Praise be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
We're just re-recording the homily from the other day on our series of Franciscan Spirituality.
I think the computer had a brain freeze, so we weren't able to get the whole homily in, so if you are having a brain freeze as well, trying to follow these conferences, you are in good company.
But we're going to continue today by talking about the human person.
Last time we spoke of man as being an individual who is incommunicable and independent.
Today we'll begin speaking about what's called his relative subsistence.
Subsistence is a philosophical term.
It means the existence that belongs to a whole and uncreated substance or reality.
It's considered a perfection that completes a nature.
Before we look at our own subsistence, though, we'll take a look at see how this plays out in God, because theology over the centuries has developed the understanding of what a person is by looking at God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and from that discovering the supreme values of man.
In the Trinity, the three persons are really distinguished from one another by their properties and their relations.
There's an eternal giving and receiving between them.
What distinguishes the divine persons are what's called their personal properties, and in them the incommunicability of the I is founded on the fact that the eternal communication is total and the pouring out of the divine essence is absolute.
Saint Bonaventure in his itinerary writes this.
He says, one cannot think of a greater diffusion, a greater outpouring than that in which the one diffusing communicates to the other his entire substance and nature.
That's what happens with God, Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit.
Bonaventure continues, from supreme goodness, it's necessary that there be in the persons supreme communicability, because if in the Trinity there's supreme communication and true diffusion, there's also true origin and true distinction, and because the whole is communicated and not merely part, whatever is possessed is given completely.
Therefore, says Saint Bonaventure, the one emanating and the one proceeding are distinguished by their properties and are one in essence.
I think hearing that, that's why the computer actually had a big glitch the other day.
So in the eternal, this eternal giving and receiving within the Trinity, there's no egoism.
Every divine richness, instead of being appropriated, instead of being taken over by each person in a possessive way, it's appropriated in a relative and altruistic way, in the communication of all that one has and is to the other persons, who in turn have similar relationships with the others.
The I of each divine person doesn't appropriate or take away anything from the other.
It's only a subsisting relationship with the other two persons.
Richard of St. Victor, along with Saint Bonaventure and Duns Scotus, says that the distinction of the three persons in God is in the giving and in the receiving.
The Father gives everything to the Son, the Son receives and gives, the Holy Spirit receives everything from the Father and from the Son together.
It's the eternal gift of self to another, the eternal receiving from another, terms that have the resonance of infinite love.
We see this even in Scripture.
For example, when Jesus says, everything has been given to me by my Father, Luke 10:22.
Or John 5:26, as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son also to have life in Himself.
Everything that the Father has is mine, John 16, verse 15.
Or John 16, verses 13 and 14, when Jesus says, when the Spirit of truth will come, He will not speak on His own behalf, but whatever He hears, He will speak.
He will glorify me, for He will take what is mine and declare it to you.
So this eternal giving and receiving, which keeps for itself only the relations of paternity, sonship, and spiration, this eternal giving and receiving in God finds its source not in the need to fill a void or to achieve a perfection that's lacking in God, but it finds its source in the superabundant fullness of the divine perfections of the divine persons who are supremely free and supremely blessed as well.
And in our next reflection, we'll talk about how some of this is reflected in our own human nature and how the reality of God's subsistence relates to us.
So let's ask Our Lady once again for the grace to know ourselves and to know the Lord better, because those are the two main hinge points for growth in the spiritual life, greater knowledge of God and a greater knowledge of myself.
Praise be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.