Commentary on My Catholic Faith 21 December 2022
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end, amen. The continuation of the commentary to My Catholic Faith. God is one. This is known through Natural Revelation. Through Supernatural Revelation, we know that there are 3 Divine Persons. Person here does not refer to human person, we use that term for a lack of a better word to express the mystery of the Trinity. This is what many people do not understand. The distinction of the 3 Divine Persons is their “origin”. The Father eternally begets the Son, the Son eternally proceeds from the Father, and the Holy Spirit eternally procceds from the Father and the Son.
All 3 Divine Persons
are God equally, yet they are One God, not 3 Gods. Omnipotence and Creation is
attributed to the Father, Redemption to the Son, and Sanctification to the Holy
Spirit. They are truly distinct from each other. The simplest way of explaining
is that the Father knows Himself and loves Himself. This Knowledge becomes a
Living Person in eternity, the Son. The Son and the Father loves each other
infinitely, thus proceeding from that mutual love is the Holy Spirit, a Living
Person. However, even this way of explanation does not fully capture the
mystery of the Blessed Trinity.
In that way, it is an
imperfect way of capturing the necessity of the Trinity, that is for God’s
Knowledge and Will be complete in Himself. Every operation of God necessarily is
common to each Person, but we as humans appropriate the operations to different
Persons, though in reality it is one. This mystery is not a contradiction, but
it is not comprehensible either to mankind. We may have a better understanding
of the Blessed Trinity in heaven, but never the fullness of the mystery. We
believe in the Trinity because God reveals it to us and commands us to believe
in His mystery. We profess this Faith in the sign of the cross, in the
doxology, and in every sacrament as being administed in the name of the Holy
Trinity.
God created everything
apart from Himself that exists out of nothing. For He did not create out of His
own Substance, as that is the process of the Trinity and also an impossibility to
create another God. As such, He created out of nothing into everything that
exists in heaven and the material universe. By heaven we mean the angels, be it
those who remained faithful to God and those who fell away from God.
From the Creation
account of Sacred Scripture, we can infer the omnipotence of God and also that man
is the peak of creation. For man bears the image of God, and is most similar to
God among all of creation. The rhythm of man’s life shall follow that of the
creation account, 6 days of work and 1 day of rest. There is also no
contradiction between the Scriptural account of creation and the scientific
account of creation. The apparent contradiction is simply a misunderstanding of
the intent of the writer of Scripture.
Revelation and science
do not contradict each other for they are both of God. However, true science
and all of Natural Revelation must obey God’s Supernatural Revelation or
religion. Proper science and so of philosophy as well shall lead into the
fullness of the Truth that is found in the Catholic religion. There are no real
contradictions between the Scriptural account of creation and what science has
discovered. For again, the difficulties according to some scientists are
resulted from improper understanding of Sacred Scripture.
Angels and men both
have the same purpose, to share in the goodness and happiness of God. Angels
are creatures which are bodiless, but otherwise they possess an intellect and a
will like us humans. Angels are by nature or more similar to God than we
humans, they possess greater wisdom and power than us by nature. Every angel is
different according to the gifts bestowed and work assigned to them. Not all
angels remained faithful to God, some rejected God by sinning, as they too have
free will. The angels who remained faithful to God are united to God and are
perfectly happy in the beatific vision. With this they can never sin again.
The angels help us by
praying for us, being messengers for us though this is rather rare nowadays, and
being our guardian angels. Some angels have special duties over communities,
nations, and churches. Our guardian angels help us by praying for us,
protecting us from harm especially spiritual harm, and inspiring us to do good.
We often cannot really distinguish whether an inspiration is of God or of
angels, but it is said that it shall be revealed to us when we are in heaven.
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