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The Trinity: the Holy Spirit

01 Thursday Jun 2017

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St Gregory of Nazianzus

St Gregory of Nazianzus

The Fathers at Nicaea were concerned primarily with Christology, which was the focus of the dispute with Arius and the Arians. In all this discussion of the relationship between Father and Son, less attention was given to the Third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. For clarification on this subject – pneumatology – we owe much to the Cappadocian Fathers, especially St. Basil and St. Gregory Nazianzus. It was their achievement to show that the Spirit, too, was of the same Substance as the Father and the Son; their greatest achievement was to make sense of the One-ness and the Three-ness of the Trinity.

The Trinity was of the same Substance: the Father was God, the Son was God and the Holy Spirit was God – but the Father was not the Son, neither was either of those two Persons the Holy Spirit, although they are what the Father is in Substance. They came up with the word hypostasis to express the difference. The Son and the Spirit are what the Father is (God) but they are not who the Father is. They relate to each other as Persons in a communion of love which is not to be explained.

The relationship between Father and Son is that the former begets the latter. This mode of eternal filial origination is the distinct hypostatic character of the Son – His Sonship lies in that He is begotten of the Father (before all worlds, God of God, True light of True light, begotten not made).

How has he been begotten? I re-utter the question with loathing. God’s begetting ought to have the tribute of our reverent silence. The important point is for you to learn that he has been begotten. As to the way it happens, we shall not concede that even angels, much less you, know that. Shall I tell you the way? It is a way known only to the begetting Father and the begotten Son. Anything beyond this fact is hidden by a cloud and escapes your dull vision. [Oration 29.8 6]

The Spirt issues perennially from the Father, and this mode of eternal spiration is the distinct hypostatic character of the Spirit, who, however, proceeds from the Father through the Son. The Spirit’s mode of origin – spiration, is what distinguishes the Third Person of the Trinity from the Second.

What, then, is “proceeding”? You explain the ingeneracy of the Father and I will give you a biological account of the Son’s begetting and the Spirit’s proceeding – and let us go mad the pair of us for prying into God’s secrets. What competence have we here? We cannot understand what lies under our feet, cannot count the sand in the sea, “the drops of rain or the days of this world,” much less enter into the “depths of God” and render a verbal account of a nature so mysterious, so much beyond words. [Oration 31.8]

So, all Three Persons are God, but each in a distinct, hypostatic realisation. The Divine Nature is not a common property of three different entities, it is, as St. Gregory showed, a personal being (that of the Father) that is hypostatically realised by the Son and the Spirit as they each derive from and relate back to the Father. The Father is the dynamic cause of the Trinity – Three Persons, One Substance.

This I give you to share, and to defend all your life, the One Godhead and Power, found in the Three in Unity, and comprising the Three separately, not unequal, in substances or natures, neither increased nor diminished by superiorities or inferiorities; in every respect equal, in every respect the same;
Just as the beauty and the greatness of the heavens is one; the infinite conjunction of Three Infinite Ones, Each God when considered in Himself; as the Father so the Son, as the Son so the Holy Ghost; the Three One God when contemplated together; Each God because Consubstantial; One God because of the Monarchia.
No sooner do I conceive of the One than I am illumined by the Splendour of the Three; no sooner do I distinguish Them than I am carried back to the One. [Oration 40.41]

St. Gregory himself, rightly warns us that to engage too much in theological reflection led to the danger of dazzling the mind by speaking about mysteries that even the angels cannot comprehend.

The Holy Spirit and the Trinity

24 Monday Apr 2017

Posted by in Bible, Catholic Tradition, Faith

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St Gregory of Nazianzus

St Gregory of Nazianzus

Although Nicaea gave us the basis of the Creed which bears its name, it failed to say much about the Holy Spirit. It was left to St. Basil and St. Gregory Nazianzus to show that the Spirit, too, was of the same Substance as the Father and the Son. Their greatest achievement, however, was to make sense of the One-ness and the Three-ness of the Trinity.

The Trinity was of the same Substance: the Father was God, the Son was God and the Holy Spirit was God – but the Father was not the Son, neither was either of those two Persons the Holy Spirit, although they are what the Father is in Substance. They came up with the word hypostasis to express the difference. The Son and the Spirit are what the Father is (God) but they are not who the Father is. They relate to each other as Persons in a communion of love which is not to be explained.

