Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, amen.
"Three real persons in an essence which is numerically one"
is the heart of the mystery of the Holy Trinity.
Saint Gregory Nazianzum
a universally recognized father of the Church, describes as follows the revelation to men of this mystery:
Then Saint Gregory thinks that it would have been "dangerous" to teach about the Holy Trinity all at once to ancient peoples.
Obviously, it was polytheism,
namely belief in many gods.
The Divine wisdom arranged that people should be given one aspect of the truth about God, at a time.
To the Jews was revealed, through the Old Testament, the existence of One God.
Our Lord Himself abstained from elaborating on the true depth of this belief at first.
He didn't tell declare His divinity lest He disturb the otherwise correct belief of His own disciples as to the oneness of God.
Yet He made His own divinity manifest through His acts.
Nature (things visible) and the spirits (things invisible) obeyed Him.
He spoke and acted with authority to the point of surpassing the Law
and overcoming death.
As the end approached, Jesus' revelations about Himself became clearer and more definite,
until to the high priest's question:
"I adjure you by the living God, that you tell us if you be the Christ, the Son of God",
He (Christ) answered:
"You have said it...hereafter you shall see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of the power of God, and coming in the clouds of heaven."
He further declares that "all power is given to me in heaven and on earth."
And most important of all, He asserts in John 10:30
His oneness with the Father: "I and the Father are one."
The fact that the Holy Spirit is a distinct Divine Person, One of the Holy Trinity, is equally clear in the New Testament.
In the Old Testament there are abundant indications to this effects. Isaiah says:
Other passages which have approximately this meaning indicate that the Spirit was expected along with the Messiah.
What is the Messiah? It means Christ.
At the Incarnation we see the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity active together.
We see them again at the Baptism when God the Father speaks,
God the Holy Spirit appears as a dove
and God the Son is baptized.
At the Transfiguration on Mount Thabor we witness again the presence of the Holy Trinity.
This time the Holy Spirit appears as a luminous cloud.
After His Baptism, Jesus is led by the Spirit into the desert.
He (the Holy Spirit) is not a gift or an impersonal power.
He is a Divine Person: our Lord says to His disciples,
"It is expedient to you that I go for if I go not, the Paraclete (the Holy Spirit) will not come to you." (John 16:7)
We can see from numerous other passages n the New Testament that the Holy Spirit, Who is Lord and God,
is nevertheless neither the Father, nor the Son.
Thus it's abundantly clear that the Creed, which is composed mainly in order to safeguard the truth of the Holy Trinity,
has its source in the Bible and in the earliest tradition of the Church.
As we may have easily observed, the words "Trinity and Person" don't occur in the Creed,
but this doesn't prevent it from being an elaborate statement of God's being One Essence in three Persons.
We say in it at the outset that we believe in One God.
Then we acknowledge that the Father is God, very word Father indicating that He is a Person;
that the Son is God and a Person;
and the Holy Spirit is God and a Person.
The divinity of the Holy Spirit is indicated by His divine attributes of uncreateness and perfection.
He is a Person inasmuch as He does things as such speaking in the Prophets,
and descending upon the Jordan.
The Father, Son and Holy Spirit have their unity in the Father
and are different only in their relation to each other.
The Father begets,
the Son "is begotten"
and the Holy Spirit "proceeds" from the Father.
But these relations don't come about in time;
they are eternal.
In other words, there was no time at which the Holy Spirit was not, or at which the Son was not.
The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are co-eternal.
By maintaining that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are one God
and different only in their relation to each other,
the Church fought the *** heretics on one side,
who said erroneously that the Son was a creature;
she (the Church) fought the Sabellian heretics on the other,
who said erroneously that God "appears" now as the Father, now as the Son and now as the Holy Spirit.
People tried vainly to reduce to the dimensions of their minds, by definition, beyond their minds.
A heretic is a person who trusts his own mind more than the mind of the Church.
He tries to push his own teachings
even when the Church has considered and found them wrong and detrimental to people's salvation.
Of course, Sabellious (the teacher of the Sabellian heresy)
and Arius (the teacher of the *** heresey) were heretics.
Sabellius taught in the first half of the third century.
Arius came less than a hundred years later.
The Creed is mainly a refutation of their ideas.
The Holy Trinity is very important for us to worship Him as One God or the Trinity.
the people in the Church always make the sign of the cross for almost two thousands years.
Why we do make the sign of the cross?
I will explain. As you know three fingers of the right hand.
The thumb finger symbols the Father, the index finger symbols the Son and the middle finger symbols the Holy Spirit.
The three fingers join together into One symbolize the Holy Trinity or One God.
Touch the forehead with the tips of the three joined fingers symbolize the Father,
then move and touch lower chest symbolize the Son,
then move and touch the left shoulder symbolize Holy and then to right shoulder symbolize Spirit (the Holy Spirit),
and then finally open the hand and rest it on the chest symbolize amen.
Interestingly, the ring and little fingers. Fold the ring and little fingers into the palm:
to symbolize the perfect humanity and the perfect divinity of Christ.
Like this... Whenever there is a mention about "In the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen"
For honoring His Name in awe.
Thank you for watching and may God be with us always. Amen.