Tuesday of the Second Week of Easter
OUR LADY OF GOOD COUNSEL
Jeremiah,
Chapter 44, Verse 10
God
knows the human heart we tend to trust in our human strength, or our clout, or
our wealth, or weapons. God knows and He wants us to trust in Him and not any
of these things. Even to this very day we have not learned this lesson for we
in America have assumed to trust in the strength of our Army, which is the
greatest Army in the world and have forgotten the true basis of our strength
which is printed on our money: In God We Trust. Many people in high offices
like to play the prophet: but “A wise person is superior to a prophet” (Bava
Basra 12a) Think a prophet can see the future but a wise person can see the present. God asks us to be present to
each other each and every day. Live in the Present!
Words
of wisdom Saint Teresa of Avila:
“I am afraid
that if we begin to put our trust in human help, some of our Divine help will
fail us.”
“The most
potent and acceptable prayer is the prayer that leaves the best effects. I
don’t mean it must immediately fill the soul with desire . . . The best effects [are] those that are
followed up by actions—–when the soul not only desires the honor of God,
but really strives for it. “
“You pay
God a compliment by asking great things of Him.”[1]
Our Lady of Good Counsel[2]
On the Feast of Saint
Mark, April 25, 1467, the people of Genazzano, Italy witnessed a marvelous
sight. A cloud descended upon an ancient church dedicated to Our Lady of Good
Counsel. When the cloud disappeared, an image of Our Lady and the Child Jesus
was revealed which had not been there before. The image, on a paper-thin sheet,
was suspended miraculously. Soon after the image's appearance many miracles
were attributed to the intercession of Our Lady of Good Counsel. Because of
this, Pope Paul II ordered an investigation and the results have been
preserved. It was later discovered that the very same image had been seen in a
church dedicated to the Annunciation in Scutari, Albania. The image in this
church was said to have arrived there in a miraculous manner. Now, the image
had been transported from Albania miraculously to avoid sacrilege from Moslem
invasion. A commission of enquiry determined that a portrait from the church
was indeed missing. An empty space the same size as the portrait was displayed
for all to see. Many miracles continue to be attributed to Our Lady of Good
Counsel. Pope Saint Pius V, for example, credited victory in the Battle of
Lepanto to Her intercession. Several Popes have approved the miraculous image.
In 1682 Pope Innocent XI had the portrait crowned with gold. On July 2, 1753,
Pope Benedict XIV approved the Scapular of Our Lady of Good Counsel, and was
the first to wear it.
Catechism
of the Catholic Church
PART ONE: THE PROFESSION OF FAITH
SECTION TWO I. THE CREEDS
CHAPTER ONE-I BELIEVE IN GOD THE FATHER
Article 1 "I BELIEVE IN GOD THE FATHER
ALMIGHTY, CREATOR OF HEAVEN AND EARTH"
Paragraph 2. THE FATHER
I. "IN THE NAME
OF THE FATHER AND OF THE SON AND OF THE HOLY SPIRIT"
232 Christians are baptized
"in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit" Before receiving the sacrament, they respond to a three-part
question when asked to confess the Father, the Son and the Spirit: "I
do." "The faith of all Christians rests on the Trinity."
233 Christians are baptized in
the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: not in their
names, for there is only one God, the almighty Father, his only Son and
the Holy Spirit: the Most Holy Trinity.
234 The mystery of the Most
Holy Trinity is the central mystery of Christian faith and life. It is the
mystery of God in himself. It is therefore the source of all the other
mysteries of faith, the light that enlightens them. It is the most fundamental
and essential teaching in the "hierarchy of the truths of
faith". The whole history of salvation is identical with the history
of the way and the means by which the one true God, Father, Son and Holy
Spirit, reveals himself to men "and reconciles and unites with himself
those who turn away from sin".
235 This paragraph expounds
briefly (I) how the mystery of the Blessed Trinity was revealed, (II) how the
Church has articulated the doctrine of the faith regarding this mystery, and
(III) how, by the divine missions of the Son and the Holy Spirit, God the
Father fulfils the "plan of his loving goodness" of creation, redemption
and sanctification.