The relationship between Father and Son is that the former begets the latter. This mode of eternal filial origination is the distinct hypostatic character of the Son – His Sonship lies in that He is begotten of the Father (before all worlds, God of God, True light of True light, begotten not made).

How has he been begotten? I re-utter the question with loathing. God’s begetting ought to have the tribute of our reverent silence. The important point is for you to learn that he has been begotten. As to the way it happens, we shall not concede that even angels, much less you, know that. Shall I tell you the way? It is a way known only to the begetting Father and the begotten Son. Anything beyond this fact is hidden by a cloud and escapes your dull vision. [Oration 29.8 6]

The Spirt issues perennially from the Father, and this mode of eternal spiration is the distinct hypostatic character of the Spirit, who, however, proceeds from the Father through the Son. The Spirit’s mode of origin – spiration, is what distinguishes the Third Person of the Trinity from the Second.

What, then, is “proceeding”? You explain the ingeneracy of the Father and I will give you a biological account of the Son’s begetting and the Spirit’s proceeding – and let us go mad the pair of us for prying into God’s secrets. What competence have we here? We cannot understand what lies under our feet, cannot count the sand in the sea, “the drops of rain or the days of this world,” much less enter into the “depths of God” and render a verbal account of a nature so mysterious, so much beyond words. [Oration 31.8]

So, all Three Persons are God, but each in a distinct, hypostatic realisation. The Divine Nature is not a common property of three different entities, it is, as St. Gregory showed, a personal being (that of the Father) that is hypostatically realised by the Son and the Spirit as they each derive from and relate back to the Father. The Father is the dynamic cause of the Trinity – Three Persons, One Substance.

This I give you to share, and to defend all your life, the One Godhead and Power, found in the Three in Unity, and comprising the Three separately, not unequal, in substances or natures, neither increased nor diminished by superiorities or inferiorities; in every respect equal, in every respect the same;
Just as the beauty and the greatness of the heavens is one; the infinite conjunction of Three Infinite Ones, Each God when considered in Himself; as the Father so the Son, as the Son so the Holy Ghost; the Three One God when contemplated together; Each God because Consubstantial; One God because of the Monarchia.
No sooner do I conceive of the One than I am illumined by the Splendour of the Three; no sooner do I distinguish Them than I am carried back to the One. [Oration 40.41]

St. Gregory himself, rightly warns us that to engage too much in theological reflection led to the danger of dazzling the mind by speaking about mysteries that even the angels cannot comprehend. After that little excursion – something upon which we can all agree.

Defining the Trinity

23 Sunday Apr 2017

Posted by in Bible, Catholic Tradition, Faith

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Sometimes commentators ask why Bosco is not banned? There is a simple answer, which is that I care about his immortal soul and the souls of others, and what he, and they confess, when they say they need no religion, just a simple walk with Christ, is a commonly held position. After all, one might reasonably ask, “why does all this stuff about the Trinity matter anyway, can’t I be a Christian without an advanced degree in theology – and anyway, no one really understands it?”  The answer is that we are not the first to encounter Christ, and that those who walked the earth with Him thought it vital that the tradition they passed on be held by all followers; St Paul did not merely receive a revelation and declare himself authorised to teach as he liked. What applies to Paul applies to all of us. Christians have known that orthodox belief matters because it defines, as far as we can, who Christ is – and if we fail to grasp that, we can’t have any sort of relationship with Him.

The New Testament talks much about Father and Son, and about the Holy Ghost, but as the last post outlined, understanding the relationship between between the three was a problem. Christians, after all, were Monotheists – believers in One God – and yet their sacred scriptures and their tradition seemed to contain three entities.

By the fourth century it was clear that the notion that this did not mean One God acting three parts – it would make no sort of sense, even as a deep mystery, to have Jesus praying to Himself at Gethsemane, or asking Himself to let the cup pass Him by. But the nature of the relationship between Father and Son (at this point little attention had been paid to the Holy Spirit) was thrown into question by an Alexandrian priest, Arius.

