Introduction
“That they may all be one; even as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in
us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory which you have given me I
have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they
may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved
them even as you have loved me.” (John 17: 21-23)
“The ultimate end of the whole divine economy is the entry of God’s creatures into the perfect
unity of the blessed Trinity (John 17: 21-23). But even now we are called to be a dwelling for
the Most Holy Trinity: “If a man loves me,” says the Lord, ‘he will keep my word, and my
Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.’” (John 14:23)
CCC 260
“The indwelling of the Trinity is easy to understand and it is difficult to understand. It is so
patent that a child can appreciate its splendor, so mysterious that theologians have disagreed for
centuries in explaining its details.” Fr. Thomas Dubay
When two of John the Baptist’s disciples asked Jesus “Rabbi (which means teacher) where are
you staying? He said to them “Come and see.” They came and saw where he was staying, and
they stayed with him that day, for it was about the tenth hour.” (John 1: 38-39)
God is Everywhere
“I am God and not man, the holy one in the midst of you” Hosea 11:9
God is both immanent and transcendent.
Who are you, sweet light, that fills me
And illumines the darkness of my heart?
You lead me like a mother’s hand,
And should you let go of me,
I would not know how to take another step.
You are the space
That embraces my being and buries it in yourself.
Away from you it sinks into the abyss
Of nothingness, from which you raised it to the light.
You, nearer to me than I to myself
And more interior than my most interior
And still impalpable and intangible
And beyond any name:
Holy Spirit eternal love!
St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross
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O LORD, you have searched me and known me! 2 You know when I sit down and when I rise
up; you discern my thoughts from afar. 3 You search out my path and my lying down, and are
acquainted with all my ways. 4 Even before a word is on my tongue, lo, O LORD, you know it
altogether. 5 You beset me behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. 6 Such knowledge is
too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain it. 7 Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where
shall I flee from your presence? 8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in
Sheol, you are there! 9 If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the
sea, 10 even there your hand shall lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. If I say, "Let only
darkness cover me, and the light about me be night," 12 even the darkness is not dark to you, the
night is bright as the day; for darkness is as light with you. 13 For you didst form my inward
parts, you knit me together in my mother's womb. Ps 139.
Image
“How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts! My soul longs, yes, faints for the courts of
the Lord; my heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God.” (Psalm 84:1-2)
“As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul for you O God. My soul thirsts for God, the
living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God.” (Psalm 42: 1-2)
“O God, you are my God whom I seek; for you my soul pines and my flesh pines like the earth,
parched lifeless and without water” (Psalm 63:1).
Name (revelation and grace)
“To make his name dwell there.” (Deut. 12:11)
“…that your eyes may be open night and day towards this house, the place of which you have
said, ‘my name shall be there,’ that you may listen to the prayer which your servant offers
toward this place.” (1 Kings 8:29)
“I have manifested your name to the men that you gave me out of the world.” (John 17:6)
“I made known to them your name, and I will make it known, that the love with which you have
loved me may be in them, and I in them.” (John 17:26)
“That “name” [given to Moses] was more than a word. It meant that God allowed himself to be
invoked, that he had entered into communion with Israel. The revelation of the name is a new
mode of God’s presence among men, a radically new way in which God makes his home with
them…”
“He is truly present, yet always remains infinitely greater and beyond our reach. ‘God’s name’ is
God himself insofar as he gives himself to us…”
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“If we may say that God’s immanence in the Old Testament was effected in the form of the word
and in the form of liturgical celebration, that immanence has now become ontological: in Jesus,
God has truly become man. God has entered our very being. In him God is truly “God-with-us”.
Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth vol. 2 p 91, 92
“who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,
but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.
And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even
death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is
above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and
under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the
Father.” Phil. 2:6-11
“It should be remembered, indeed, that our real, vital, indispensable communication with God is
not merely the natural one, achieved by our rational or sentimental attempts, but it is the one
established by Jesus Christ, namely, that of the supernatural order, of grace.
“And what is grace? Oh! Do not ask us that in this momentary conversation! In any case, you
know: it is a gift of God; it is an intervention of His love, of the Spirit in the free movement of
our soul; in fact it mysteriously goes before it and arouses it, without exonerating it from
responsibility (cf. Denz. Sch. 1541). It is a quality of the soul, created grace, instilled by Godlove—the Holy Spirit, uncreated Grace. It is the formal immanent cause of our justification (cf.
S. Th. I-II, 113, 8); it is our elevation to the dignity and reality—though men of this world—of
adopted sons of God, brothers of Christ, tabernacles of the Holy Spirit. It is God living in us; it
is living contact with the divine life; and therefore it is our link with salvation in this life and the
next.
“To be or not to be in God’s grace is a question of life and death. We can never overestimate
God’s grace; no effort of study, endeavor, hope and joy will ever be in vain to maintain grace as
the most important thing in our lives.” Paul VI General audience, Feb. 28, 1973.
Temple Worship
“And let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst. According to all that I show
you concerning the pattern of the tabernacle, and of all its furniture, so you shall make it.”