236 The Fathers of the Church
distinguish between theology (theologia) and economy (oikonomia).
"Theology" refers to the mystery of God's inmost life within the
Blessed Trinity and "economy" to all the works by which God reveals
himself and communicates his life. Through the oikonomia the theologia is
revealed to us; but conversely, the theologia illuminates the whole oikonomia.
God's works reveal who he is in himself; the mystery of his inmost being
enlightens our understanding of all his works. So it is, analogously, among
human persons. A person discloses himself in his actions, and the better we
know a person, the better we understand his actions.
237 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.
II. THE REVELATION OF GOD AS TRINITY
The Father revealed by the Son
238 Many religions invoke God
as "Father". the deity is often considered the "father of gods
and of men". In Israel, God is called "Father" inasmuch as he is
Creator of the world. Even more, God is Father because of the covenant and
the gift of the law to Israel, "his first-born son". God is also
called the Father of the king of Israel. Most especially he is "the Father
of the poor", of the orphaned and the widowed, who are under his loving
protection.
239 By calling God
"Father", the language of faith indicates two main things: that God
is the first origin of everything and transcendent authority; and that he is at
the same time goodness and loving care for all his children. God's parental
tenderness can also be expressed by the image of motherhood, which
emphasizes God's immanence, the intimacy between Creator and creature. the
language of faith thus draws on the human experience of parents, who are in a
way the first representatives of God for man. But this experience also tells us
that human parents are fallible and can disfigure the face of fatherhood and
motherhood. We ought therefore to recall that God transcends the human
distinction between the sexes. He is neither man nor woman: he is God. He also
transcends human fatherhood and motherhood, although he is their origin and
standard: no one is father as God is Father.
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."
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".
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 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".
The
Father and the son revealed by the spirit
243 Before his Passover, Jesus
announced the sending of "another Paraclete" (Advocate), the Holy
Spirit. At work since creation, having previously "spoken through the
prophets", the Spirit will now be with and in the disciples, to teach them
and guide them "into all the truth". The Holy Spirit is thus
revealed as another divine person with Jesus and the Father.
244 The eternal origin of the
Holy Spirit is revealed in his mission in time. the Spirit is sent to the
apostles and to the Church both by the Father in the name of the Son, and by
the Son in person, once he had returned to the Father. The sending of the
person of the Spirit after Jesus' glorification reveals in its fullness
the mystery of the Holy Trinity.
245 The apostolic faith
concerning the Spirit was confessed by the second ecumenical council at
Constantinople (381): "We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver
of life, who proceeds from the Father." By this confession, the
Church recognizes the Father as "the source and origin of the whole
divinity". But the eternal origin of the Spirit is not unconnected
with the Son's origin: "The Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity,
is God, one and equal with the Father and the Son, of the same substance and
also of the same nature. . . Yet he is not called the Spirit of the Father
alone,. . . but the Spirit of both the Father and the Son." The Creed
of the Church from the Council of Constantinople confesses: "With the
Father and the Son, he is worshipped and glorified."
246 The Latin tradition of the
Creed confesses that the Spirit "proceeds from the Father and the Son
(filioque)". the Council of Florence in 1438 explains: "The Holy
Spirit is eternally from Father and Son; He has his nature and subsistence at
once (simul) from the Father and the Son. He proceeds eternally from both as
from one principle and through one spiration... And, since the Father has
through generation given to the only-begotten Son everything that belongs to
the Father, except being Father, the Son has also eternally from the Father,
from whom he is eternally born, that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the
Son."
247 The affirmation of the
filioque does not appear in the Creed confessed in 381 at Constantinople. But
Pope St. Leo I, following an ancient Latin and Alexandrian tradition, had already
confessed it dogmatically in 447, even before Rome, in 451 at the Council
of Chalcedon, came to recognize and receive the Symbol of 381. the use of this
formula in the Creed was gradually admitted into the Latin liturgy (between the
eighth and eleventh centuries). the introduction of the filioque into the
Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed by the Latin liturgy constitutes moreover, even
today, a point of disagreement with the Orthodox Churches.
