JESUS' RELATIONSHIP WITH HIS FATHER AND THE TRINITARIAN MYSTERY

VATICAN CITY, MAR 10, 1999 (VIS) - At today's general audience held in St. Peter's Square, the Pope spoke on "Jesus' Relationship With His Father, Revelation of the Trinitarian Mystery."

John Paul II said that the "essential union" between Jesus and the Father not only concerns the activity of the Son "but also that which qualifies his being."

"The Father is He who in the life of the Trinity is the absolute principle, He who has no beginning and from whom divine life emanates." As the Lateran Council states: "It is the Father who generates, the Son who is begotten, and the Holy Spirit who proceeds" from both of them.

Proclaiming that "God is love," St. John offers us a key to understanding "this mystery which infinitely surpasses our intelligence. ... The Son and the Holy Spirit are equal to the Father not as autonomous entities, as if they were three gods, but in that they receive all divine life from the Father, distinct from Him, and from each other in the diversity of the relationships."

Saying that "God is love," added the Holy Father, means that it is the "free and total gift of Himself, to which Christ especially gave witness by his death on the Cross. ... The capacity of loving infinitely, giving Himself without reserve and measure, is for God alone."

This dynamism of the Trinity, concluded the Pope, "is lived by human beings, so that all is directed to the Father, through Jesus Christ, in the Holy Spirit. Thus the Catechism of the Catholic Church says: 'the whole Christian life is a communion with each of the divine persons, without in any way separating them. Everyone who glorifies the Father does so through the Son in the Holy Spirit'."

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