Chapter II

The More Outstanding Elements of

The Christian Message

THE MYSTERY 0F THE ONE GOD: FATHER, SON, HOLY SPIRIT

47 The history of salvation is identical with the history of the way and the plan by which God, true and one, the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, reveals himself to men, and reconciles and unites with himself those turned away from 5m.

The Old Testament, while clearly affirming the unity of God in a polytheistic world, already gives some foreshadowing of the mystery of the Trinity. These are completely explicated, however, in the person, the works, and the words of Jesus Christ. indeed, when he reveals himself as the Son of God, he al the same time reveals the Father and the Holy Spirit. An intimate knowledge of the true God imbues the whole mind of the Divine Teacher, and he shares it with his disciples, calling them 10 become sons of God, through the Gift of his filial Spirit, which he bestows on them (cf. John 1, 12; Rom. 8, 15).

in catechesis, therefore, the meeting with the Triune God occurs first and foremost when the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are acknowledged as the authors of the plan of salvation that has its culmination in the death and resurrection of Jesus (cf. Irenaeus, Proof of the Apostolic Pmeaching, n. 6, Sources chretiénnes, 62, pp. 39 if.). in this way the growing awareness of the faithful responds to the revelation of the mystery transmitted by the Church; for the faithful understand through faith that their life, beginning at baptism, consists in acquiring a more intimate familiarity with the three divine Persons, inasmuch as the faithful are called to share in their divine nature. Finally, Christians, through the gift of the Holy Spirit, can already now contemplate with eyes of faith and cherish with filial love the Most Holy Trinity of Persons, as it is from eternity in God’s intimate life.