Title: God Is the Blessed Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit General audience of October 9, 1985
1God Is the Blessed Trinity, Father, Son and Holy
Spirit General audience of October 9, 1985
- The Church professes her faith in the one God,
- who is at the same time the Most Holy and
ineffable Trinity of Persons - Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
- The Church lives by this truth contained in the
most ancient symbols of faith. - Paul VI recalled it in our times on the occasion
of the 1900th anniversary of the martyrdom of the
holy Apostles Peter and Paul (1968), in the
symbol he presented which is universally known as
the Credo of the People of God.
2God Is the Blessed Trinity, Father, Son and Holy
Spirit General audience of October 9, 1985
- Only "he who has wished to make himself known to
us, and who 'dwelling in light inaccessible' - (1 Tim 616)
- is in himself above every name,
- above every thing
- and above every created intellect...
- can give us right and full knowledge of this
reality by revealing himself as Father, Son and
Holy Spirit, in whose eternal life we are by
grace called to share, here below in the
obscurity of faith and after death in eternal
light..." - (L'Osservatore Romano, English edition, July 11,
1968, p. 4).
3God Is the Blessed Trinity, Father, Son and Holy
Spirit General audience of October 9, 1985
- God is incomprehensible to us.
- He wished to reveal himself, not only as the one
creator and Almighty Father, but also as - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
- This revelation reveals in its essential source
the truth about God, who is love - God is love in the interior life itself of the
one divinity.
4God Is the Blessed Trinity, Father, Son and Holy
Spirit General audience of October 9, 1985
- This love is revealed as an ineffable communion
of persons. - This mystery
- the most profound, the mystery of the intimate
life of God himself - has been revealed to us by Jesus Christ
- "He who is in the bosom of the Father,
- he has made him known"
- (Jn 118).
5God Is the Blessed Trinity, Father, Son and Holy
Spirit General audience of October 9, 1985
- The last words with which Christ concluded his
earthly mission after the resurrection were
addressed to the apostles, - according to St. Matthew's Gospel
- "Go therefore and make disciples of all the
nations. Baptize them in the name of the Father
and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" - (Mt 2819).
- These words began the Church's mission and
indicated her fundamental and constitutive task. - The Church's first task is to teach and baptize
- to baptize means "to immerse"
- so that all may come to share God's trinitarian
life.
6God Is the Blessed Trinity, Father, Son and Holy
Spirit General audience of October 9, 1985
- Trinity in New Testament
- Jesus Christ expressed in these final words all
that he had previously taught about God, - the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
- He had announced from the beginning the truth
about the one God, in conformity with the
tradition of Israel. - Jesus answered the question
- "Which commandment is the first of all?" by
stating - "The first is, 'Hear, O Israel the Lord our God
is one Lord,'" - (Mk 1229).
7God Is the Blessed Trinity, Father, Son and Holy
Spirit General audience of October 9, 1985
- Trinity in New Testament
- At the same time Jesus had constantly addressed
God as "his Father," to the point of asserting - "I and the Father are one"
- (Jn 1030).
- He had revealed in the same way the
- "Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father"
- and whomas he assured us
- "I will send to you from the Father"
- (Jn 1526).
8God Is the Blessed Trinity, Father, Son and Holy
Spirit General audience of October 9, 1985
- The words of baptism
- "in the name of the Father and of the Son
- and of the Holy Spirit,"
- entrusted by Jesus to the apostles at the end of
his earthly mission, have a special significance.
- They have consolidated the truth about the Most
Holy Trinity, by placing it at the basis of the
Church's sacramental life. - The life of faith of all Christians begins in
baptism, - with immersion in the mystery of the living God.
9God Is the Blessed Trinity, Father, Son and Holy
Spirit General audience of October 9, 1985
- The letters of the apostles prove this,
- especially those of Paul.
- Among the trinitarian formulas which they
contain, the best known and the one constantly
used in the liturgy is that in the Second Letter
to the Corinthians - "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love
of God (the Father) and the fellowship of the
Holy Spirit be with you all" - (2 Cor 1314).
- We find others in the First Letter to the
Corinthians, in the Letter to the Ephesians and
also in the First Letter of St. Peter, at the
beginning of the first chapter - (1 Pet 11-2).
10God Is the Blessed Trinity, Father, Son and Holy
Spirit General audience of October 9, 1985
- Indirectly the whole development of the Church's
life of prayer has taken on a trinitarian
awareness and orientation - in the Spirit, through Christ, to the Father.
- Thus faith in the Triune God has entered from the
beginning into the tradition of the life of the
Church and of Christians. - Consequently the whole liturgy has been
- and is
- essentially trinitarian,
- inasmuch as it expresses the divine economy.
