The Holy Trinity - God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit

The Trinity is the foundational doctrine of God in the Christian faith. Although the word itself was not used in Scripture, it can be shown that the Scripture teaches the essential truths which lead to the doctrine. In essence, the doctrine of the Trinity explains how the following apparently incompatible statements can be true:

1. There is only one God ( Rom 3:30, etc.)
2. The Father is God ( 1 Cor 8:6, etc.)
3. Jesus is God ( John 1:1, etc.)
4. The Holy Spirit is God ( 1 Cor 6:19, etc.)
5. Jesus is not the Father ( John 1:1, Luke 3:21-22, etc.)
6. Jesus is not the Spirit ( Luke 3:21-22, etc.)
7. The Father is not the Spirit ( Luke 3:21-22) )

The Trinity tells us that there are three Persons in one Divine Nature. The names Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are names of persons. God can serve as either a name for the Father or a name for the Divine Nature. Before delving into the relative meaning of Persons and Natures it will be useful to make it clear that these terms refer to distinctly different things.

I will attempt to clarify this with an analogy. My hand has five fingers, but all five fingers are parts of one hand (and the words finger and hand do not refer to the same kind of thing). It is appropriate, therefore, that I will arrive at a different number if I count fingers than hands. Likewise, Person and Nature are different things, and when I apply these words to God I find that there are three of the former and one of the later.

As useful as analogies can be to explain a concept, in all cases we find that analogies can only provide an accurate picture to a certain extent. Therefore it is useful to point out the places where they fail, and to provide a variety of them. We will then be able to proceed to an understanding by comparison and contrast. The analogy of fingers and hands breaks down in the following ways:

1. God is not composed of matter. Instead his Nature refers to the eternal perfections that he possesses: Love, Goodness, Power, etc.
2. God is not composed of parts. If God were composed of parts, then it would be necessary to have a cause for the arrangement of the parts, and something else would be fundamental.
3. There is only one Divine Nature. While there can be many hands, there can only be one Divine Nature.

One can now construct another analogy to consider the Persons and Nature of God. We can say that the persons are like dimensions, and the Nature is like three-dimensional space. The dimensions are indeed distinct realities, which we may term height, width, and depth, but we cannot call them parts, nor can we remove one dimension from the space in which we live. Three-dimensional space is composed of three inseparable dimensions. This analogy fails at a certain point to describe God as well, because there is really no way to distinguish one spatial dimension as special or different from the others.

As yet, however, we have only discussed how something can be different and yet inseparable. We cannot yet comprehend what the meanings of the words Person and Nature are. Persons are objects and sources both of communication, and of love. St. Augustine explains the passage "God is love" (1 John 4:8) by noting that if God is to be "love" for all eternity, then there must always exist Divine Persons in God to love one another. Ludwig Ott suggests that we may think of Persons as somewhat analogous to personalities, John Henry Newman suggests that we might think of them as personifications of Divine attributes (i.e. the Son is the Wisdom of the God).

The Divine Nature is that through which the Divine Persons are and through which they act. The Divine Nature is to the Divine Persons what the body is to a human person. However, as I noted before, the Divine Nature is not something material, rather it refers to the Divine Perfections as noted above.

These next few points are somewhat detached from the above discussion, but it is useful to bring them up as they are common misinterpretations.

Although the idea that the Divine Nature is Goodness, Love, etc. rules the interpretation of Divine Nature as a term meaning Divine species, the interpretation is voiced on occasion. This idea leads to the suggestion that the Divine Persons are just instances of this species. Divine Nature is not meant to be taken as a term for species in the doctrine of the Trinity, and if we do allow the term Divine species the doctrine of the Trinity only allows us to have one instance of it.

One possible misinterpretation that one could make at this point would be to think of God as something like a man with a split personality. If you can imagine a split personality as a good thing, then this may have some merit, but it does not do justice to the unity of God. Believers in the Trinity recognize that there is but one Divine Will. This does not mean that the three Persons merely agree, but that there is numerically one Divine Will (there is a wrinkle on this, however, as the Son of God, since his Incarnation, also has a human will and thus we say that there are two wills in Christ).

It might be useful to discuss John 1:1 at this point.

Once you have grasped this, it is worthwhile to note that there is an important related doctrine to the Trinity called the Incarnation. In fact, it is inseparable from the Trinity in discussions about the God. The doctrine of the Incarnation unites the apparently contradictory statements: Jesus is God, Jesus is man.

