5. Trinity

5. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit The One God has Revealed Himself as a Trinity of Persons Compendium 44-49 Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John. But John tried to deter him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” Jesus replied, “Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness.” Then John consented. As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” Matthew 3:13-17 1. The Trinity is the most sublime and central mystery. It sheds light on every aspect of our faith and our lives. Revealed to us by Jesus Christ, the concept of the Trinity expands and elevates the power of reason.To grow in understanding of God we must pray and meditate on this profoundly important mystery. 2. Jesus taught us about the Father when he referred to the Father’s beneficent creation of the birds in the air and the lilies of the field. He demonstrated his perfect love for the Father in his complete and unwavering obedience even unto death on the cross. 3. From the Scriptures we learn that Jesus was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and that the Holy Spirit hovered over him at his baptism and the Transfiguration. The Holy Spirit empowered the Apostles to forgive sins and descended on Mary and the Apostles at Pentecost. 4. The Father eternally generates the Son and the bond of love between them is the Holy Spirit. 5. The three persons of the Trinity possess completely and co-equally the divine nature. They are three identifiable Persons, each fully God in a manner that is distinct yet related to the others. We must pray to each of them as three persons in one God. 6. God is love and love is always triune. There must be a lover, a beloved, and there must be mutual love among them. God is One and God is one perfect family in love. The human family is an image of the Trinity. God invites us to become part of his family and for this reason he sent his only begotten son to become one with us so that through his son we could also be adopted into his perfect family. This is the Last Will and Testament of Jesus: “Father, that all may be one, as you and I are one.” Jesus not only wants us to love one another and live in perfect harmony and peace forever, he gives himself to each of us totally and makes us heirs to his very same intimacy with the Father and the Holy Spirit for all eternity. God has only one heart and one soul and desires that we freely conform our hearts and minds and souls to his so that all will be one in him.

4. Faith

4. Faith's Foundation Discovering and knowing the one true God Compendium 36-43 Dt 6:4 "Hear, O Israel!* The LORD is our God, the LORD alone!" (Shema prayer) 1. "I believe in One God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible." This is the most fundamental key to our faith. 2. Without God, creation and humanity lose their dignity and nihilism abounds. Without God, life is a meaningless survival of the fittest and even that only briefly. Without God the world is a dark, violent, cruel, sad and stark place. 3. Faith does not destroy reason but enables it to look more competently beyond itself. 4. God revealed his name to Moses as "I Am Who Am" this indicates that he has always existed and will always exist beyond the universe and history. 5. God is unconditional, joyful and everlasting Love. 6. We can know the existence of God by reflecting on the beauty and order of creation and the urgings of our conscience to do good and avoid evil and our insatiable desire for perfect love and fulfillment. 7. If we do not believe in something greater than we are, we can never be greater than we are. 8. St Anselm’s definition of “God” is “that which there can be no greater than” (the greatest) Christopher Hitchens' book “God Is Not Great" only proves that believers are sinners and often severe hypocrites, which is why Jesus came: to save sinners. We hope and pray Christopher is now at peace with his savior, Jesus Christ, his namesake. 9. Science accepts truth by empirical data or by definition. By definition God is the One, all knowing, all powerful, all beautiful, all perfect, all loving, unconditioned, irreplaceable, First Cause, creator of all that is visible and invisible. By definition God is Truth: the Way, the Truth and the Life. 10. St. Thomas Aquinas gives proof of the necessity of a First Cause as do the greatest philosophers of antiquity. Only those committed to a godless agenda say otherwise and they have no empirical evidence to substantiate disbelief only prejudice. 11. Three leading cosmologists, Arvin Borde, Alan Guth, and Alexander Vilenkin, were able to prove that any universe which has, on average, been expanding throughout its history cannot be infinite in the past but must have a past space-time boundary. (A beginning). Wild conjecture regarding the possibility of alternate universes are without an iota of empirical evidence. This debunks Stephen Hawking's unsupported and unexplained statement that because gravity exists there is no first cause and the cosmos and earth are just a random accident without intelligent design and therefore without meaning or purpose. Stephen Hawking has often had to admit to wrong theories and we pray he will have the grace to admit his declared atheism is also wrong as is his support for euthanasia. 12. Physical science can only inquire about the physical universe we know. God transcends the physical universe and is therefore not within the competence of physical science or the scientific method. To deny or dismiss God is to dismiss transcendence and limits us to our physical senses. Love, hope, goodness, virtue, joy, generosity, kindness, gentleness, modesty, faithfulness, chastity, are all transcendent values that disappear without God 13. The rate of expansion of our universe indicates that it began about 16 billion years ago. 14. A common oxymoron is posed as the riddle: can God create something too heavy for God to lift. This is no more intelligible than a square circle. God cannot contradict himself, that is the only thing God cannot do. 15. The energy and enthusiasm that atheists dedicate to denying God is suspect. Only a person with a serpentine motive or a guilty conscience would be obsessed with the impossible task of proving that something doesn't exist. There are many things we cannot see but believe in such as intelligence and electricity. Scientific theories require belief in their assumptions and are sometimes debunked by new evidence. Miracles defy science quite often and those who deny miracles are closed minded to the truth.