11God Is the Blessed Trinity, Father, Son and Holy
Spirit General audience of October 9, 1985
- One must emphasize that faith in the redemption,
- that is, faith in Christ's work of salvation,
- has contributed to understanding this supreme
mystery of the Blessed Trinity. - It manifests the mission of the Son and of the
Holy Spirit who in the bosom of the eternal
Trinity proceed "from the Father." - It reveals the "trinitarian economy" present in
the redemption and in sanctification.
12God Is the Blessed Trinity, Father, Son and Holy
Spirit General audience of October 9, 1985
- The Holy Trinity is announced first of all
through soteriology, that is, - through the knowledge of the
- "economy of salvation,"
- which Christ announced and put into effect in his
messianic mission.
13God Is the Blessed Trinity, Father, Son and Holy
Spirit General audience of October 9, 1985
- The path to the knowledge of the "immanent"
Trinity, - of the mystery of God's inner life,
- begins from this knowledge.
- In this sense the New Testament contains the
fullness of trinitarian revelation. - God reveals both who God is for us,
- and who God is in himself,
- namely, in his inner life,
- by the revelation of himself in Jesus Christ.
14God Is the Blessed Trinity, Father, Son and Holy
Spirit General audience of October 9, 1985
- The truth that "God is love"
- (1 Jn 416),
- expressed in the First Letter of John,
- is a keystone here.
- This truth reveals who God is for us.
- It also reveals who God is in himself,
- (as far as is possible for the human mind to
understand it and for human language to express
it). - He is a Unity, that is, a Communion of the
Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
15God Is the Blessed Trinity, Father, Son and Holy
Spirit General audience of October 9, 1985
- The Old Testament has not revealed this truth
explicitly. - It prepared the way for it by showing God's
Fatherhood in the covenant with his people, and
by manifesting his activity in the world with
Wisdom, the Word and the Spirit - (cf. e. g., Wis 722-30 Prov 822-30 Ps 334-6
Ps 14715 Is 5511 Wis 121 Is 112 Sir
4812). - The Old Testament has principally consolidated
the truth about the one God, the hinge of the
monotheistic religion, first of all in Israel and
then outside of it.
16God Is the Blessed Trinity, Father, Son and Holy
Spirit General audience of October 9, 1985
- One must then conclude that the New Testament has
brought the fullness of revelation about the
Blessed Trinity. - The trinitarian truth has been from the beginning
at the root of the living faith of the Christian
community by means of baptism and the liturgy. - The rules of faith,
- which we meet frequently both in the letters of
the apostles and in the testimony of the kerygma,
- kept pace with the Church's catechesis and prayer.
17God Is the Blessed Trinity, Father, Son and Holy
Spirit General audience of October 9, 1985
- The formation of the trinitarian dogma in the
context of the defense against the heresies of
the early centuries is a separate subject. - The truth about the Triune God is the most
profound mystery of the faith and also the most
difficult to understand. - The possibility of erroneous interpretations
existed, especially when Christianity came into
contact with Greek culture and philosophy.
18God Is the Blessed Trinity, Father, Son and Holy
Spirit General audience of October 9, 1985
- It was a case of correctly "inscribing" the
mystery of the Triune God - "into the terminology of being."
- That is, it was to express in a precise form
- in the philosophical language of the age
- the concepts
- which unequivocally defined
- both the unity and trinity
- of the God of our revelation.
19God Is the Blessed Trinity, Father, Son and Holy
Spirit General audience of October 9, 1985
- This happened first of all in the two great
ecumenical councils of Nicaea (325) and
Constantinople (381). - The magisterium of these councils bore fruit in
the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed. - The Church has expressed in it from those times
her faith in the Triune God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
20God Is the Blessed Trinity, Father, Son and Holy
Spirit General audience of October 9, 1985
- Recalling the work of the councils one must
mention some particularly outstanding
theologians, especially among the Fathers of the
Church. - For the pre-Nicene period we may mention
Tertullian, Cyprian, Origen, Irenaeus - for the Nicene period, Athanasius and Ephraim the
Syrian - for the period preceding the Council of
Constantinople we recall Basil the Great, Gregory
Nazianzen and Gregory of Nyssa, Hilary, down to
Ambrose, Augustine and Leo the Great. - From the fifth century we have the so-called
Athanasian Creed which begins with the word
Quicumque. It is like a kind of comment on the
Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed.
21God Is the Blessed Trinity, Father, Son and Holy
Spirit General audience of October 9, 1985
- Paul VI's Credo of the People of God confirms the
faith of the primitive Church when it proclaims - "The mutual bonds which eternally constitute the
three Persons who are each one and the same
Divine Being, are the blessed inmost life of God
thrice holy, infinitely beyond all that we can
conceive in human measure - truly, the ineffable and Most Holy Trinity
- the One God.
- (cf. DS 804) (L'Osservatore Romano, English
edition, July 11, 1968, p. 4)