It
is par excellence the mystery that our sacrosanct Religion encloses with great
secrecy, without which it would not be the only religion or Church instituted
by Our Lord Jesus Christ. It is, at the same time, the cornerstone on
which the Catholic religion is built, this dogma can only be accessed through
FAITH, that is, through our assent to this great truth revealed by Jesus Christ
himself in the Sacred Scriptures, there is nothing more distant from our
understanding than this beautiful mystery of the Holy Trinity.
Therefore,
there is no more difficult dogma to expose than this and you can only have a
pale idea of it through our faith and where our intelligence without it can
do nothing.
It
is certain and of divine faith that we cannot prove by natural reason alone the
existence of royal processions in God (If so, the more difficult it will be to
explain their essence). In the case of proving the existence of these
divine processions with only natural reason, they would cease to be what they
are, that is, transcendental and supernatural as the very intimate being of
God. For this reason, to reach their knowledge we only have the testimony
of divine revelation, authentically interpreted and proposed by the infallible
magisterium of the Church. In things that exceed our natural capacity, it
is a duty of our reason to conform to the divine, submitting to it and giving
assent to it through FAITH. Theology has the sacred duty of explaining
them in the best possible way,
Saint
Thomas, when dealing with the divine processions, is content to affirm that
"Sacred Scripture uses names and expressions that mean processions to
designate the divine persons", later collecting in a text the meaning of
the revelation, the integral content of which he then goes on to explain.
theologically, we, for now, leave the theological sense for lack of space and
time.
The
names that the divine persons are expressed in Sacred Scripture manifest, in
effect, the existence in God of two different processions. Thus the first
person is given the name of Father (Jn. 17, 6). The second receives
different names, all expressing the same idea of provenance from the Father
by true and proper generation. And these are: Son of God by nature (Mt. 3, 17), Only Begotten of the Father (Jn. 1, 14:
3, 16 etc), Verb (Jn. 1, 1:
apoc. 19, 13), Image of God, Figure of His
Substance (II. Cor. 4,4: Col. 1, 15; Hebr. 1, 3).
There
is no doubt that all these names of the second person of the august Trinity
indicate the origin or provenance of the Father, for which reason they can only
be attributed with full propriety. Because the Son of God by nature is
said in the Holy Scripture of the one who receives from the Father by true
generation. For this reason, the name of Father is the one that Jesus
Christ constantly uses when referring to God (Jn. 8, 1; 21, 24 etc), to signify
the intimate relationship of paternity, which is none other than that of origin
for true generation in unity of nature or divine essence (Jn. 8, 15; 19, 30;
14, 24; 16. 3, 24 etc). As this communication of nature is very full,
total and unique because it is in the most absolute identity of essence, the
Son is also called Only Begotten. It is also said Verb, because it
proceeds from the act of understanding the Father's divine essence. In the
same way, since the essence of the Son is the perfect expression of the very
nature of the Father, it is also properly called Image, Splendor, Figure of the
substance of the Father.
The
third divine person is designated in Sacred Scripture with a very different
name from the second. These names are: Holy
Spirit (Mt. 28,19 etc), Love (I
Jn. 4, 7-8; Rom. 5, 5), Gift (Jn.
7, 38; 4, 10 S; Act. 2, 38 etc.), Lawyer
and Spirit of Truth (JN. 14, 15-19; 15, 26) and more secondary
prayers. Unlike the second person, it is never said of the third person in
the Holy Scriptures that it is generated, but that it proceeds.
Whereby
it is clearly manifested that it has an origin other than that in
God. This distinction consists in the fact that the Holy Spirit proceeds
from the Father and the Son (as we confess in the Creed of Sundays and public
holidays of I and II classes in Masses), and its origin does not have a reason
of generation like that of the Son.
This
is how Jesus Christ himself teaches through Saint John: "When the
Advocate comes that I will send from the Father, the Spirit of Truth, who
proceeds from the Father, He will bear witness to me" (15,
26). A little further on, he adds that it also proceeds from the Son, in
the following terms: "When he comes, the Spirit of Truth, he will
lead you towards the complete truth, because he will not speak of himself, but
will speak of what he hears, and he will speak to you." will announce
things to come. He will glorify me because he will take from what is mine
and will make you know; because I told you that he would take what is mine
and make it known to you” (Jn 14, 13-15).
That
is, the Holy Spirit receives from the knowledge of the Son. But science in
God is really identified with the divine essence. Therefore, to say that
the Holy Spirit receives from the Son is as much as to say that it really
proceeds from Him. And since, on the other hand, it is also said that it
proceeds from the Father, it follows that the procession of the Holy Spirit is
really different from that of the Son. and, therefore, that it is not a
generation, which is unique in God. Hence the various names it receives in
divine revelation.
Thus,
according to divine revelation, there are two different processions in God,
that of the Son and that of the Holy Spirit, of which he is the true generation
and not the second. The Father does not come from anyone, but is the
beginning of the entire Trinity, and thus is also truly distinguished from the
other divine persons, who come from Him. In other words, there are only two
processions of the same God, because there are only three different persons in
one true God, and there are two immanent actions according to which they are
verified. It is not an easy subject to deal with the Holy Trinity, it is a
subject of which only a very brief notion is given and even this is a pale
expression of the infinite dimensions that this beautiful subject really
encompasses, but at the same time mysterious and dogmatic.
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