248 At the outset the Eastern
tradition expresses the Father's character as first origin of the Spirit. By
confessing the Spirit as he "who proceeds from the Father", it
affirms that he comes from the Father through the Son. The Western
tradition expresses first the consubstantial communion between Father and Son,
by saying that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son (filioque). It
says this, "legitimately and with good reason", for the eternal
order of the divine persons in their consubstantial communion implies that the
Father, as "the principle without principle", is the first
origin of the Spirit, but also that as Father of the only Son, he is, with the
Son, the single principle from which the Holy Spirit proceeds. This
legitimate complementarity, provided it does not become rigid, does not affect
the identity of faith in the reality of the same mystery confessed.
III. THE HOLY TRINITY
IN THE TEACHING OF THE FAITH
The formation of the Trinitarian dogma
249 From the beginning, the revealed truth of the Holy Trinity has been at the very root of the Church's living faith, principally by means of Baptism. It finds its expression in the rule of baptismal faith, formulated in the preaching, catechesis and prayer of the Church. Such formulations are already found in the apostolic writings, such as this salutation taken up in the Eucharistic liturgy: "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all."
250 During the first centuries
the Church sought to clarify her Trinitarian faith, both to deepen her own understanding
of the faith and to defend it against the errors that were deforming it. This
clarification was the work of the early councils, aided by the theological work
of the Church Fathers and sustained by the Christian people's sense of the
faith.
251 In order to articulate the
dogma of the Trinity, the Church had to develop her own terminology with the
help of certain notions of philosophical origin: "substance",
"person" or "hypostasis", "relation" and so on.
In doing this, she did not submit the faith to human wisdom, but gave a new and
unprecedented meaning to these terms, which from then on would be used to
signify an ineffable mystery, "infinitely beyond all that we can humanly
understand".
252 The Church uses (I) the
term "substance" (rendered also at times by "essence" or
"nature") to designate the divine being in its unity, (II) the term
"person" or "hypostasis" to designate the Father, Son and
Holy Spirit in the real distinction among them, and (III) the term
"relation" to designate the fact that their distinction lies in the
relationship of each to the others.
The dogma of the Holy
Trinity
253 The Trinity is One. We do not confess three Gods, but one God in three persons, the "consubstantial Trinity". The divine persons do not share the one divinity among themselves but each of them is God whole and entire: "The Father is that which the Son is, the Son that which the Father is, the Father and the Son that which the Holy Spirit is, i.e. by nature one God." In the words of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), "Each of the persons is that supreme reality, viz., the divine substance, essence or nature."
254 The divine persons are
really distinct from one another. "God is one but not
solitary." "Father", "Son", "Holy
Spirit" are not simply names designating modalities of the divine being,
for they are really distinct from one another: "He is not the Father who
is the Son, nor is the Son he who is the Father, nor is the Holy Spirit he who
is the Father or the Son." They are distinct from one another in their
relations of origin: "It is the Father who generates, the Son who is
begotten, and the Holy Spirit who proceeds." The divine Unity is
Triune.
255 The divine persons are
relative to one another. Because it does not divide the divine unity, the real
distinction of the persons from one another resides solely in the relationships
which relate them to one another: "In the relational names of the persons
the Father is related to the Son, the Son to the Father, and the Holy Spirit to
both. While they are called three persons in view of their relations, we
believe in one nature or substance." Indeed "everything (in
them) is one where there is no opposition of
relationship." "Because of that unity the Father is wholly in
the Son and wholly in the Holy Spirit; the Son is wholly in the Father and
wholly in the Holy Spirit; the Holy Spirit is wholly in the Father and wholly
in the Son."
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 splendor. I have not even begun to think of the
Trinity when unity grasps me. .
