With Trinity Sunday approaching, I have been thinking about the Trinitarian way that John of Ruusbroec explains the highest, unifying point of our soul. For the mediaeval Augustinian canon, it would be unfortunate to describe the unifying centre of our spirit in terms that do not reflect our creaturely origin in the Three Divine Persons.

This unifying centre goes by many names. Francis de Sales calls it quite famously “the fine point of our spirit.” It is something above reason and consciousness. We might locate it, to use a very Maritainian phrase, in “the spiritual unconscious” or “supraconscious”—as opposed to the animalistic, psychological unconscious or subconscious. It is the most condensed, simplified point of the supraconscious sphere.

In this “fine point” is where grace first roots itself and the Trinitarian Persons take up their abode. From it all the individually distinguishable, often conscious manifestations of grace radiate outwards, including faith, hope, and charity.

This is how many Christian teachers on the spiritual life speak. But if we put things just like this, it all sounds very plain. In fact, I picture the “fine point” to be very simple—but with the simplicity of something that is singular and alone.

That can’t be right.

The Trinity is going to make its abode there for the person in a state of grace, so why not characterize the “fine point” in openly Trinitarian terms? That’s what Ruusbroec reminds us of, and I really am drawn to his contribution.

In the work called the Mirror of Eternal Blessedness, Ruusbroec gives his description of “the soul’s high reason,”[1] i.e., the “fine point of the spirit” or uppermost part of the “spiritual unconscious.” He begins by telling us that “the topmost part of our soul is always… bare and devoid of images and is always gazing at and tending toward its source.”[2] In this phraseology, we can detect “three attributes.”[3]

The first is “an essential barenesss devoid of images,”[4] which can be represented by the image of a desert—empty, barren, void, but still of a particular, if simple, configuration. This barren desert is associated with the spiritual unconscious of the memory, which is here before all images and memories. It makes one think of the Person of the Father—the first relation, the first remembering. There is room for him to be present in our uppermost desert. There is always a space empty enough for that.

The second attribute is “a mirrorlike resplendence through which we receive the Son of God.”[5] So, we have an association with the Second Person of the Trinity, and the formation of an idea or thought like the Second Person is to the Father, per many traditional expositions of the Trinity. This “part” or “dimension” (if we can use the words) of the uppermost, simplest point of the human spirit is like the supraconscious origin of the intellect.

Finally, the third attribute that Ruusbroec draws our attention to is “what I call the spark of the soul, which is the soul’s natural tendency toward its source.”[6] In other words, now we have the incipient point of willing, desiring, loving, and tending towards. The fire imagery and the evocation of some sort of pre-conscious will make one, of course, think of the Holy Spirit of Pentecost.

Later on in the same work, Ruusbroec regroups the three attributes as “three properties.”^[7] At that point, he summarizes them as “being, seeing, and tending toward the source of our creatureliness.”^[8] The desert is a matter of being, the mirror a matter of seeing, the spark a matter of tending towards. Again—Father, Son, Spirit, in our spiritually preconscious memory, intellect, will.

Why does this mediaeval teaching appeal to me?

I find it very comforting and strengthening. Even when I am not conscious of it, so long as I am in a state of grace, the Three Divine Person dwell in me. They really do. That means they are truly welcomed into some space that is before all my memories or imaginations, before all my thoughts, and before all my conscious desires and choices. Grace is not purely about the conscious mind, the virtues, even the theological virtues. The primary point is more than that—thank God. Christian belief is about a Trinity who says, “We will come to them and make our home with them” (Jn 14:23 NRSV).

Ruusbroec is also very simple. He “divides” up this simplest point of our soul, before all its divisions and operations, into three foundational images:

• the desert devoid of images and memories—precursor of the memory;
• the mirror ready to receive the Son—incipient power of the intellect;
• the spark ready to light a fire—in the will.

Somehow, “the soul’s highest reason” or “the topmost part of our soul” is all three things at once, despite being totally simple. And that’s great, because it’s where a Trinity in Unity makes its home.

I like to think about this teaching of Ruusbroec’s often, because I have come to regard it as a very simple way to envision the divine indwelling in anthropological and phenomenological terms.

Where, O Blessed Trinity, do you go when I am not aware that you are there? Ah, you are in this “fine point” or “spiritual unconscious”—the preconscious source of my memory, intellect, and will—and you are flooding your grace into that point where you truly, really dwell, and the waters cascade from there into the demarcated sections in the depths and outer edges of my soul where my conscious mind wanders. That barren desert, that clean mirror, that spark of the soul—blessed be the Trinity who creates this in each of us and desires to abide in it forever.

[1] John Ruusbroec, Mirror of Eternal Blessedness II.B, in The Spiritual Espousals and Other Works, trans. James A. Wiseman (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1985), 214.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Mirror of Eternal Blessedness III.A, in ibid., 235.

[8] Ibid.