Quoting John 17:3 , along with Colossians 1:15 and Proverbs 8:22 he argued that the Son was not God, but the first-born of creation – a creature, not the Creator. His bishop, Alexander, condemned him, but, as is so often the way, Arius quoted these lines of Scripture and argued that there was a ‘time when the Son was not’, defying his bishop to do anything about it. Arius was not the first, and will not be the last, clever man to think himself illuminated in a way denied to lesser intellects.

Arius posed a problem for Bishop Alexander, and so popular was his reading of Scripture, that it soon posed a problem for Bishops elsewhere. What the confrontation with Arius did was to force men who had not thought through the beliefs they confessed to do so. So what was it the Bishops held? They held that Jesus was God, in the beginning with God – a notion to make the head spin, but one which accorded with John’s Gospel and which made sense of Jesus being Divine. But Jesus was also human, so how could He be both? The Arians argued that this made no sense, and that they were more logical – Jesus was a created being sent by God to create the world and redeem mankind – but He was not God, as there was only One God. This was easily comprehensible by everyone – hence its popularity.

In order to combat this heresy, orthodox theologians, the most eminent of them being a deacon of Alexander’s, Athanasius (who succeeded him as Patriarch of Alexandria), were forced to think through how God could be both One and Three. The notion that God existed in three modes, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, was a common one, but did that mean that Jesus and the Holy Spirit were somehow less than the Father? Athanasius argued that He existed in Three Persons, that Father, Son and Holy Spirit were equal and yet one. The word he used to express this concept was the Greek homoousios – that expressed the view that the Son was of “one substance” with the Father. It was from this formula that the Nicene Creed developed in 325.

The Nicene Creed answers Arianism directly, saying of Jesus that he is:

the Son of God, only-begotten of the Father, that is, of the substance of the Father; God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God; begotten, not made, one in substance [homoousios] with the Father …

So, God was Father, the Generator of all things, but Himself ungenerate (that is He was before, above and beyond our concepts of Time), and Jesus was generated of the Father ‘before all worlds’. The manner in which this has happened was a mystery beyond our comprehension, but it firmly established that Father and Son, and also Holy Spirit, were of the same substance (consubstantial) and therefore both one and three – for which the new word, Trinity, was coined.

The Council of Nicaea in 325 established this as Christian orthodox belief. But, as Athanasius himself was aware, the place of the Holy Spirit in this triad whilst established, had hardly been discussed. This will be the subject of the final part of this series.

Misunderstanding the Trinity

22 Saturday Apr 2017

Posted by in Bible, Catholic Tradition, Early Church, Faith, Reading the BIble

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I suggested yesterday that it is clear that Christians have developed their understanding of Scripture from the earliest times; that tradition, oral and written to which Paul refers in his second letter to the Thessalonians, has been preserved and studied. One of the distinctive features of Christianity is that it sees God in Three Persons, the Blessed Trinity. We like to say that it is inherent in Scripture, and indeed Father, Son and Holy Ghost are all found there; but the relation between the Three has not always been clear, and if the early history of Christianity shows us anything, it is that left to themselves, even learned men can be led, and lead others, astray. In this short series I want to examine the developing understanding of ‘Father, Son and Holy Ghost’ in the early Church.

Strictly speaking heresy is only rightly so called when it appears in opposition to orthodoxy, and it is often the case in the early Church that beliefs which were, when enunciated debatable, later became classified as heretical, and it is well to say upfront that in the long debate over this matter, heresy has played a useful part in forcing the Church to be clearer about what is and is not orthodox belief; another reason, of course, why absent authority, chaos is not far away. Most Trinitarians accept a definition arrived at by the Church and guaranteed by it, even if they cannot accept the Church which gave that guarantee.