IV. THE DIVINE WORKS
AND THE TRINITARIAN MISSIONS
257 "O blessed light, O
Trinity and first Unity!" God is eternal blessedness, undying life,
unfading light. God is love: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God freely wills to
communicate the glory of his blessed life. Such is the "plan of his loving
kindness", conceived by the Father before the foundation of the world, in
his beloved Son: "He destined us in love to be his sons" and "to
be conformed to the image of his Son", through "the spirit of
sonship". This plan is a "grace [which] was given to us in
Christ Jesus before the ages began", stemming immediately from Trinitarian
love. It unfolds in the work of creation, the whole history of salvation
after the fall, and the missions of the Son and the Spirit, which are continued
in the mission of the Church.
258 The whole divine economy is
the common work of the three divine persons. For as the Trinity has only one
and the same natures so too does it have only one and the same operation:
"The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are not three principles of
creation but one principle." However, each divine person performs the
common work according to his unique personal property. Thus the Church
confesses, following the New Testament, "one God and Father from whom all
things are, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom all things are, and one
Holy Spirit in whom all things are". It is above all the divine
missions of the Son's Incarnation and the gift of the Holy Spirit that show
forth the properties of the divine persons.
259 Being a work at once common
and personal, the whole divine economy makes known both what is proper to the
divine persons, and their one divine nature. Hence the whole Christian life is
a communion with each of the divine persons, without in any way separating
them. Everyone who glorifies the Father does so through the Son in the Holy
Spirit; everyone who follows Christ does so because the Father draws him and
the Spirit moves him.
260 The ultimate end of the
whole divine economy is the entry of God's creatures into the perfect unity of
the Blessed Trinity. But even now we are called to be a dwelling for the
Most Holy Trinity: "If a man loves me", says the Lord, "he will
keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and make
our home with him":
O
my God, Trinity whom I adore, help me forget myself entirely so to establish
myself in you, unmovable and peaceful as if my soul were already in eternity.
May nothing be able to trouble my peace or make me leave you, O my unchanging
God, but may each minute bring me more deeply into your mystery! Grant my soul
peace. Make it your heaven, your beloved dwelling and the place of your rest.
May I never abandon you there, but may I be there, whole and entire, completely
vigilant in my faith, entirely adoring, and wholly given over to your creative
action.
IN BRIEF
261 The mystery of the Most
Holy Trinity is the central mystery of the Christian faith and of Christian
life. God alone can make it known to us by revealing himself as Father, Son and
Holy Spirit.
262 The Incarnation of God's
Son reveals that God is the eternal Father and that the Son is consubstantial
with the Father, which means that, in the Father and with the Father the Son is
one and the same God.
263 The mission of the Holy
Spirit, sent by the Father in the name of the Son (Jn 14:26) and by the Son
"from the Father" (Jn 15:26), reveals that, with them, the Spirit is
one and the same God. "With the Father and the Son he is worshipped and
glorified" (Nicene Creed).
264 "The Holy Spirit
proceeds from the Father as the first principle and, by the eternal gift of
this to the Son, from the communion of both the Father and the Son" (St.
Augustine, De Trin. 15, 26, 47: PL 42, 1095).
265 By the grace of Baptism
"in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit", we
are called to share in the life of the Blessed Trinity, here on earth in the
obscurity of faith, and after death in eternal light (cf. Paul VI, CPG # 9).
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).
267 Inseparable in what they
are, the divine persons are also inseparable in what they do. But within the
single divine operation each shows forth what is proper to him in the Trinity,
especially in the divine missions of the Son's Incarnation and the gift of the
Holy Spirit.
Daily
Devotions
·
Unite in the work of the Porters of St. Joseph by joining them
in fasting: Today's Fast: Growth
of Catholic Families and Households
·
Make
reparations to the Holy Face-Tuesday
Devotion
·
Pray Day 7 of
the Novena for our Pope and Bishops
·
Tuesday:
Litany of St. Michael the Archangel
·
Litany of the Most Precious
Blood of Jesus
·
Manhood of
the Master-week 10 day 3
·
Offering to
the sacred heart of Jesus
· Make reparations to the Holy Face
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