The document discusses the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity - that God exists as three persons (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) in one divine being. It provides scriptural references and passages from the Catechism of the Catholic Church to explain the nature of each person and their relations, as well as how God revealed the Trinity through creating the world, sending Jesus as the incarnate Son, and giving the Holy Spirit. It also discusses how humanity is made in God's image and called to faith, hope and love through free will.

1. THE TRINITY
A MYSTERIOUS REALITY
Produced by: JBB
Graphics by: ROAN
CCC (Catechism of the Catholic Church)

2. The Family Tree
GOD
Mother Father
ChildChild Child
CCC 229
Faith in God leads us to turn to him alone
as our first origin and our ultimate goal,
and neither to prefer anything to him nor to
substitute anything for him.
CCC 231
The God of our faith has revealed himself
as He who is; and he has made himself
known as “abounding in steadfast love and
faithfulness” (Ex 34:6). God's very being is
Truth and Love.
CCC 228
“Hear, O Israel, the LORD our GOD is
one LORD...” (Deut 6:4; Mk 12:29). “The
supreme being must be unique, without
equal...If God is not one, he is not God”
CCC 230
Even when he reveals himself, God
remains a mystery beyond words: “If
you understood him, it would not be
God” (St. Augustine)

3. The Family Tree
GOD
Mother Father
ChildChild Child
CCC 278
If we do not believe that God's love is
almighty, how can we believe that the
Father could create us, the Son redeem us,
and the Holy Spirit sanctify us?
CCC 277
God shows forth his almighty power by
converting us from our sins and restoring
us to his friendship by grace. “God, you
show your almighty power above all in your
mercy and forgiveness...” (Roman Missal,
26th
Sunday, Opening Prayer).

4. HOLY
SPIRIT
SONFATHER
The Family Tree
Mother Father
ChildChild Child
CCC 234
The mystery of the Most
Holy Trinity is the central
mystery of Christian faith
and life. It is the mystery of
God in himself. It is
therefore the source of all
the other mysteries of faith,
the light that enlightens
them.
GOD

5. HOLY
SPIRIT
SONFATHER
The Family Tree
GOD
Mother Father
ChildChild Child
CCC 237
The Trinity is a mystery of faith in the strict
sense, one of the “mysteries that are hidden
in God, which can never be known unless
they are revealed by God.” To be sure, God
has left traces of his Trinitarian being in his
work of creation and in his Revelation
throughout the Old Testament. But his inmost
Being as Holy Trinity is a mystery that is
inaccessible to reason alone or even to
Israel's faith before the Incarnation of God's
Son and the sending of the Holy Spirit
CCC 261
The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is
the central mystery of the Christian
faith and of Christian life. God alone
can make it known to us by revealing
himself as Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit.

6. HOLY
SPIRIT
SONFATHER
The Family Tree
GOD
Mother Father
ChildChild Child
CCC 254
The divine persons are really distinct from
one another. “God is one but not solitary.”
“Father,” “Son,” “Holy Spirit” are not simply
names designating modalities of the divine
being, for they are really distinct from one
another: “He is not the Father who is the Son,
nor is the Son he who is the Father, nor is the
Holy Spirit he who is the Father of the Son.”
They are distinct from one another in their
relations of origin: “It is the Father who
generates, the Son who is begotten, and the
Holy Spirit who proceeds.” The divine Unity is
Triune.

7. HOLY
SPIRIT
SONFATHER
The Family Tree
GOD
Mother Father
ChildChild Child
CCC 259
Being a work at once common and
personal, the whole divine economy
makes known both what is proper to the
divine persons and their one divine
nature. Hence 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; everyone who follows Christ does
so because the Father draws him the
Spirit moves him.”

8. HOLY
SPIRIT
SONFATHER
The Family Tree
GOD
Mother Father
ChildChild Child
CCC 267
Inseparable in what they are, the
divine persons are also inseparable in
what they do. But within the single
divine operation each shows forth
what is proper to him in the Trinity,
especially in the divine missions of
the Son's Incarnation and the gift of
the Holy Spirit.

9. HOLY
SPIRIT
SONFATHER
The Family Tree
GOD
Mother Father
ChildChild Child
The Father and the Son revealed by the
Spirit.
CCC 243
Before his Passover, Jesus
announced the sending of “another
Paraclete” (Advocate), the Holy Spirit. At
work since creation, having previously
“spoken through the prophets,” the Spirit
will now be with and in the disciples, to
teach them and guide them “into all the
truth.” The Holy Spirit is thus revealed as
another divine person with Jesus and the
Father.

10. HOLY
SPIRIT
SONFATHER
The Family Tree
GOD
Mother Father
ChildChild Child
CCC 263
The mission of the Holy Spirit, sent by
the Father in the name of the Son (Jn
14:26) and by the Son “from the
Father” (Jn 15:26), reveals that, with
them, the Spirit is one and the same
God. “With the Father and the Son he
is worshipped and glorified” (Nicene
Creed).

11. HOLY
SPIRIT
SONFATHER
The Family Tree
GOD
Mother Father
ChildChild Child
CCC 508
From among the descendants of Eve,
God chose the Virgin Mary to be the
mother of his Son. “Full of Grace,”
Mary is “the most excellent fruit of
redemption” (SC 103): from the first
instant of her conception, she was
totally preserved from the stain of
original sin and she remained pure
from all personal sin throughout her
life.
MARY
JESUS
------------------
MANKIND
CCC 509
Mary is truly “Mother of God” since
she is the mother of the eternal Son of
God made man, who is God himself.