 

One common early reading, which is still present in some Pentecostal churches is called ‘Modalism’.  Modalism is the belief that God, rather than being three persons, is one person who reveals himself in three “modes,” much as an actor might play three roles in a movie. It is also called Sabellianism or monarchianism. Modalism is associated with two notable early church figures, Praxeas and Sabellius, both of whom gained a large following in the church in the late 2nd (Praxeas) and early 3rd centuries (Sabellius). The size of their following and an explanation for it is given by Tertullian in A.D. 200:

The simple, indeed, (I will not call them unwise and unlearned), who always constitute the majority of believers, are startled at the dispensation [of the Trinity], on the ground that their very rule of faith withdraws them from the world’s plurality of gods to the one only true God.
   They fail to understand that, although he is the one only God, He must yet be believed in with his own order. The numerical order and distribution of the Trinity they assume to be a division of the Unity, whereas the Unity which derives the Trinity out of its own self is so far from being destroyed, that it is actually supported by it.
   They are constantly throwing out against us that we are preachers of two gods and three gods, while they take to themselves the preeminent credit of being worshippers of the one God, as if the Unity itself with irrational deductions did not produce heresy, and the Trinity rationally considered constitute the truth. (Against Praxeas 3)

There is not One Divine Person, there are Three. The earliest definition of Our Faith is to be found in St. Irenaeus:

The Church, though dispersed through our the whole world, even to the ends of the earth, has received from the apostles and their disciples this faith:

[She believes] in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them.

And in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who became incarnate for our salvation

And in the Holy Spirit, who proclaimed through the prophets the dispensations of God, and the advents, and the birth from a virgin, and the passion, and the resurrection from the dead, and the ascension into heaven in the flesh of the beloved Christ Jesus, our Lord.

Tertullian shows us the problems the early Fathers had:

Before all things God was alone … He was alone because there was nothing external to him but himself. Yet even then was he not alone, for he had with him that which he possessed in himself—that is to say, his own Reason.

    … Although God had not yet sent out his Word, he still had him within himself …

   I may therefore without rashness establish that even then, before the creation of the universe, God was not alone, since he had within himself both Reason, and, inherent in Reason, his Word, which he made second to himself by agitating it within Himself.

It is easy to see from this how Arius could conclude: “there was a time when the Son did not exist.”

The early church answer was that there was a time when the Son was not separate from the Father, but there was never a time when he did not exist. Before He was separate from the Father, He was already the Logos inside of God. There was a term for this: homoousios (of the same substance). It was so important that it was inserted in the Nicene Creed twice.

The second part of this series will explain why this word was so important. But already we have, I think, established that left to themselves, there is no guarantee that theologians or ordinary Christians, will come to an orthodox understanding of who God is.

The Holy Trinity and love

26 Sunday Jun 2016

Posted by in Bible, Faith, Galatians

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In researching this morning’s Patristic commentary on Galatians, I cam across St Augustine’s comment that we ‘obey the law spiritually when we act out of love, not fear’, and his reminder that the law is there for our good too. That took me back to some of the recent discussions here about ‘love’ and ‘the law’ where, at times, one might have gained the impression that they were somehow antithetical. It can, it is true, seem that way. Newman described well the type of Christian who is so worried about ‘Judgement’ that he never shares the joy of knowing Christ, so conscious of his sins that he appears to derive no joy from knowing Christ. One of the things often commented upon by anti-Christian polemicists is just that tendency to be concerned with judging others which can come from judging ourselves. Jesus Himself asked how we could love God, whom we did not know, if we did not love our brother whom we did? If we hate ourself, how can we love others? What, after all, is love, save that which emanates from the mystery of the Economy of the Trinity?

The most startling insight of Christianity is not the revelation that God is one, but that He is Three. The Jews, and now the Muslims, hold the first belief; Christians alone hold the latter. When St. John tells us that ‘God is love’, he describes the relationship of the Persons of the Holy Trinity.

The only distinction between the persons of the Trinity is their mutual relations. None of the persons exists in respect to Himself alone, but each exists relatively to the other two:
…the “three persons” who exist in God are the reality of word and love in their attachment to each other. They are not substances, personalities in the modern sense, but the relatedness whose pure actuality… does not impair unity of the highest being but fills it out. St Augustine once enshrined this idea in the following formula: “He is not called Father with reference to himself but only in relation to the Son; seen by himself he is simply God.” Here the decisive point comes beautifully to light. “Father” is purely a concept of relationship. Only in being-for the other is he Father; in his own being-in-himself he is simply God. Person is the pure relation of being related, nothing else. Relationship is not something extra added to the person, as it is with us; it only exists at all as relatedness.

