ON THE FEAST OF THE HOLY TRINITY.

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.