12. HOLY
SPIRIT
SONFATHER
The Family Tree
GOD
Mother Father
ChildChild Child
CCC 422
“But when the time had fully come,
God sent forth his Son, born of a
woman, born under the law, to redeem
those who were under the law, so that
we might receive adoption as sons.”
This is “the gospel of Jesus Christ,
the Son of God”. God has visited his
people. He has fulfilled the promise he
made to Abraham and his
descendants. He acted far beyond all
expectation—he has sent his own
“beloved Son.”
MARY
JESUS
------------------
MANKIND

13. HOLY
SPIRIT
SONFATHER
The Family Tree
GOD
Mother Father
ChildChild Child
CCC480
Jesus Christ is true God and true
man, in the unity of his divine person;
for this reason he is the one and only
mediator between God and men.
MARY
JESUS
------------------
MANKIND
CCC 481
Jesus Christ possesses two natures,
one divine and the other human, not
confused, but united in the one
person of God's Son.
CCC 262
The Incarnation of God's Son reveals
that God is the eternal Father and that
the Son is consubstantial with the
Father, which means that, in the
Father and with the Father, the Son is
one and the same God.

14. HOLY
SPIRIT
SONFATHER
The Family Tree
GOD
Mother Father
ChildChild Child
CCC 483
The Incarnation is therefore the
mystery of the wonderful union of the
divine and human natures in the one
person of the Word.
MARY
JESUS
------------------
MANKIND
CCC 482
Christ, being true God and true man,
has a human intellect and will,
perfectly attuned and subject to his
divine intellect and divine will, which
he has in common with the Father and
the Holy Spirit.
CCC 240
Jesus revealed that God is Father in
an unheard-of sense: he is Father not
only in being Creator; he is eternally
Father in relation to his only Son, who
is eternally Son only in relation to his
Father: “No one knows the Son
except the Father, and no one knows
the Father except the Son and any one
to whom the Son chooses to reveal
him.”

15. HOLY
SPIRIT
SONFATHER
The Family Tree
GOD
Mother Father
ChildChild Child
MARY
JESUS
------------------
MANKIND
CCC 470
Because “human nature was
assumed, not absorbed,” in the
mysterious union of the Incarnation,
the Church was led over the course of
centuries to confess the full reality of
Christ's human soul, with its
operations of intellect and will, and of
his human body. In parallel fashion,
she had to recall on each occasion
that Christ's human nature belongs,
as his own, to the divine person of the
Son of God, who assumed it.
Everything that Christ is and does in
this nature derives from “one of the
Trinity.” The Son of God therefore
communicates to his humanity his
own personal mode of existence in
the Trinity. In his soul as in his body,
Christ thus expresses humanly the
divine ways of the Trinity.
CCC 470
The Son of God... worked with human
hands; he thought with a human
mind. He acted with a human will, and
with a human heart he loved. Born of
the Virgin Mary, he has truly been
made one of us, like to us in all things
except sin.”

16. HOLY
SPIRIT
SONFATHER
The Family Tree
GOD
Mother Father
ChildChild Child
MARY
JESUS
------------------
MANKIND
CCC 362
The human person, created in the
image of God, is a being at once
corporeal and spiritual. The biblical
account expresses this reality in
symbolic language when it affirms
that “then the LORD God formed man
of dust from the ground, and breathed
into his nostrils the breath of life; and
man became a living being.” Man,
whole and entire, is therefore willed
by God.”
CCC 357
Being in the image of God the human
individual possesses the dignity of a
person, who is not just something, but
someone. He is capable of self-
knowledge, of self-possession and of
freely giving himself and entering into
communion with other persons. And he is
called by grace to a covenant with his
Creator, to offer him a response of faith
and love that no other creature can give in
his stead.

17. HOLY
SPIRIT
SONFATHER
The Family Tree
GOD
Mother Father
ChildChild Child
MARY
JESUS
------------------
MANKIND
CCC 266
“Now this is the
Catholic faith: We
worship one God in
the Trinity and the
Trinity in unity,
without either
confusing the persons
or dividing the
substance; for the
person of the Father is
one, the Son's is
another, the Holy
Spirit's another; but
the Godhead of the
Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit is one, their
glory equal, their
majesty coeternal”
(Athanasian Creed;
DS 75; ND 16).
FREE WILL
FAITH
–HOPE
-LOVE
FAITH–HOPE-LOVE
FAITH – HOPE - LOVE

18. HOLY
SPIRIT
SONFATHER
The Family Tree
GOD
Mother Father
ChildChild Child
MARY
JESUS
------------------
MANKIND
CCC 1702
The divine image is present in every
man. It shines forth in the communion
of persons, in the likeness of the unity
of the divine persons among
themselves (cf. Chapter two).
CCC 1776
“Deep within his conscience man discovers
a law which he has not laid upon himself
but which he must obey. Its voice, ever
calling him to love and to do what is good
and to avoid evil, sounds in his heart at the
right moment...For man has in his heart a
law inscribed by God... His conscience is
man's most secret core and his sanctuary.
There he is alone with God whose voice
echoes in his depths.”
FREE WILL