YOUCAT Question n. 35 - Part V. Do we believe in one God or in three Gods?
(Youcat answer - repeated) We believe in one God in three
persons (Trinity). “God is not solitude but perfect communion.” (Pope Benedict
XVI, May 22, 2005).
A deepening through
CCC
(CCC 256) St. Gregory of Nazianzus, also called "the
Theologian", entrusts this summary of Trinitarian faith to the catechumens
of Constantinople: Above all guard for me this great deposit of faith for which
I live and fight, which I want to take with me as a companion, and which makes
me bear all evils and despise all pleasures: I mean the profession of faith in
the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. I entrust it to you today. By it I
am soon going to plunge you into water and raise you up from it. I give it to
you as the companion and patron of your whole life. I give you but one divinity
and power, existing one in three, and containing the three in a distinct way.
Divinity without disparity of substance or nature, without superior degree that
raises up or inferior degree that casts down… the infinite co-naturality of
three infinites. Each person considered in himself is entirely God… the three
considered together…. I have not even begun to think of unity when the Trinity
bathes me in its splendour. I have not even begun to think of the Trinity when
unity grasps me (St. Gregory of
Nazianzus, Oratio 40, 41: PG 36, 417).
Reflecting and
meditating
(Youcat comment)
Christians do not worship three different
Gods, but one single Being that is threefold and yet remains one. We know that
God is triune from Jesus Christ: He, the Son, speaks about his Father in heaven
(“I and the Father are one”, Jn 10:30). He prays to him and sends us the Holy
Spirit, who is the love of the Father and the Son. That is why we are baptized
“in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Mt 28:19).
(CCC Comment)
(CCC 266) "Now this is the Catholic faith: We worship
one God in the Trinity and the Trinity in unity, without either confusing the
persons or dividing the substance; for the person of the Father is one, the
Son's is another, the Holy Spirit's another; but the Godhead of the Father, Son
and Holy Spirit is one, their glory equal, their majesty coeternal" (Athanasian Creed: DS 75; ND 16). [End]
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