Trinity Sunday
Introit Blessed be the holy Trinity, and undivided Unity: we will give glory to Him, because He has shown His mercy to us. Psalm. O Lord, our Lord, how wonderful is Your Name in all the earth! ℣. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. ℟. Amen. — Blessed be the holy Trinity …
Collect Almighty and everlasting God, who has enabled Yuour servants, in confessing the true Faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of Majesty to adore its Unity: we beseech You, that by steadfastness in the same Faith, we may ever be defended against all adversity. Through our Lord Jesus Christ …
Epistle (Romans 11) O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and of the knowledge of God! How incomprehensible are His judgments, and how unsearchable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been His counsellor? Or who has first given to Him, and recompense shall be made him? For of Him, and by Him, and in Him, are all things: to Him be glory for ever. Amen.
Gradual Blessed are You, Lord, that beholds the depths and sits above the Cherubim. Blessed are You, O Lord, in the firmament of heaven, and worthy of praise for ever. Alleluia, alleluia. (Dan. 3. 52.) Blessed are You, O Lord, the God of our fathers, and worthy to be praised for ever. Alleluia
The Gospel At that time Jesus said to His disciples: All power is given to Me in heaven and on earth. Going therefore, teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you; and behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world
Offertory Blessed be God the Father, and the only begotten Son of God, and also the Holy Spirit; because He has shown us His mercy.
Secret Sanctify, we beseech You, O Lord, our God, by the invocation of Your holy Name, the Sacrifice we offer, and by it make us an everlasting offering unto You. Through our Lord…
Communion We bless the God of heaven, and before all the living we will praise Him; because He has shown His mercy to us.
Postcommunion O Lord, our God, may our reception of this Sacrament and our acknowledgment of the holy and eternal Trinity and its undivided Unity be of avail to us for health of mind and body. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son, Who lives and reigns with You in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end.
The Unity Of Nature In God
from the Catechism of the Council of Trent
… it must also be confessed that there is but one God, not many gods. For we attribute to God supreme goodness and infinite perfection, and it is impossible that what is supreme and most perfect could be common to many. If a being lack anything that constitutes supreme perfection, it is therefore imperfect and cannot have the nature of God. The unity of God is also proved from many passages of Sacred Scripture. It is written: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord; again the Lord commands: Thou shalt not have strange gods before me; and further He often admonishes us by the Prophet: I am the first, and I am the last, and besides me there is no God. The Apostle also openly declares: One Lord, one faith, one baptism. …
The Trinity Of Persons In God
The Christian faith, therefore, believes and professes, as is declared in the Nicene Creed in confirmation of this truth, that God in His Nature, Substance and Essence is one But soaring still higher, it so understands Him to be one that it adores unity in trinity and trinity in unity. …
God Is Called Father Because He Is Creator And Ruler
Even some on whose darkness the light of faith never shone conceived God to be an eternal substance from whom all things have their beginning, and by whose Providence they are governed and preserved in their order and state of existence. Since, therefore, he to whom a family owes its origin and by whose wisdom derived from human things these persons gave the name Father to God, whom they acknowledge to be the Creator and Governor of the universe. The Sacred Scriptures also, when they wish to show that to God must be ascribed the creation of all things, supreme power and admirable Providence, make use of the same name. Thus we read: Is not he thy Father, that hath possessed thee, and made thee and created thee? And: Have we not all one Father? hath not one God created us?
God Is Called Father Because He Adopts Christians Through Grace
But God, particularly in the New Testament, is much more frequently, and in some sense peculiarly, called the Father of Christians, who have not received the spirit of bondage again in fear; but have received the spirit of adoption of sons (of God), whereby they cry: Abba (Father). For the Father hath bestowed upon us that manner of charity that we should be called, and be the sons of God, and if sons, heirs also; heirs indeed of God, and jointheirs with Christ, who is the firstborn amongst many brethren, and is not ashamed to call us brethren. Whether, therefore, we look to the common title of creation and Providence, or to the special one of spiritual adoption, rightly do the faithful profess their belief that God is their Father.
The Name Father Also Discloses The Plurality Of Persons In God
But the pastor should teach that on hearing the word Father, besides the ideas already unfolded, the mind should rise to more exalted mysteries. Under the name Father, the divine oracles begin to unveil to us a mysterious truth which is more abstruse and more deeply hidden in that inaccessible light in which God dwells, and which human reason and understanding could not attain to, nor even conjecture to exist. This name implies that in the one Essence of the Godhead is proposed to our belief, not only one Person, but a distinction of persons; for in one Divine Nature there are Three Persons the Father, begotten of none; the Son, begotten of the Father before all ages; the Holy Ghost, proceeding from the Father and the likewise, from all eternity
The Doctrine Of The Trinity
In the one Substance of the Divinity the Father is the First Person, who with His Onlybegotten Son, and the Holy Ghost, is one God and one Lord, not in the singularity of one Person, but in the trinity of one Substance. These Three Persons, since it would be impiety to assert that they are unlike or unequal in any thing, are understood to be distinct only in their respective properties. For the Father is unbegotten, the Son begotten of the Father, and the Holy Ghost proceeds from both. Thus we acknowledge the Essence and the Substance of the Three Persons to be the same in such wise that we believe that in confessing the true and eternal God we are piously and religiously to adore distinction in the Persons, unity in the Essence, and equality in the Trinity.
Hence, when we say that the Father is the First Person, we are not to be understood to mean that in the Trinity there is anything first or last, greater or less. Let none of the faithful be guilty of such impiety, for the Christian religion proclaims the same eternity, the same majesty of glory in the Three Persons. But since the Father is the Beginning without a beginning, we truly and unhesitatingly affirm that He is the First Person, and as He is distinct from the Others by His peculiar relation of paternity, so of Him alone is it true that He begot the Son from eternity. For when in the Creed we pronounce together the words God and Father, it means that He was always both God and Father.
