Objective:
The middle school youth will develop a deeper understanding of the mystery of the Trinity and the role of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.
Overview:
One of the greatest mysteries and most fundamental truths of the Catholic faith is our belief in the Holy Trinity. A mystery in the Catholic faith does not refer to a set of clues leading us to the answer to a riddle or unsolved crime. For Catholics, a mystery is something that can only be known through divine revelation. A mystery, such as the Trinity, is beyond human understanding. Unless God reveals this truth, we cannot know it. Great theologians and doctors of the Church have studied Scripture and wrote about various mysteries, but their understanding remains partial because the finite mind cannot fully comprehend the infinite. Many analogies have been made to attempt to explain the Trinity, but these cannot fully explain the depth of the truth. The Catechism expresses it as: “The Trinity is a mystery of faith in the strict sense, one of the mysteries that are hidden in God, which can never be known unless they are revealed by God’, To be sure, God has left traces of his Trinitarian being in his work of creation and in his Revelation throughout the Old Testament. But his inmost Being as Holy Trinity is a mystery that is inaccessible to reason alone or even to Israel’s faith before the Incarnation of God’s Son and the sending of the Holy Spirit” (237).
The Trinity is not simply three ways to see the same person. They are three persons, but the same substance/being. Even though the Three Persons are One God, they are distinct: for the Father has no origin, He came from no one. The Son is begotten; He comes from the Father alone. The Holy Spirit comes or proceeds from both the Father and the Son. These different relations of origin tell us there are three distinct Persons, who have one and the same divine nature.
While the Trinity is one in nature, it is suitable that we attribute some works specifically to one or the other Person. So we speak of the Father especially as the power of creation, of the Son as the wisdom of the Father, of the Holy Spirit as goodness and sanctification.
The two doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation are the foundation of Christian life and worship. By becoming man, God the Son offered us a share in the inner life of the Trinity. By grace, we are brought into the perfect communion of life and love, which is God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This sharing in the life of the Trinity is meant to culminate in heaven, where we will see the three persons face to face, united to them in unspeakable love.