CATECHISM LESSON: God is Trinity

Continuing Chapter 5. What is the central mystery of the Christian faith and of Christian life? Many today might well reply it is a person, Jesus Christ. That answer is incorrect. The Church teaches us that the mystery of the Trinity is what is central to our faith.

Interesting thought we might think about too often: People of the OT times did not have the experience of the Trinity as we know it. For them God, Yahweh, was learned from the scriptures that God was one, unique. He had no equal. He created the world, established a covenant with the people. He is, as we have heard, the Father of the poor, the orphan and the widow.

OT scripture time and again gives praise and glory to the universal power of God. Then, in time, there comes the man Jesus. With his presence upon the earth we encounter God in a different sense. Jesus revealed God as Father. God has a relationship to his only begotten Son. Read St. John's gospel, Chapters 13-17: you will find that Jesus refers to God as 'Father' forty-five times. Jesus is divine as is his Father.

Prior to his passion this son of God made a promise to all of us: I will send the Holy Spirit to teach, counsel and guide. The appearance of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and elsewhere in the NT is considered to be evidence that the Holy Spirit is the third person of this Holy Trinity.
So, we can say that the Holy Trinity is God's revelation of himself as Father in an intimate relationship with Jesus, his Son, and the Holy Spirit. This unique reality includes THREE truths of our faith.

First: The Trinity is ONE. Each person is fully God. Three gods are not part of this theology. We believe in a unity of Persons and one divine nature (p52).

Second: The Divine Persons (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) are distinct from each other. Each is not an expression of an appearance or mode of God. Each is an identifiable person. Each Person of the Trinity is fully God in a way that is distinct from the others.

Third: The three Divine Persons are in relation to each other. Catch this third truth. It takes few minutes to sink in ... as much as a mystery can sink in! The distinction for the other two that each possesses is understood by our human minds as we see that distinction only in reference to the others. God cannot be Father without His Son, nor can His Son be the Son without the Father. Then in the Holy Spirit we find a relationship to both Father and Son because both sent the Spirit to the world.

Enough for today. This is an important lesson for establishing a strong basis to our faith. This is essential today because, unfortunately, much of our catechetical instruction occurred years ago. If you are like this blogger, time and quantity many have pushed this learning deep, deep within our memories. Since the Trinity gives illumination to all the other mysteries of our faith, we should have a clear an understanding of this mystery as is humanly possible ... so that we can gain so much more in our understanding the other mysteries of our faith and why we say we are who we are as Roman Catholics.