasons of our Christian life just like there is beauty as seasons change in the natural world.
But this Gospel has a reminder for us. Jesus says, “Whoever sees me, sees the one who sent me” (Jn 12:45). Seeing Jesus here is obviously not simply to clap eyes on him. It is to perceive his deep identity. And we cannot perceive the identity of the Son except by knowing the Father. Because the secret of the Son’s identity is his relation to the Father. In the Trinity, eternally, the three divine persons are subsistent relations: they are entirely turned towards the other, the Son towards the Father and with him towards the Spirit; the Father towards the Son and through him towards the Spirit. To know a divine person without knowing their relation to the others is not to know them at all.
This is not to say that unless we’ve tried to do the theology of the Trinity, tried to get our heads around the toughest pages of the Summa Theologiae where Aquinas develops the doctrine of the divine persons as subsisting relations, we do not know the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. That’s not what I’m saying at all. But each divine person points towards the others. So it’s the measure for example of your encounter with the Holy Spirit that he leads you towards Christ and his body the Church. It’s the measure of your reading of the word of Christ in the Scriptures that you go on an interior journey to bring your inner child to the embrace of the Father. It’s the measure of your trust in the Father that you open yourself to the guiding motions and creative love of the Holy Spirit.
Casting Fire 