Page 109 - Built For God Handbook (Annotated and Explained Edition) - The Christian Edition of the Tao Te Ching - The New Evangelization - Pope John Paul II

43

An image of God as the Trinitarian relationship begins this chapter: The
Father loving the Son, who in turn loves the Holy Spirit (the source of all
virtues and the presence of the Son in our lives), who in turn loves the
Father.

The focus then shifts to the Incarnation, the mystery of the Son of God
physically and humbly entering our human history as a little child, conceived
by the power of the Holy Spirit in the womb of a young Palestinian maiden,
Mary of Nazareth.

This great mystery described here as unfathomable and indefinable, also
inexplicably has form and substance – both truly divine and truly human. In
his humanity as a youth, Jesus was distinguished only by a few
extraordinary events, such as his exchange with the elders in the temple at
the age of twelve. This leads us into the reality of Incarnational spirituality –
that because the divine has participated so fully in our human nature, our
human nature now takes on profound aspects of the divine.

That is made possible by his Spirit of grace and power freely given to us as
gift, the same Spirit that hovered over the original chaos of creation as the
breath or Ruah of God, that raised Jesus the Son of God from the dead, and
that transformed the small band of his disciples into his body, the Church,
coming upon them at Pentecost in the form of wind and fire. That was the
shekinah or glory of God coming back - not to the temple, the physical
building in Jerusalem at the time - but to that little group of disciples huddled
in the upper room. That indwelling Spirit, pouring out on us the unconditional
love of Jesus as forgiveness and healing, is the best witness to the true
nature of the source of that love, our Triune God.

b
a John 14:26; Ephesians 3:14-18; Galatians 4:6; John 1:1-18; Judith 16:2;
d
c Matthew 28:18-20; 1 Corinthians 3:16-17; Romans 8:9-11;
1 Corinthians 6:19.