….the First Person [the Father] does not beget the Son in the sense of the act of begetting coming on top of the finished Person; it is the act of begetting, of giving oneself, of streaming forth. It is identical with the act of giving.

(Joseph Ratzinger Introduction to Christianity, pp. 131-132; cf. Augustine, ; De Trinitate VII, 1, 2.)

In short, each of the persons of the Trinity lives completely for the others; each is a complete gift of self to the others. The complete self-giving not only constitutes the individual persons of the Trinity, but also their inseparable oneness.

That love, it was which impelled  him to take action to help his creatures gone astray so when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman to redeem us and make us sons by adoption. It is the love that overflows from the Trinity which created the universe and ourselves, it is that love which offers us redemption, and it is that same love which also sets out the law to help us. We obey the law because of love, not fear, but that does mean the law does not matter or is somehow opposed to love.

Gospel for Trinity Sunday: Year C

22 Sunday May 2016

Posted by in Bible, Commentaries, Faith, St John

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John 16: 12-15

Here Jesus tells his disciples that there are some things they are not ready to hear now, but they will hear them from the Spirit once he had ascended. Since the Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son, He can grasp what no more human can, and we are bound to give assent to Him, even if we cannot fully understand – it is like Our Lord and Nicodemus, when the latter wondered how a man could be born again. In our regeneration we receive faith, but perfect understanding is not ours. The Spirit, Hilary of Poitiers reminds us, listeth where He will, and He is not beholden to us or required to explain himself. So, in the words of the Creed, we confess we believe in the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit, and we hold firm in that faith. The Infinite is not to be understood fully by the finite, and if we think we fully understand it, then it is not the Infinite Mystery of the Trinity which we grasp but a phantasm of our own devising.

One of those things which the disciple grasped when the Spirit came was that the Spirit was Divine. (St Gregory of Nazianzus).

We are, St Augustine reminds us, to grow in all love, that love which is nurtured in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. It is through the workings of the Spirit that our understanding will become spiritual and surpass the carnal understanding of men. In this life we shall not enter into all truth, but we can be prepared for it. Now we can know only in part, as through a glass darkly, but hereafter we shall know as we are fully known, and we shall see Him face to face. This is what the Lord means when he tells us that the Spirit will guide us into all truth.

St Ambrose comments that the Spirit speaks in the name of the Father and the Son, because they are one God. What the Son said was from the Father, and what the Spirit says is,.likewise from the Father and Son. The Son is biorn of the father, and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, but only the Father, St Augustine reminds us, is ‘not of another’. But we should not therefore think there is any disparity in the Trinity, for the Son and the Spirit are equally one God with the Father. The distinction is that the Son is born of the Father and the Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son, but that does not make any difference between them as to substance, for they are consubstantial. The Spirit is not inferior to the Father, any more than the Son is, and these errors are heresy and condemned by the Church. This is, of course, extremely hard for us to comprehend, and we see it as through a glass darkly, but since the Church has declared it to us, and the Church is guided by the Spirit, we accept His word in faith.

As St Gregory Nazianzus expresses it:

All things that the Father has are the Son’s. And … all that belongs to the Son is the father’s. Nothing then is peculiar [to any one Person] because all things are in common. For their being itself is common and equal, even though the Son receives it from the Father.

 

 

Trinity Sunday

31 Sunday May 2015

Posted by in Catholic Tradition, Early Church, Faith, Lutheranism

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220px-Shield-Trinity-Scutum-Fidei-English.svgSo across almost all of our churches, today is Trinity Sunday. The Trinity is, of course, one of the distinctive characteristics of Christianity, and is, in fact, almost always misunderstood by others. And, in truth, it is a difficult concept for us as well.

In the break up of the Roman World, in fact amongst its causes were the Goths who under Arius became again non-Christian, or at least non Orthodox, truthfully in much the same way as Unitarians and Mormons are non-Christians. We could likely say, “Close but no cigar.” But the Arian heresy led to a restatement of the faith that on Trinity Sunday is still used in the Lutheran Church. It’s pretty much the only time we read it aloud.

It’s called The Athanasian Creed, and this is how it appears in The Book of Concord:

 

Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the catholic faith. Which faith except every one do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly.