3. Response

3. Our Response to God Faith is a gift to be both received and shared Compendium 25-35 Luke 1:26-38 (Fiat) 1. Obedience of Faith: Divine Faith acknowledges the Truth that God has revealed in his goodness and authority and enables us to remain in his presence and follow him. 2. The Blessed Mother's response to Gabriel "let it be done unto me" is a model for everyone. 3. We say "I believe" because Faith is both personal and ecclesial. Faith is nourished in and through the community of believers. 4. Evangelization and catechesis are two essential components of faith. 5. As our faith grows we begin to share here and now in the life of heaven. 6. Faith helps us to understand supernatural truths and clarifies what cannot be understood by reason alone. 7. Both Faith and Science originate in God and cannot contradict each other. 8. It is important for us to memorize and understand the formulas of faith such as the Apostles Creed. 9. The Ten Commandments are indispensable for a just and peaceful society. Jesus summarizes these in the two great commandments of love: love God and neighbor and finally gives his new commandment: love one another as I have loved you. This is the formula for perfection which Jesus offers the rich young man. 10. The beatitudes are the formula for happiness. 11. The 7 Corporal Works of Mercy and the 7 Spiritual Works of Mercy are the blueprint for authentic daily Christian living. 12. The 7 Virtues are to be cultivated and bring the 7 Gifts of the Holy Spirit as well as the 12 Fruits (Galations 5:22-23) of living the Gifts and enable us to avoid the 7 Deadly Vices. 13. The 5 Precepts keep us faithful to the Church and the 4 Last Things determine our final destiny. 14. As important as it is necessary to know and live these formulas, they are useless without complete charity, sincere tenderness, indomitable patience, total forgiveness and profound humility. This is all summed up in Mary's fiat: "Let it be done to me according to your word."

2. Scripture, Tradition, Magisterium

2. God's way of coming to us: Scripture, Tradition, Magisterium Compendium 11-24 Scripture: God "desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth." 1 Timothy 2:4 "if I am delayed, you will know how people ought to conduct themselves in God's household, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth." 1 Timothy 3:15 The Church, and not Scripture alone, is the pillar and foundation of the truth, according to scripture itself. http://www.catholic.com/magazine/articles/not-by-scripture-alone For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also. (James 2: 17-26) http://www.catholic.com/quickquestions/doesnt-john-316-clearly-indicate-that-faith-alone-is-necessary-for-salvation Did Christ start a church? Which one is it? 1. Catholicism is the fullest and truest expression of Christianity. 2. Our Faith is not a matter of personal conjecture and preferences but rather a Revelation from God and Jesus Christ through Scripture, Tradition and Magisterium. 3. The 46 books of the Old Testament and the 27 books of the New Testament are a unified and coherent blueprint of God's plan of love for the world. This is demonstrated at Mass in the liturgy that draws from both the old and the new testaments. The old points to and confirms the new and the new clarifies and completes the old. 4. The high point of revelation occurred when God the Father sent his only Son, the second person of the Trinity into the world and the Son became like us in every way yet without sin. 5. The two sources of God's revelation and self-communication to us are Scripture and Tradition. Those who deny tradition deny the foundation of their own beliefs. Every community has traditions which define it. When the New Testament refers to Scripture it can only mean Jewish Scripture because the Bible, as we know it, was only codified (index, chapters, verses) and accepted by Church counsels centuries after it was recorded and it is based on traditional oral and written teachings of Jesus and the Apostles. Jesus wrote nothing himself, as far as we know. 6. Christ established Peter and the Apostles as the first Magisterium and promised to protect their teachings from error. The Pope and the bishops are the only unbroken successors of that Magisterium and promise. 7. Jesus entrusts the keys of the kingdom to Peter. Jesus is referring to Isaiah 22 where King Hezekiah removed Shebna as prime minister and replaced him with Eliakim. The prime minister had all the authority of the king in all practical matters especially the safety and security of the kingdom. This is the authority which Peter clearly exercised among the apostles and past on to his successors. (Luke 10:16 and Acts 1:24-25) Peter is the rock upon which Christ builds his church. Christ has only one kingdom and one church. The tens of thousands of churches which self proclaim the authority of Christ make a mockery of his one church, one baptism, one truth and one way. None of these churches can trace their origins back to Peter except the Catholic Church. The disunity of Christians is the fundamental cause of disunity in the world. Christ’s mission was “that all may be one.” If someone rejects authority, by what authority does one do so? 8. It is not by divisive arguments that we work towards unity but by harmonious living and authentic, patient and humble listening without judgement or arrogance, believing that only the grace of God can bring about the miracle of unity and the presence of Jesus in our midst so that “all may be one, as you, father, and I are one.” They will only recognize us as Christians if we love one another.