Magnificat Vol. LX, No. 1 15 N JANUARY 1, we pay homage to the Eternal Father, the first Person of the Most Holy Trinity. All great feasts begin with a vigil, that of the Eternal Father straddles the end of one year and the beginning of another: He is indeed the Alpha and the Omega,1 the beginning and the end. The Eternal Father is God, the Good Lord – infinitely good, infinitely lovable. He is love in essence. God is love,2 says Saint John. He is almighty. He is eternal, without beginning or end. He is the one and only God; there can be no other. From all eternity, Almighty God engenders His Son, and this Son is in every way equal to His Father, sharing His divine nature. The Father loves the Son with infinite love, which 1. In the Book of the Apocalypse (1:8), God presents Himself as “the Alpha and the Omega”, meaning that He is the One who is, who was and who is to come, the Almighty. These two words, Alpha and Omega, designating the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, express the complete and eternal nature of God, presenting Him as the source and the end of all existence. 2. I St. John 4:8,16. is His essence, and the Son returns this infinite love to His Father. The spirit of love proceeding from the Father and the Son is the Holy Spirit. This is the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity, the greatest of Christian mysteries and the source of all truth. To symbolize the Trinity, one God in three Persons, the Church makes use of the triangle. In electricity, we speak of a delta connection: a single current in three phases. Electricity is an image of the Divinity. It is invisible but it exists, and we feel its effects. “He who sees Me, sees the Father.” Saint John says in his Gospel: No one has ever seen God. The only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has revealed Him.3 To honor God the Father properly, correctly, we need to know Him. And the only way to know the Father is to enroll in the school of His Son, to contemplate Him. 3. St. John 1:18. O By Father Paulin de Jésus, O.D.M.
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