Antipolo Cathedral - Our Lady of Peace and Good Voyage

Every merry month of May, the legendary town of Antipolo becomes a beehive of acitivity and vibrancy as thousands, from all walks of life, flock to this lovely place amongst the hills. To the lilting tune of native songs, people come to this town, primarily to pay homage to the miraculous Our Lady of Peace and Good Voyage and, secondly, to take a breather from the heat and dust of the summer months amidst Antipolo's refreshing mountain air, rippling streams and springs.

In Antipolo, one finds the religious shrine of Our Lady of Peace and Good Voyage, popularly known as the Virgin of Antipolo (Birhen ng Antipolo).

The origin of our Virgin of Antipolo dates back to Spanish era in the Philippines, when galleon trade between the Philippines and Mexico were at its height On March 25, 1626, Don Juan Niño de Tabora left the shores of Mexico aboard the galleon, El Almirante, to make its voyage to the Philippines. On this trip, Governor Tabora brought along the brown image of our Blessed Virgin Mother. For three months, the El Almirante safely braved the dangers of the stormy seas and a fire aboard the ship, arriving in the ports of Manila on July 18, 1626. Governor Tabora, realizing that the galleon's safe and successful journey was due to the presence of the image of the Blessed Virgin on board the ship, called for the pompous celebration of the image's arrival. Amidst pageantry and fireworks, the religious procession started from the Church of San Ignacio, the Jesuit Church in Intramuros, up to the Manila Catholic Cathedral, which became the first house of the Blessed Virgin's image. It is said that because of the events surrounding the safe voyage of the El Almirante, the Blessed Virgin was named Nuestra Señora de la Paz y Buenviaje.

When Governor Tabora died in 1632, the Blessed Image was turned over to the care of the Jesuit fathers who were then constructing a church of Antipolo. Actually, a church was to be specifically built for the Blessed Virgin in the nearby barrio of Sta. Cruz. But attempts of the Jesuit fathers to move it from the Church of Antipolo were futile because somehow, as if in protest of leaving this town, the holy image was always found on the trunk of a tree called the Tipolo which grew in the original site of the old church. Because of these manifestations, a pedestal was curved out of the trunks of the said tree, and thus the Blessed Virgin became locally known as the Virgin of Antipolo.

During the occupation of the Japanese, the Blessed Image of our Lady of Antipolo was evacuated to the mountains of Angono, then at Santolan. The five hundred people who journeyed with the Brown Virgin all felt safe through their trips along steep mountain trails. For a while, the Blessed Virgin was housed in the Ocampo residence at Quiapo, previous to its transfer to the Quiapo Church where it stayed until October 15, 1945, when it was finally transferred to its original and permanent sanctuary at the Church of Antipolo. Every year, devotees commemorate this transfer, as they join the "Alay Lakad" from Quiapo Church to the Antipolo Cathedral starting at around 8:00 PM (30th of April) until dawn of the following day (1st of May).

Pope John Paul - The Impossible Dream

The Venerable Pope John Paul II (Latin: Ioannes Paulus PP. II, Italian: Giovanni Paolo II, Polish: Jan Paweł II, French: Jean Paul II, German: Johannes Paul II), born Karol Józef Wojtyła (pronounced [ˈkaɾɔl ˈjuzɛv vɔi̯ˈtɨwa] ( listen); 18 May 1920 – 2 April 2005) served as Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church and Sovereign of Vatican City from 16 October 1978 until his death over 26 years later. His was the second-longest documented pontificate; only Pope Pius IX served longer (St Peter the Apostle is reputed to have served for more than thirty years as the first pontiff; however documentation is too sparse to definitively support this). He has been the only Polish Pope to date, and was the first non-Italian Pope since Dutch Pope Adrian VI in the 1520s.

John Paul II has been acclaimed as one of the most influential leaders of the twentieth century. It is widely held that he was instrumental in ending communism in his native Poland and eventually all of Europe as well as significantly improving the Catholic Church's relations with Judaism, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the Anglican Communion. Though criticised for his opposition to contraception and the ordination of women, as well as his support for the Second Vatican Council and its reform of the Liturgy, he has also been praised for his firm, orthodox Catholic stances in these areas.

He was one of the most-travelled world leaders in history, visiting 129 countries during his pontificate. He was fluent in many languages: Italian, French, German, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Ukrainian, Russian, Croatian, Esperanto, Ancient Greek and Latin as well as his native Polish. As part of his special emphasis on the universal call to holiness, he beatified 1,340 people and canonised 483 Saints, more than the combined tally of his predecessors during the last five centuries. On 19 December 2009, John Paul II was proclaimed "Venerable" by Pope Benedict XVI