feast day (solemnity): Sunday after Pentecost Sunday
about:
- honoring the most fundamental Christian belief
belief in the Holy Trinity. We can never fully understand the mystery of
the Trinity, but we can sum it up in the following formula: God is
three Persons in one Nature. The three Persons of God—Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit—are all equally God, and They cannot be divided.
TE
DEUM: PRAYER OF PRAISE
You are God: we
praise You;
You are the
Lord: we acclaim You;
You are the
Eternal Father:
all creation
worships You.
To You all
Angels, all the powers of heaven,
Cherubim and Seraphim,
sing in endless
praise: Holy, Holy, Holy,
Lord, God of power and might,
Heaven and
earth are full of your glory.
The glorious
company of Apostles praise You.
The noble fellowship of Prophets praise You.
The white-robed army of Martyrs praise You.
Throughout the
world the holy Church acclaims You:
Father, of
majesty unbounded,
Your true and
only Son,
worthy of all
worship, and
the Holy
Spirit, advocate and guide.
You, Christ,
are the King of Glory,
the eternal Son
of the Father.
When You became
man to set us free
You did not
spurn the Virgin’s womb.
You overcame
the sting of death,
And opened the
Kingdom of Heaven to all believers.
You are seated at God’s right
hand in glory.
We believe that You will come,
and be our judge.
Come then,
Lord, and help Your
people,
bought with the price of Your own Blood,
and bring us with Your Saints
to glory everlasting.
Amen.
THE DOGMA OF THE TRINITY
The Trinity is the term employed to signify the central doctrine of the Christian religion -- the truth that in the unity
of the Godhead there are Three Persons, the Father, the Son, and
the Holy Spirit, these Three Persons being truly distinct one from
another.
Thus, in the words of the Athanasian Creed : "the Father is God, the
Son is God, and the Holy Spirit
is God, and yet there are not three Gods but one God." In this
Trinity of Persons the Son is begotten of the Father by an eternal
generation, and the Holy Spirit
proceeds by an eternal procession from the Father and the Son. Yet,
notwithstanding this difference as to origin, the Persons are
co-eternal and co-equal: all alike are uncreated and omnipotent.
This, the Church teaches, is the revelation regarding God's nature
which Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came upon earth to deliver to the
world: and which she proposes to man as the foundation of her whole
dogmatic system.
In Scripture
there is as yet no single term by which the Three Divine Persons are
denoted together. The word trias (of which the Latin trinitas is a
translation) is first found in Theophilus of Antioch about A.D. 180.
He speaks of "the Trinity of God [the Father], His Word and His
Wisdom ("Ad. Autol.", II, 15). The term may, of course, have been in
use before his time. Afterwards it appears in its Latin form of
trinitas in Tertullian
("De pud." c. xxi). In the next century the word is in general use.
It is found in many passages of Origen ("In Ps. xvii", 15). The first
creed
in which it appears is that of Origen's pupil, Gregory
Thaumaturgus. In his Ekthesis tes pisteos composed between 260 and
270, he writes:
There is therefore nothing created, nothing subject to another in the
Trinity: nor is there anything that has been added as though it once had
not existed, but had entered afterwards: therefore the Father has never
been without the Son, nor the Son without the Spirit : and this same
Trinity is immutable and unalterable forever (P. G., X, 986).
It is manifest that a dogma so mysterious presupposes a Divine
revelation . When the fact of revelation, understood in its full sense
as the speech of God to man, is no longer admitted, the rejection
of the doctrine follows as a necessary consequence. For this reason
it has no place in the Liberal Protestantism
of today. The writers of this school contend that the doctrine of
the Trinity, as professed by the Church, is not contained in the New
Testament, but that it was first formulated in the second century and
received final approbation
in the fourth, as the result of the Arian and Macedonian
controversies. In view of this assertion it is necessary to consider
in some detail the evidence afforded by Holy Scripture . Attempts have
been made recently to apply the more extreme theories of comparative
religion to the doctrine of the Trinity, and to account for it by an
imaginary law of nature
compelling men to group the objects of their worship in threes. It
seems needless to give more than a reference to these extravagant
views, which serious thinkers of every school reject as destitute of
foundation.
links/ sources:
- "The Blessed Trinity" (Catholic Online):
http://www.catholic.org/encyclopedia/view.php?id=11699
- "Trinity Sunday" (Wikipedia):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_Sunday
- "Trinity Sunday" (Catholic Encyclopedia):
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15058a.htm
- "What is Trinity Sunday?" (About- Catholicism):
http://catholicism.about.com/od/holydaysandholidays/p/Trinity_Sunday.htm
- "Prayers to the Most Holy Trinity" (iBreviary):
http://www.ibreviary.com/m/preghiere.php?tipo=Preghiera&id=373
1. An Act of Faith
2. The Trisagion, or ‘Thrice Holy’
3. Sanctissima
4. Omnipotentia Patris
5. An Act of Praise
6. An Act of Oblation of St. Francis de Sales
7. A Prayer of the Caldean Tradition
8. Another Prayer of the Chaldean Tradition
9. Eucharistic Thanksgiving to the Holy Trinity
10. ‘O Eternal Trinity’ of St. Catherine of Sienna
