46. What did Jesus Christ reveal to us about the mystery of the Father?

46. What did Jesus Christ reveal to us about the mystery of the Father?

(Comp 46) Jesus Christ revealed to us that God is “Father”, not only insofar as he created the universe and the mankind, but above all because he eternally generated in his bosom the Son who is his Word, “ the radiance of the glory of God and the very stamp of his nature” (Hebrews 1:3).

“In Brief”

(CCC 276) Faithful to the witness of Scripture, the Church often addresses her prayer to the "almighty and eternal God" (“omnipotens sempiterne Deus…"), believing firmly that "nothing will be impossible with God" (Gen 18:14; Lk 1:37; Mt 19:26).

To deepen and explain

(CCC 240) Jesus revealed that God is Father in an unheard-of sense: he is Father not only in being Creator; he is eternally Father by his relationship to his only Son who, reciprocally, is Son only in relation to his Father: "No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him“ (Mt 11-27). (CCC 241) For this reason the apostles confess Jesus to be the Word: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God"; as "the image of the invisible God"; as the "radiance of the glory of God and the very stamp of his nature" (Jn 1:1; Col 1:15; Heb 1:3).

On reflection

(CCC 242) Following this apostolic tradition, the Church confessed at the first ecumenical council at Nicaea (325) that the Son is "consubstantial" with the Father, that is, one only God with him (The English phrases "of one being" and "one in being" translate the Greek word homoousios, which was rendered in Latin by consubstantialis). The second ecumenical council, held at Constantinople in 381, kept this expression in its formulation of the Nicene Creed and confessed "the only-begotten Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father" (Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed; cf. DS 150).

(Next question: Who is the Holy Spirit revealed to us by Jesus Christ?)