And the catholic faith is this, that we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; Neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance. For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost is all one: the glory equal, the majesty coeternal. Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Ghost. The Father uncreated, the Son uncreated, and the Holy Ghost uncreated. The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Ghost incomprehensible. The Father eternal, the Son eternal, and the Holy Ghost eternal. And yet they are not three Eternals, but one Eternal. As there are not three Uncreated nor three Incomprehensibles, but one Uncreated and one Incomprehensible. So likewise the Father is almighty, the Son almighty, and the Holy Ghost almighty. And yet they are not three Almighties, but one Almighty. So the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God. And yet they are not three Gods, but one God. So likewise the Father is Lord, the Son Lord, and the Holy Ghost Lord. And yet not three Lords, but one Lord. For like as we are compelled by the Christian verity to acknowledge every Person by Himself to be God and Lord, So are we forbidden by the catholic religion to say, There be three Gods, or three Lords.

The Father is made of none: neither created nor begotten. The Son is of the Father alone; not made, nor created, but begotten. The Holy Ghost is of the Father and of the Son: neither made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding. So there is one Father, not three Fathers; one Son, not three Sons; one Holy Ghost, not three Holy Ghosts. And in this Trinity none is before or after other; none is greater or less than another; But the whole three Persons are coeternal together, and coequal: so that in all things, as is aforesaid, the Unity in Trinity and the Trinity in Unity is to be worshiped. He, therefore, that will be saved must thus think of the Trinity.

Furthermore, it is necessary to everlasting salvation that he also believe faithfully the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. For the right faith is, that we believe and confess that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and Man; God of the Substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds; and Man of the substance of His mother, born in the world; Perfect God and perfect Man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting. Equal to the Father as touching His Godhead, and inferior to the Father as touching His manhood; Who, although He be God and Man, yet He is not two, but one Christ: One, not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking the manhood into God; One altogether; not by confusion of Substance, but by unity of Person. For as the reasonable soul and flesh is one man, so God and Man is one Christ; Who suffered for our salvation; descended into hell, rose again the third day from the dead; He ascended into heaven; He sitteth on the right hand of the Father, God Almighty; from whence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead. At whose coming all men shall rise again with their bodies, and shall give an account of their own works. And they that have done good shall go into life everlasting; and they that have done evil, into everlasting fire.

This is the catholic faith; which except a man believe faithfully and firmly, he cannot be saved.

Why do we only use it on Trinity Sunday? I suspect because it is more specialized than the other two creeds in Lutheranism, The Apostle’s Creed and the Nicene Creed. Each stresses a somewhat different area, and this one was specifically written to help us to understand the Trinity

Gospel for Trinity Sunday: year B

31 Sunday May 2015

Posted by in Bible, Commentaries, Faith

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Matthew 28:16-20

Chrysostom notes that even here, as we approach the Great Commission and the end of Matthew’s Gospel, the Evangelist is truthful in depicting where there was doubt; but again, even those who doubted were assured by what they saw.

Jerome points out that ‘all authority’ had been given to him who had hung on the tree having been mocked and tortured; God had made his name the name above all names. The Apostles are to baptise in the name of the Trinity. First with water, for the body is not able to receive the sacrament of baptism before the soul has received the truth of the faith. The name of the Trinity is the name of the One God in whom we believe.

Chrysostom comments that the Apostles had not yet received the Holy Spirit, so Jesus commissions them in his own name: they are to teach his precepts, and he will be with them to the end of time – that is a promise he makes to his church. He bids them look beyond the dangers that they will encounter, beyond the scorn of the princes of this world, and beyond the hostility of its powers and dominations, and reminds them of the age to come. What is suffered is suffered now, and for a while, what it to be enjoyed is eternal felicity. Having roused their spirits, Jesus sends them forth in his name to bring the world to the Trinity.

So, let is not fear, let us not fall away or say the task is too hard. We should repent whilst there is time; we should amend our lives now, for we do not know when our hour will come and our soul be required of us; and we should receive him, by faith, in our hearts with thanksgiving. And may the Holy and Most Blessed Trinity, bless us all, now and forevermore. Amen.

There will be a post up later on the Trinity from Neo. There is a post on my parish website on the Trinity, here.