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Instruction 3

God’s plan to save man after the Fall

Father S. Well, Mr. Jackson, where did we leave off with our instruction? You see, I have a number of persons coming for instructions and I easily lose track of what progress we have made.

Mr. J. Why, you told me that you would explain how it became possible for those who are born in a state of original sin to recover the friendship of God by receiving sanctifying grace.

Father S. Oh, yes; and this lesson will present God to you as an infinitely good, loving, and merciful Father. But for a proper understanding of the matter it will be necessary for you to know something about the Trinity. Do you know what that word means?

Mr. J. No, Father.

Father S. It means that in the One God there are three Divine Persons, called respectively, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.¹

Mr. J. You are telling me two things which I do not quite see through: (1) that God is a person; I thought only creatures were persons; and (2) that the One God is Three.

Father S. In answer to your first difficulty, let me remind you that not only human beings are persons, but all spirits, because possessed of intelligence and free will, are persons. The angels, therefore, are persons, and so is God. We human beings are persons only because we too have intelligence and free will. Our personality, therefore, arises primarily from our souls and their powers of reasoning and free choice. If merely our bodies made us persons, animals would be persons.

As to the second difficulty, you do not quite catch the teaching of the Church; God is one in nature, but three Divine Persons possess that divine nature.²

Mr. J. I am afraid you will have to express yourself somewhat more clearly, Father; that is over my head.

Father S. That’s not surprising. Not only you, but I, and the most learned theologians, fail to fully comprehend what Christ has revealed concerning the Trinity. It is one of the few revealed truths which we cannot fully grasp. No created intelligence can fully comprehend God’s nature. God would not be God, He would not be infinite, but finite, if creatures whose powers of intellect are limited could fully comprehend Him. I said that it is one of the few teachings of faith which we cannot grasp. The wonder is that such truths are not innumerable because if we consider the countless number of things in nature which we do not understand, we should expect to find very much of the mysterious in the supernatural order. The Trinity is a mystery, or a truth which we believe on God’s word, but which we cannot fully fathom with our reason.³

Mr. J. Where does the Bible refer to the Trinity?

Father S. In 1 John 5:7, we read: “There are three that bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one.” Christ instructed His apostles to baptize “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” (Mt 28:19). Then we read in Mark 1:10-11 that when Christ was being baptized the Holy Spirit appeared over His head in the form of a dove, and that the Father spoke: “Thou art my beloved Son.” In these passages the three Persons are referred to.

Mr. J. Then it seems that they are separate persons.

Father S. Yes, they are three Divine Persons really distinct from one another. The Father is not the Son, neither is the Holy Spirit the Father or the Son. In our soul, though a spirit, and hence an indivisible thing, the understanding is not the will, neither is the memory, yet each of these distinct powers belongs to the very nature of the soul. But as I have said, you must not expect to grasp this, nor expect that I should be able to explain the “how” to you. However, we do know that the three Divine Persons are perfectly equal to one another because they are one and the same God, and they are one and the same God because they all have one and the same divine nature.⁴

Now, we can start the promised instruction. After Adam, the head of the human race, sinned, and involved us all in his loss of God’s friendship and grace, heaven was closed against all mankind, because, as we have already seen, the possession of sanctifying grace is a condition for the enjoyment of the vision of God. Had the Almighty shown no mercy, Adam and Eve would have met the same miserable everlasting fate as the rebellious angels, since they knowingly committed a similar sin. However, because our first parents were tempted from an external source, and there was question of future billions being involved who did not sin actually, God in His unbounded mercy, opened a way for the possible salvation of the human race.⁵

Mr. J. This is certainly a consolation.

Father S. A consolation to us, but mind you what it cost God to accomplish it!

Mr. J. What it cost God! Could He not simply have pardoned man and let that end it?

Father S. He could have; but because God is all-just and cannot be indifferent to sin, he required that the demands of justice be met; He required that the sin be fully atoned for, and Adam could not do it.

Mr. J. Why could not Adam do it? It would seem that the one who sins could undo his sin by repentance.

Father S. No, Mr. Jackson, a creature endowed with reason and free will can disobey God, but only a person of infinite dignity can repair that offense.

Mr. J. I don’t grasp that.

