Catholics believe in one God and that in the one God there are three divine persons. The Blessed Trinity is the central mystery of the Catholic faith. Knowing the Trinity is necessary to know who God is.
The mystery of the Holy Trinity is that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are all equally the same eternal God even though they are separate and unique persons.
The Father is the first person of the Trinity, the Son is the second person, and the Holy Spirit is the third person.
The first person of the Holy Trinity is called Father because the Son is eternally begotten of Him. The Creator of all things is the first person of the Trinity, not because He is older or greater than the other persons, but because He is unbegotten.
Jesus Christ is the second person of the Blessed Trinity. As the only-begotten Son of the Father, He has the same essence and divine nature. He took on a second, human nature to redeem mankind.
The third person of the Trinity is the Holy Spirit who proceeds from both the Father and the Son. The Sanctifier is the eternal love between the first and second persons of the Trinity.
Catholics are invited to share in the life of the Holy Trinity, adoring and glorifying all three persons by whose grace and in whose names they are baptized.
The Church celebrates the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity on the Sunday after Pentecost.
God is both one and many:
He is an eternal exchange of love:
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.
2 Corinthians 13: 13
WHAT God is and Who God is:
The Trinity is unique to Christian teaching about God:
The Trinity is One. We do not confess three Gods, but one God in three persons, the “consubstantial Trinity”. The divine persons do not share the one divinity among themselves but each of them is God whole and entire: “The Father is that which the Son is, the Son that which the Father is, the Father and the Son that which the Holy Spirit is, i.e. by nature one God.” In the words of the Fourth Lateran Council, “Each of the persons is that supreme reality, viz., the divine substance, essence or nature.”
Catechism of the Catholic Church 253
The Trinity in the Creed and councils:
The most fundamental truth in Christianity:
Jesus revealed to us the mystery of God: he, the Son, made us know the Father who is in Heaven, and gave us the Holy Spirit, the Love of the Father and of the Son. Christian theology synthesizes the truth of God with this expression: only one substance in three persons. God is not solitude, but perfect communion. For this reason the human person, the image of God, realizes himself or herself in love, which is a sincere gift of self.
Pope Benedict XVI, Angelus Address, 22 May 2005
We wouldn’t know it if God had not revealed it:
God’s innermost secret:
All metaphors and analogies fail to explain the Trinity:
The Trinity is in the Bible but not explicitly:
The Truth, Goodness, and Beauty of the Catholic Church
The work of human hands:
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