Some time before Vatican II, a certain prelate in a major U.S. archdiocese gave the invocation at an interfaith meeting at which Jews were present. So as not to offend, he began his prayer thus: “In the name of God. Amen.” The subsequent history of that prelate and his see lend credence to the theory that divine retribution still manifests itself from time to time. While it is said that Unitarians begin their prayers “To whom it may concern,” God wills Catholics to get it right!
The true God is the Blessed Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Whoever loves the Blessed Trinity will be saved. Whoever does not love the Blessed Trinity will be damned. And, to quote St. Augustine’s book on the subject, “I cannot love that which I do not know.”
But do we really know the Trinity as we ought? I think we can do better. And, while knowing sacred doctrine does not sanctify unless joined to loving and serving the Triune God, that knowledge is a necessary beginning. If we join learning to piety, we have a wonderful recipe for sanctity.
We Christians are baptized in the name of the Trinity, confirmed in the name of the Trinity, and have our sins forgiven in the name of the Trinity. We begin and conclude our prayers in Their name and receive a multitude of blessings from priests in like manner. Our entire sacramental life, our assistance at Mass, and our popular prayers are full of such references. Yet, most of us can’t make two or three cogent sentences about the Trinity, much less are we interiorly stirred up by the thought of eternal life with These Three. How far we are from Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity, who called the Three Persons, “My Three,” and would be frequently distracted during recreations by daydreaming about Them!
All this is compounded by the sermons preached on the Sunday after Pentecost: Trinity Sunday. Those priests who actually speak of the Mystery (and not of something lesser) too often limit themselves to an explanation of how ineffable the whole matter is. Father Feeney had a few choice comments about this, in his The Blessed Trinity Explained to Thomas Butler:
The statement is often made that because the Blessed Trinity is a mystery, therefore we can know nothing about it. Being, furthermore, the profoundest mystery in God, it is assumed by many preachers and teachers that it is the one phase of God we must dismiss without discussion. All this I deny. God would not have revealed the mystery to us if this were so. … A mystery is not a fact about which we can know nothing. It is a fact about which we cannot know everything. But the deeper we plunge, the more we learn. The ultimate veil will be removed from our minds only in the Beatific Vision. But veil by veil we can go tearing and plunging in the direction of that sunlight which is dimly, but surely, seeping through.
In this Ad Rem, I propose to outline five things you can know about the Trinity.
I. In the Holy Trinity, there is one Essence — the divine. Essence is “that by which a thing is what it is.” It is the quiddity, or whatness, of a thing. It answers the question: “What is it?” Now, because Nature is the essence of a thing considered according to what it can do and what can be done to it, there is also one nature in the Trinity. For this reason, we use the words “divine essence” and “divine nature” virtually synonymously. I will go further on this matter of the unity of Three Persons and note that there is also one Substance in the Trinity, and that divine Substance is not divided into parts.
II. There are two Processions in the Trinity. The First Person, the Eternal Father, proceeds from no other. He is the Origin without Origin. The Son proceeds from the Father by way of Generation and the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son by way of Spiration (breathing). For more on this subject, please see Trinitarian Processions.
III. There are, of course, three Persons in the Trinity. As we should not take for granted just what a “person” is, here are two useful definitions. Boethius, a master definer, defined person as an “individual substance of a rational nature.” Saint Thomas Aquinas defined it as a “distinct being, subsisting in an intellectual nature.” Though they are living creatures, plants and animals are not persons. Among the myriad distinct natures God created — spiritual, animal, vegetable, and mineral — only individuals of the human and angelic natures are persons. We and the angels (both the holy and the fallen) have that privilege of personality in common with the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
IV. There are four Relations in the Trinity: Paternity, whereby the First Person is related to the Second as Father; Filiation, by which the Second is related to the First as Son; Active Spiration, which relates the Father and Son (as one principle) to the Holy Ghost as spirating (or breathing) Him; and Passive Spiration, which relates the Holy Ghost to the Others as being breathed. (For these last two relations, think of active and passive voice in English grammar: I see. I am seen.) According to Saint Thomas Aquinas, the relations of Paternity, Filiation, and Passive Spiration are what constitute the Three Persons in the Godhead (“Each divine Person is a subsistent, incommunicable, internal divine relation”), so this is a very important part of Trinitarian Theology. It means that when we say “Father,” we are naming a personal relation. So, too, when we say “Son,” and “Holy Spirit.” For more on this, read The ‘Relations’ in the Blessed Trinity.
V. There are five Notions in the Trinity: innascibility (or unbegottenness), active generation, passive generation, active spiration, and passive spiration. A notion, as the name suggests, is something by which a thing is known. The Father can be known by three properties: Innascibility (not being begotten, that is, as we already said, He is the “Origin without origin” in the Trinity), Active Generation (He generates, or begets, the Son), and Active Spiration (He breathes forth the Holy Ghost). The Son can be known by two properties: Passive Generation (He is begotten by the Father) and Active Spiration (He breathes forth the Holy Ghost with the Father). The Holy Ghost is known by the property of Passive Spiration, being breathed by the Father and Son. As you can see, there is some overlap between the relations and the notions.
I invite you — no, I challenge you — to chew on this subject some more. The Catholic Encyclopedia article on the Trinity or The Divine Trinity in the Pohle-Preuss dogmatic series recommend themselves for further study. St. Thomas’ Summa is always in season, as is St. Augustine’s On the Trinity.
The Catholic vocation to grace and glory is a call to live through, with, and in Jesus as members of His Mystical Body, the Church, giving all glory to the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost. Thus does the ancient Roman Canon summarize our life in the Trinity, who we can and must know, love, and serve here in order to see the Triune God hereafter.
