THE TRINITY

A MYSTERIOUS REALITY

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Graphics by: ROAN

CCC (Catechism of the Catholic Church)

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GOD

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CCC 229

Faith in God leads us to turn to him alone as our first origin and our ultimate goal, and neither to prefer anything to him nor to substitute anything for him.

CCC 231

The God of our faith has revealed himself as He who is; and he has made himself known as “abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Ex 34:6). God's very being is Truth and Love.

CCC 228

“Hear, O Israel, the LORD our GOD is one LORD...” (Deut 6:4; Mk 12:29). “The supreme being must be unique, without equal...If God is not one, he is not God”

CCC 230

Even when he reveals himself, God remains a mystery beyond words: “If you understood him, it would not be God” (St. Augustine)

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CCC 278

If we do not believe that God's love is almighty, how can we believe that the Father could create us, the Son redeem us, and the Holy Spirit sanctify us?

CCC 277

God shows forth his almighty power by converting us from our sins and restoring us to his friendship by grace. “God, you show your almighty power above all in your mercy and forgiveness...” (Roman Missal, 26th Sunday, Opening Prayer).

HOLYSPIRITSONFATHER

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CCC 234

The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of Christian faith and life. It is the mystery of God in himself. It is therefore the source of all the other mysteries of faith, the light that enlightens them.

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CCC 237

The Trinity is a mystery of faith in the strict sense, one of the “mysteries that are hidden in God, which can never be known unless they are revealed by God.” To be sure, God has left traces of his Trinitarian being in his work of creation and in his Revelation throughout the Old Testament. But his inmost Being as Holy Trinity is a mystery that is inaccessible to reason alone or even to Israel's faith before the Incarnation of God's Son and the sending of the Holy Spirit

CCC 261

The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of the Christian faith and of Christian life. God alone can make it known to us by revealing himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

HOLYSPIRITSONFATHER

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GOD

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CCC 254

The divine persons are really distinct from one another. “God is one but not solitary.” “Father,” “Son,” “Holy Spirit” are not simply names designating modalities of the divine being, for they are really distinct from one another: “He is not the Father who is the Son, nor is the Son he who is the Father, nor is the Holy Spirit he who is the Father of the Son.” They are distinct from one another in their relations of origin: “It is the Father who generates, the Son who is begotten, and the Holy Spirit who proceeds.” The divine Unity is Triune.

HOLYSPIRITSONFATHER

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GOD

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CCC 259

Being a work at once common and personal, the whole divine economy makes known both what is proper to the divine persons and their one divine nature. Hence the whole Christian life is a communion with each of the divine persons, without in any way separating them. Everyone who glorifies the Father does so through the Son in the Holy Spirit; everyone who follows Christ does so because the Father draws him the Spirit moves him.”

HOLYSPIRITSONFATHER

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GOD

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CCC 267

Inseparable in what they are, the divine persons are also inseparable in what they do. But within the single divine operation each shows forth what is proper to him in the Trinity, especially in the divine missions of the Son's Incarnation and the gift of the Holy Spirit.

HOLYSPIRITSONFATHER

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The Father and the Son revealed by the Spirit.

CCC 243 Before his Passover, Jesus announced the sending of “another Paraclete” (Advocate), the Holy Spirit. At work since creation, having previously “spoken through the prophets,” the Spirit will now be with and in the disciples, to teach them and guide them “into all the truth.” The Holy Spirit is thus revealed as another divine person with Jesus and the Father.

HOLYSPIRITSONFATHER

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GOD

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CCC 263

The mission of the Holy Spirit, sent by the Father in the name of the Son (Jn 14:26) and by the Son “from the Father” (Jn 15:26), reveals that, with them, the Spirit is one and the same God. “With the Father and the Son he is worshipped and glorified” (Nicene Creed).

HOLYSPIRITSONFATHER

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GOD

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CCC 508

From among the descendants of Eve, God chose the Virgin Mary to be the mother of his Son. “Full of Grace,” Mary is “the most excellent fruit of redemption” (SC 103): from the first instant of her conception, she was totally preserved from the stain of original sin and she remained pure from all personal sin throughout her life.

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CCC 509

Mary is truly “Mother of God” since she is the mother of the eternal Son of God made man, who is God himself.

HOLYSPIRITSONFATHER

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CCC 422

“But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.” This is “the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God”. God has visited his people. He has fulfilled the promise he made to Abraham and his descendants. He acted far beyond all expectation—he has sent his own “beloved Son.”

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HOLYSPIRITSONFATHER

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Jesus Christ is true God and true man, in the unity of his divine person; for this reason he is the one and only mediator between God and men.

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CCC 481

Jesus Christ possesses two natures, one divine and the other human, not confused, but united in the one person of God's Son.

CCC 262

The Incarnation of God's Son reveals that God is the eternal Father and that the Son is consubstantial with the Father, which means that, in the Father and with the Father, the Son is one and the same God.

HOLYSPIRITSONFATHER

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The Incarnation is therefore the mystery of the wonderful union of the divine and human natures in the one person of the Word.

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CCC 482

Christ, being true God and true man, has a human intellect and will, perfectly attuned and subject to his divine intellect and divine will, which he has in common with the Father and the Holy Spirit.

CCC 240

Jesus revealed that God is Father in an unheard-of sense: he is Father not only in being Creator; he is eternally Father in relation to his only Son, who is eternally Son only in relation to his Father: “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”

HOLYSPIRITSONFATHER

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CCC 470

Because “human nature was assumed, not absorbed,” in the mysterious union of the Incarnation, the Church was led over the course of centuries to confess the full reality of Christ's human soul, with its operations of intellect and will, and of his human body. In parallel fashion, she had to recall on each occasion that Christ's human nature belongs, as his own, to the divine person of the Son of God, who assumed it. Everything that Christ is and does in this nature derives from “one of the Trinity.” The Son of God therefore communicates to his humanity his own personal mode of existence in the Trinity. In his soul as in his body, Christ thus expresses humanly the divine ways of the Trinity.

CCC 470

The Son of God... worked with human hands; he thought with a human mind. He acted with a human will, and with a human heart he loved. Born of the Virgin Mary, he has truly been made one of us, like to us in all things except sin.”

HOLYSPIRITSONFATHER

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CCC 362

The human person, created in the image of God, is a being at once corporeal and spiritual. The biblical account expresses this reality in symbolic language when it affirms that “then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.” Man, whole and entire, is therefore willed by God.”

CCC 357

Being in the image of God the human individual possesses the dignity of a person, who is not just something, but someone. He is capable of self-knowledge, of self-possession and of freely giving himself and entering into communion with other persons. And he is called by grace to a covenant with his Creator, to offer him a response of faith and love that no other creature can give in his stead.

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CCC 266

“Now this is the Catholic faith: We worship one God in the Trinity and the Trinity in unity, without either confusing the persons or dividing the substance; for the person of the Father is one, the Son's is another, the Holy Spirit's another; but the Godhead of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is one, their glory equal, their majesty coeternal” (Athanasian Creed; DS 75; ND 16).

FREE WILL

FAIT

H –

HO

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LOVE

FAITH

– HO

PE

- LOV

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FAITH – HOPE - LOVE

HOLYSPIRITSONFATHER

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CCC 1702

The divine image is present in every man. It shines forth in the communion of persons, in the likeness of the unity of the divine persons among themselves (cf. Chapter two).

CCC 1776

“Deep within his conscience man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey. Its voice, ever calling him to love and to do what is good and to avoid evil, sounds in his heart at the right moment...For man has in his heart a law inscribed by God... His conscience is man's most secret core and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths.”

FREE WILL