This book is a prolonged contemplative gaze upon the central mysteries of human existence illumined from that core mystery that gives meaning to all things: the essence of all being as love and intimacy in the very likeness of the Trinity. The reflections contained here seek to sink their roots down into the foundational experiences of human existence, in its most basic origin and meaning, and thus also to stretch to the true extent of human desire and aspiration, which is fulfilled only in Christ, the Redeemer of Man. In him, who reveals to us the love of the Father by the gift of the Holy Spirit, we come to know, with awe and wonder, our true dignity, and to rejoice in this mystery before him, even as this awareness blossoms in a capacity to love and care for our brothers and sisters too. Thus it opens up the path for us to begin to see the whole of created reality bathed in the light of the relations of the Persons of the Trinity, and to live, in the whole rich fabric of our life, in the very likeness of the Love who created us for himself-the eternally blessed Father, Son, and Holy Spirit-and in whom alone our restless hearts find definitive and everlasting rest.

God has not left us in the darkness, but has come as Light among us to bring clarity and peace and simplicity to our hurting hearts, and to draw us back together again, from the multiplicity of fragmentation, into the harmony and simplicity of unity. He has come to us as a living human being, a man, in the Person of Jesus Christ-the only-begotten Son of the Father made present at the heart of the world and history-in order to make a marriage of God and humanity, of the divine and the whole created order, and to make the latter new within the tender embrace of the former. The incarnate Christ is, as the felicitous expression puts it, the "Verbum abbreviatum," the abbreviated Word. He is God "made short" for us, God made simple and humble and little. He is God meeting us in our littleness.

The words of this book will seek, however imperfectly, to open up the path for us to draw nearer to the unspeakable beauty of our amazing God, to come to know, love, and experience the beauty and goodness of the Trinity, and to embrace our call to participate in his inner life of love. For this is the source and fulfillment of human existence, and its true blessedness: to be loved totally in the whole of my being by eternal Love, and to fall in love with him in response. This experience of mutual love heals and renews my being, and draws me into the ceaseless circulation of self-giving that passes eternally between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In this circulation of love, I am caught up right into the heart of the Trinity's embrace, and there, also, find myself most deeply united with all of my brothers and sisters, and with the beauty and goodness of the whole creation.