Father S. Well, you see, offenses are greater as the dignity of the one offended is greater, so the offense involved in a sin against God is measured by the greatness and dignity of God, Who is offended — and God’s dignity is limitless and infinite. Now, no good work of man can be greater than man’s own powers, which are limited; and there will always be an immeasurable distance between man’s best works and what God is actually entitled to by strict justice.

Mr. J. It is plain to me, now. Man had a limitless debt to pay and only limited means to pay it.

Father S. That’s right. The Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity, took unto Himself human nature and was born of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Son of God was not always man, but He became man at the time of the Incarnation. Now by that term “Incarnation” is meant that the Son of God, remaining God, took unto Himself a body and soul like ours in Mary’s womb. Thus Jesus Christ was truly God because He had the same divine nature as His Father, and He was truly man because, as Mary’s son, He had a body and soul like ours. He was one person — the Second Person of the Trinity, who became man and here on earth offered an adequate atonement for the sins of mankind to His Heavenly Father. That is why we speak of Him as the Savior of all men. With God atoning for sin, the reparation was as infinite and limitless as the sin which attacked His infinite majesty.⁶ Saint John calls the Second Person of the Trinity “The Word,” and refers to the “Incarnation” thus: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God … and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us (Jn 1:1, 14).

Mr. J. That was surely mercy and goodness on the part of God, of which man was wholly unworthy. Was He the Son of God in the flesh, Who, on earth, was known as “Christ”?

Father S. Precisely.

Mr. J. But did not thousands of years elapse between Adam and Christ’s time?

Father S. Yes, according to the way the Bible reckons time, over 4,000 years.

Mr. J. That is another puzzle to me. Did all the descendants of our first parents, who lived during those centuries, get the benefit of God’s atonement?

Father S. Yes, God promised a Savior to Adam and Eve, and often thereafter through others — the prophets — and in anticipation, He applied the merits of the atonement of Christ to their souls on the condition of faith in the Redeemer to come and fulfillment of other conditions, such as observing the law.⁷

Mr. J. I now understand Christ in a new light! Who He was and what He did never dawned on me. That makes Mary important, too, doesn’t it?

Father S. Yes, I am pleased to see that you have a proper sense of the fitness of things. When, in eternity, the Son of God willed to become man, He evidently thought of the one from whom He would take His flesh and blood. She must be as worthy of her dignity as a creature could be.⁸ Hence at the moment He would create her soul, He would apply to it the merits of His atonement and preserve it from original sin. It would not be fitting that she, from whom He would take His human nature, in which He would atone for sin, should herself ever have been infected with sin. You will hear us speak of Mary’s Immaculate Conception, by which we express our belief in her preservation from original sin when she was conceived, at the first moment of her existence.⁹

Mr. J. Is the Immaculate Conception the same as the “Virgin Birth”?

Father S. No. Mary was born in a natural way of human parents as all other human beings are. It was Christ Who had a “virgin birth,” since His body was formed in the womb of a virgin by the power of the Holy Spirit (Lk 1:35).¹⁰

Mr. J. I now understand better that little prayer called “Hail Mary”; there Mary is spoken of as being “full of grace.”

Father S. Yes, those are the words of the Angel Gabriel, who was sent by Almighty God to announce to Mary her exalted vocation, and receive her consent to the will of God. I wish you would read this incident in the first chapter of Saint Luke’s Gospel. There it is recorded that Mary was a virgin, and blessed among all women — both because she did not inherit original sin and because she was chosen from among all women to be the mother of the Son of God. There it is told how Mary hesitated at the angel’s message, because she could not understand how she could become a mother and still remain forever a virgin consecrated to God. Then the angel made known that by a miracle, by the power of the Holy Spirit, she would conceive and bring forth a Son Who would be called “Son of the Most High.”¹¹ The Apostles’ Creed expresses this mystery in the words “Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary.”¹² Thus Christ had no human father, but Saint Joseph, who was Mary’s husband, was His guardian or foster father.

Mr. J. Father, you told me at the beginning of this instruction that you would present God as a good and loving God; He must certainly be that. I would not leave off this study for anything, for while God seems greater and holier to me than ever before, yet I feel nearer to Him. I begin to picture Him as intensely interested in me.