(Exodus 25:8-9)
“Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel.” (Psalm 22:3)
“But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain
you; how much less this house which I have built.” (1 Kings 8:27)
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“God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” (John 4:24)
“And when the priests came out of the holy place, a cloud filled the house of the Lord, so that
the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud; for the glory of the Lord filled the
House of the Lord.” (1 Kings 8:11)
“And the glory of the LORD went up from the cherubim to the threshold of the house; and the
house was filled with the cloud, and the court was full of the brightness of the glory of the
LORD.” (Ezek 10:4)
“And the glory of the LORD went up from the midst of the city, and stood upon the mountain
which is on the east side of the city” (Ezek 11:23)
Pauline Letters
“God’s love has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.” (Rom
5:5)
“But you are not in the flesh, you are in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Any
one who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you,
although your bodies are dead because of sin, your spirits are alive because of righteousness. If
the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from
the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit which dwells in you.”
(Romans 8: 9-12)
“Built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief
corner stone: in whom all the building, being framed together, growth up into a holy temple in
the Lord. In whom you also are built together into a habitation of God in the Spirit.” (Eph. 2:2022)
“That Christ may dwell by faith in your hearts” (Eph. 3:17)
“Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” (1 Cor. 3:16)
“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you?” (1 Cor. 6:19)
“For we are the temple of the living God; as God has said, ‘I will live in them and move among
them, and I will be their God and they shall be my people. Therefore come out from them and be
separate from them, says the Lord, and touch nothing unclean; then I will welcome you, and I
will be a father to you, and you shall be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.’” (2
Cor. 6:16-18)
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Gospel of John and the Trinity
“In this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.” (1
John 4:13)
“God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” (1 John 4:16)
“I will ask the Father and he will give you another Advocate… whom the world cannot receive
because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you shall know him, because he will dwell with
you, and be in you.” (John 14:16-17)
“In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. He who loves
me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.” (John 14:2021)
“God is love. He who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.” (1 John 4:16)
The effects of God’s presence in us
“The glory which thou hast given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are
one.
“In my interior life I never reason; I do not analyze the ways in which God’s Spirit leads me. It
is enough for me to know that I am loved and that I love. Pure love enables me to know God and
understand many mysteries.” St. Faustina, Diary, 293
“Here all three Persons communicate themselves to it, speak to it, and explain those words of the
Lord in the Gospel: that He and the Father and the Holy Spirit will come to dwell with the soul
that loves Him and keeps His commandments… Each day this soul becomes more amazed, for
these Persons never seem to leave it any more, but it clearly beholds, in the way that was
mentioned, that they are within it. In the extreme interior, in some place very deep within itself,
the nature of which it doesn’t know how to explain, because of a lack of learning, it perceives
this divine company.” St. Teresa of Avila, Interior Castle, 7.1.
“I knew, more distinctly than ever before, the Three Divine Persons, the Father, the Son and the
Holy Spirit. But their being, their equality and their majesty are one. My soul is in communion
with these Three; but I do not know how to express it in words; yet my soul understands it well.
Whoever is united to one of the Three Persons is thereby united to the whole Blessed Trinity, for
this Oneness is indivisible. This vision, or rather this knowledge filled my soul with
unimaginable happiness, because God is so great.” St. Faustina, Diary, 472.
“A vivid and clearly felt presence of God continues in my soul. The awareness of this plunges
me into deep recollection, without the slightest effort on my part. My heart is a living tabernacle
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in which the living Host is reserved. I have never sought God in some far-off place, but within
myself. It is in the depths of my being that I commune with God.” St. Faustina, Diary, 1302.
“This flame of love is the Spirit of its Spouse—that is, the Holy Spirit. And this flame the soul
feels within it, not only as a fire that has consumed and transformed it in sweet love, but also as a
fire which burns within it and sends out flame, as I have said, and that flame bathes the soul in
glory and refreshes it with the temper of Divine life.” John of the Cross, Living Flame of Love,
1.3
“Wherefore the delicacy of the delight which is felt in this touch is impossible of true
description, nor would I willing speak of it lest it should be supposed that it is no more than that
which I say. There are no words to expound such sublime things of God as come to pass in these
souls; the proper way to speak is for one that knows them to understand them inwardly and to
feel them inwardly and enjoy them and be silent concerning them.” Living Flame of Love, 2.19
“I have in mind fruit which is said to be very tasty, but I have never eaten it. I know that it is a
tasty fruit because he who told me does not deceive me. This is God as known by faith and
possessed by charity. But I put the fruit to my mouth and begin to eat it, and then I know by
experience that it was true what they told me of its sweetness and savor. This is God known by
mystical experience.” J. Menendez-Reingada, Los dones del Espiritu Santo y la perfeccion
Cristiana, Ch. 1.
Conclusion
“God is in man, not only as in inanimate things, but because He is more fully known and loved
by him, since even by nature we spontaneously love, desire, and seek after the good. Moreover,
God by grace resides in the just soul as in a temple, in a most intimate and peculiar manner.
From this proceeds that union of affection by which the soul adheres most closely to God, more
so than the friend is united to his most loving friend, and enjoys God in all fullness and
sweetness. Now this wonderful union, which is properly called “indwelling,” differing only in
degree of state from that with which God beatifies the saints in heaven, although it is most
certainly produced by the presence of the whole Blessed Trinity—nevertheless is attributed in a
peculiar manner to the Holy Ghost.” Leo XIII, Pope, Encyclical Letter of May 9th, 1897 in The
Abiding Presence of the Holy Ghost in the Soul
Bibliography
Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection, The Practice of the Presence of God
Jean Danielou, God in us
Paul VI, God’s Gift—the Holy Spirit
Francis Cunningham, The Indwelling of the Trinity
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Thomas Dubay, The Indwelling of Divine Love in Letter and Spirit vol. 4 2008.
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