Sacred Scripture alerts us to two interconnected truths.
Both the Son and the Holy Spirit proceed from another in God, and they are sent into the
world.
Now, in an earlier video, we've already discussed what a procession is in
God.
St. Thomas Aquinas moves from speaking about the divine processions to speaking about the
divine missions, the way the Son and the Holy Spirit are sent into the world by the Father,
and these missions are the key hinge to the whole dispensation of salvation.
Think of them like rescue missions.
They're the ways that the eternal processions in God are made present in the world.
God comes to us in person, and at the same time they're the way that God in person brings
us back to Himself.
They become the pathways or the vectors of our return to God.
By means of the divine missions, the Trinitarian mystery of God in Himself is not only revealed
in the dispensation of salvation, but is active in drawing creation back into the Trinity,
as these eternal processions of the divine persons are made present and extended into
time.
So what is a divine mission?
Well, first of all, the word mission simply means to be sent.
In fact, every sending, even when we're talking about human persons, always involves two things:
first, being from another, and then going someplace new.
When it comes to speaking about the mission of a divine person however, Aquinas removes
from this creaturely analogy any sense of change.
That's because a divine person doesn't change.
He doesn't begin to be where he wasn't before, and that brings Aquinas to a key formulation
of what is a divine mission.
It is on the one side that the person proceeds from another in God, there is an eternal procession,
and on the other side, there is a new mode of existing in another, a new mode of existing
in creation.
A divine person is sent according to a new created effect so that he is present in the
world according to or in this effect.
Let's consider some examples.
When the Father sends the Son into the world in Jesus Christ, what happens?
You have the presence of the Son in time according to a new created effect, which is the human
nature of Jesus.
Now this is a totally unique case of a visible mission of a divine person.
The created effect is Christ's humanity, the person present is the Word, and that humanity
is united to the Word so that it is the human nature of that divine person.
But there are other examples of divine missions, especially the visible missions
of the Holy Spirit.
Aquinas identifies four of these.
The first is when the form of a dove descends on Jesus at his baptism in the Jordan.
The second is at the Transfiguration when a luminous cloud envelops Christ on the top
of Mount Tabor.
The third and fourth visible missions of the Holy Spirit are to the apostles.
When Jesus appears to the disciples in the upper room on the evening of the Resurrection,
he breathes on them and says, "Receive the Holy spirit," and again, at Pentecost, the
Holy Spirit descends on them in the form of tongues of fire.
These visible missions of the divine persons are the central events depicted in
the New Testament, and they're extremely important, but Aquinas says that they are for the sake
of something equally important.
That is the indwelling of the divine persons in our souls, and this is what it means to
be saved.
Jesus Christ came into the world so that we would be able to receive the gift of salvation,
each of us individually, each of us having the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit dwell
in our hearts.
This is what Aquinas calls the invisible missions, because here there is no visible created effect
by which a divine person is sent, but there is an invisible effect.
What are those effects?
It is the virtue of faith and the virtue of charity.
The virtue of faith assimilates us to the procession of the divine Word.
The Father, as He knows Himself, generates a Word that expresses him perfectly by which
the Father in a certain sense is knowing Himself perfectly.
And when we receive the gift of faith, we too are assimilated to this procession of
the Word so that we begin to know God as He knows Himself.
And likewise in the gift of divine charity, when charity is infused into our hearts, we
receive the theological virtue that makes us like the divine person of the Holy Spirit
who is Love in person.
We are assimilated to the Holy Spirit, and in fact, Aquinas says the Holy Spirit is personally
present in us when we are filled with His charity.
And so as the Father sends the Son and the Holy Spirit into our hearts, we
are configured to their personal processions.
And as that happens, we are set on the trajectory back to God through the Holy Spirit and the
Son all the way unto the Father who is the source without a source in the Holy Trinity.
For readings, podcasts, and more videos like this, go to Aquinas101.com.
While you're there, be sure to sign up for one of our free video courses on Aquinas.
And don't forge to like and share with your friends, because it matters what you think!