On Pentecost, Third Sermon

Today’s festival, dearly beloved, which is held in reverence by the whole world, has been made holy by the coming of the Holy Spirit, who on the fiftieth day after the Lord’s resurrection came down on the apostles and on the multitude of believers, just as had been hoped. And there was this hope because the Lord Jesus had promised that he would come. He was not then coming for the first time to dwell in the saints. He came to kindle to a greater heat and to fill with larger abundance the hearts that were dedicated to him, increasing his gifts, not beginning them, not new in his working because he was richer in his bounty. For the majesty of the Holy Spirit is never separate from the almighty power of the Father and the Son, and whatever the divine government accomplishes in the ordering of all things comes from the Providence of the whole Trinity. In it there is one mercy and one loving-kindness, one judgment and one justice; nor is there any division in action where there is no difference of will. So what the Father enlightens, the Son enlightens, and the Holy Spirit enlightens. And while the One who is sent is one Person, the One who sends is another, and the One who promised is another, both the unity and the Trinity are revealed to us at the same time. So the essence, which has equality and does not admit of being solitary, is understood to be of the same substance, but not the same Person. [a]

So the fact that certain things are done by the Father, certain things by the Son, and certain things by the Holy Spirit, while the working together of the inseparable Godhead remains complete, belongs in a special way to the ordering of our redemption and to the method of our salvation. For if man, made in the image and likeness of God, had kept the dignity of his own nature, and had not been deceived by the devil’s tricks into breaking, through desire, the law laid down for him, the Creator of the world would not have become a creature. The Eternal would not have entered the sphere of time, and God the Son, who is equal with God the Father, would not have taken the form of a slave and the likeness of sinful flesh. But “through the devil’s malice death entered the world,” and captive humanity could not be set free in any other way than by one taking up our cause who, without losing his majesty, would both become true man and alone be free from any stain of sin. And so the mercy of the Trinity divided among itself the work of our restoration in such a way that the Father should be propitiated, the Son should propitiate, and the Holy Spirit should kindle. For it was necessary that those who are to be saved should also do something on their part, and by turning their hearts to the Redeemer should leave the dominion of the enemy. As the apostle says: “God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father,” and “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom,” and “No one can call Jesus Lord except in the Holy Spirit.” [b]

So, dearly beloved, if with grace to guide us we understand faithfully and wisely what is the particular work of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit in our restoration, and what is common to the three, we will without doubt accept what was done for us in humility and in the body in such a way as to think nothing unworthy about the one and the same glory of the Trinity. For no mind is equal to thinking about God, and no tongue to speaking about him. Yet whatever the human intellect grasps about the essence of the Father’s Godhead, unless one and the same truth is held about his only Son and about the Holy Spirit, our thoughts are disloyal and clouded by the intrusions of the flesh. And even what seemed a right conclusion about the Father is lost, because the whole Trinity is abandoned if the unity in it is not kept; and what is made different by any inequality cannot in any true sense be one.

So when we set our minds to confess the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, let us keep far from our thoughts the shapes of visible things, the ages of beings born in time, and all material bodies and places. Let whatever is spread out in space, whatever is enclosed by a limit, and whatever is not always everywhere and entire be banished from the heart. The idea of the threefold Godhead must put aside every notion of interval or of grade. And if anyone has reached any worthy thought of God, let him not dare to withhold it from any Person in it, as if it gave more honor to the Father to credit him with what he does not credit to the Son and the Spirit. It is not true godliness to put the Father ahead of his only Son. An insult to the Son is an insult to the Father; what is taken away from the one is taken away from both. For since their eternity and Godhead are shared alike, the Father would not be counted either almighty or unchangeable if he had begotten one less than himself, or had gained by having one whom he did not have before.

The Lord Jesus does indeed say to his disciples, as was read in the Gospel reading, “If you loved me, you would certainly rejoice, because I go to the Father, because the Father is greater than I.” But ears that have often heard the words “I and the Father are one” and “Whoever sees me sees the Father also” accept this saying without supposing any difference of Godhead, and without taking it of that essence which they know to be eternal with the Father and of the same nature as he. So the raising up of humanity in the incarnation of the Word is commended to the holy apostles too, and they, who were distressed when the Lord announced his departure from them, are stirred to eternal joy over the increase of their dignity. “If you loved me,” he says, “you would certainly rejoice, because I go to the Father.” That is: if you saw with full knowledge what glory is given to you by this, that I, who was begotten of God the Father, have also been born of a human mother; that I, who was invisible, have made myself visible; that I, who am eternal “in the form of God,” accepted “the form of a slave,” then “you would rejoice because I go to the Father.” For this ascension is offered to you, and your lowliness is raised in me to a place above all the heavens at the Father’s right hand. But I, who am with the Father what the Father is, remain undivided with my Father. In coming from him to you I do not leave him, just as in returning to him from you I do not abandon you. So rejoice “because I go to the Father, because the Father is greater than I.” For I have united you with myself, and have become the Son of Man so that you might have power to be sons of God. And so, though I am one in both forms, in the form in which I am made like you I am less than the Father, while in the form in which I am not divided from the Father I am greater even than myself. So let the nature that is less than the Father go to the Father, so that the flesh may be where the Word always is, and so that the one faith of the catholic church may believe that the one whom as man it does not deny to be less is, as God, equal with the Father. [e]

Accordingly, dearly beloved, let us despise the empty and blind cunning of ungodly heretics, which flatters itself over its crooked interpretation of this saying. When the Lord says, “All things that the Father has are mine,” it does not understand that whatever it dares to deny to the Son it takes away from the Father. It is so foolish, even in human matters, as to think that what is his Father’s has stopped belonging to his only Son because he has taken on himself what is ours. In God, mercy does not lessen power, and reconciling the creature he loves is no falling away from eternal glory. What the Father has, the Son also has; and what the Father and the Son have, the Holy Spirit also has, because the whole Trinity together is one God. But this faith is not the discovery of earthly wisdom, nor the conviction of human opinion. The only Son has taught it himself, and the Holy Spirit has established it himself, and no other idea must be formed about the Spirit than is formed about the Father and the Son. For although he is not the Father and not the Son, he is not separable from the Father and the Son. And as he has his own Person in the Trinity, so he has one substance in Godhead with the Father and the Son, filling all things, containing all things, and with the Father and the Son governing all things. To him is the honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. [g]