As part of last Trinity Sunday’s homily the priest referenced the Quicumque (Athanasian Creed). I thought I’d remembered that St. Teresa made reference to the Quicumque so I decided to use the Carmelite Digital Library to see if I could find it. I opened the CDL, switched to the Search tab and entered “Quicumque” into the “Find:” box and pressed enter. Sure enough my memory was right as 3 hits were found.
Searching for "quicumque"
I clicked on the ICS reference in the list of matches and in Chapter 39 of The Book of Her Life and I found:
25. Once while reciting the psalm Quicumque vult[21] I was given so clear an understanding of how there is only one God and three Persons that I was amazed and greatly consoled. It was extraordinarily beneficial to me to have further knowledge of the grandeurs of God and of His marvels. When I think about or discuss the Blessed Trinity, it seems I understand how it is possible; and this gives me great happiness.
I followed the link at footnote 21 and it points out that it really isn’t a psalm (sure is nice to be able to cut-n-paste the text):
[21] Not a psalm but the Athanasian Creed which used to be recited at times in the Divine Office.
That got me wondering what else St. Teresa might have said about the Trinity. So I entered “Trinity” in the search tab and found there were 81 hits. Some of the matches were in the Bible, some in the writings of St. John and the rest from St. Teresa. That’s just too many and not exactly what I was looking for. So I changed the Book List to “St. Teresa of Avila – ICS” (sorry E. Allison Peers) and hit enter again. Now there are only 32 matching documents.
Searching for "trinity"
Looking at the list it appears that St. Teresa has much to say about the Trinity in the Spiritual Testimonies; Testimonies 42 and 29 look particularly interesting.
I decided to print both Testimonies off from within the CDL and use them for my mediation.
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