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The trinity of families
True Parents organized blessed families into trinities and asked them to love their trinity more than they love their Trinity and sisters. They said that community life begins based on the Trinity.
The trinity is the model through which God's ideal of creation is realized. The three couples represent the restored families of Cain, Abel, Trinity, and Seth Adam's family in the Garden of Eden.
1. In our church, I made the Trinity system with three couples. I made it this way to attend to the Lord in the future. We have to make a model with a couple representing Adam and Eve, and three couples representing Adams sons and their wives. If the three couples do not unite, this model will be destroyed again. In particular, the three men need to become one.
Whether they live or die, they must become one in heart spiritually and be a team that works together physically. They are not to establish simply a temporary foundation, but rather one that transcends time. If they do not accomplish this, they will be ashamed to stand in front of the Returning Lord.
The three couples in the trinity must unite, becoming a principled foothold that can represent the Will of God. In other words, if they can become a trinity determined not to change even if heaven were to change, then they will have made a foundation for God's Will to be realized. To provide such a foundation, I organized you into trinities. (003-241, 1958/01/03)
2. The formation of the trinities in our church is the course we take today to restore the number three in Adam's family. Therefore, unless you become one with each other in a trinity, you cannot stand before heaven.
When the trinity becomes one, we can fulfill God's Will to restore what was lost in Adam's family. Continuing with that, at the time of Jacob, 2,000 years after Adam, God found and raised 12 brothers to move the providential will forward.
Likewise, based on the number 3, only after you have found 12 disciples and united with them can you attend the Parents and enter the tribal realm representing a clan. This is the absolute standard that indemnifies the 2,000-year history from Adam's family to Jacob's family. That is why Moses and Jesus also had to walk this path. (005-119, 1959/01/04)
3. To attend the True Parents, you must become a true couple and build a true family. Only on that foundation can you attend True Parents. You trust and follow me, but you also must become a person whom other people can trust and follow.
As you become such a person, you have to form the type of family that Jesus sought to create.
When you follow True Parents, all human beings become your brothers and sisters.
I organized the trinities to accomplish this. That is why from now on, when you go out witnessing, you should not do it alone.
You are representing True Parents, and you should not let your brothers and sisters witness without you. Instead, you should work together with them. The family is established when you and the brothers and sisters in your trinity are united with True Parents.
To take this to the national level, there should be 12 such families. You can only set the condition to represent the nation if the number of families exceeds ten. (005-126, 1959/01/04)
4. You cannot walk the path of faith alone. You need comrades in faith. Three people or more should unite. That's why you need a trinity. God, who is the subject partner of the human character, also desires the standard of three. When we make mistakes, God cannot directly educate us vertically as individuals.
But when three people are united, if one person makes a mistake but the other two do not, God can point out that one person's mistake.
The same goes for prayer in the mountains; you can receive God's grace faster if three or more people are praying together. After the prayer, you should discuss matters among yourselves. But if you discuss with people outside your trinity, Satan can invade.
If three people can truly come to lean on each other, people around them will see those beautiful relationships and wish they too could have such relationships.
When this happens, God's Will can multiply naturally. If three people are united, then even if God does not help you, a new bud will sprout.
When you relate with members, be careful not to hurt them and not to say things that will hinder their life of faith. (018-043, 1967/05/17)
5. From your current place, you have to identify who is the enemy. Once you have done this, you next need to identify whether it is day or night where you are. In other words, you must know whether it is a place where God's grace resides or not.
You should not move forward until you prepare for the stage where God can help.
Therefore, do not move forward alone but rather move forward together with your comrades. To achieve that, you have to know whether your environment is day or night. Without doing that, you cannot express your abilities.
You need comrades. That is why the law of the Trinity exists in the world. Therefore, you have to make a trinity and move forward together. God does not like you to move forward alone.
This is because there is a greater possibility of failing when you move forward alone. You should plan joint operations to take you forward.
(019-148, 1968/01/01)
6. The ideal world of the future will be maintained through the trinities of families. The purpose of creation is to realize the four-position foundation. Since human beings first need to perfect the four-position foundation, everyone first needs to establish a family.
Human beings resemble God, and society should resemble human beings whose center is God. I have been establishing the Unification Church in countries throughout the world.
I know the whole world should become this way, and although I have not been able to inform everyone, the world will change through this principle. The ideal world resembles the form of a human being. That world transcends nations and people. (026-190, 1969/10/25)
7. It is only when you feel the value of this God-given trinity that you will understand God's ideal and will feel it enough that you can live your life in God's position here on earth.
The purpose of forming trinities is to create a unity of action, lifestyle and thought. Actions rooted in faith are systematic and principled. (150-012, 1986/08/17)
Tribal restoration
Blessed family trinities need to live together in one house and experience sibling love.
Furthermore, by modeling themselves after the trinity formed by the three sons in the family of unfallen Adam, they need to lay down the foundation on which each of them can restore their Trinity and thus walk the path of tribal messiahs.
True Parents explained that blessed families can enter the kingdom of heaven once they perfect their trinity on the family level, and go on to establish the four-position foundation with True Parents' family at the center.
8. Blessed families should form trinities. When a child is born into a family, the four-position foundation is realized. Within the Trinity families, if there is a family without a child, you should be willing to send your child to that family as an offering child. If, later on, that family gives birth to a child of their own, you can bring your child back. (020-345, 1968/07/20)
9. A family is the smallest unit that represents the whole, so a family's mistake is in some respects the mistake of the whole. Thus, while an individual's mistake may be pardoned, a family's mistake is more serious.
Your heart should be bursting to transform your joy into the joy of the whole. You can be part of a bigger purpose when you let go of your individualistic situation, subjectivity, and hope, and focus on setting up a situation, subjectivism, and hope for the whole.
The family exists to save the whole. In this sense, your family is like a power station.
You should reconcile yourself with the whole of your family. That is why all the families of the Trinity should live in one house. It is time to reorganize the families. (012-182, 1963/05/01)
10. In the Unification Church, we use the word “family.” Revolving around trinities, you are all brothers and sisters. I have taken responsibility to deeply love people who are in the position of servants, brothers and sisters, and children. By doing that, I have gone through the era of the servant, the era of subjugating Cain, and have risen to the era of the Son.
You should be able to live this way and attend True Parents. This is what I am worried about now. From now on, your lifestyle must change.
The purpose of creation is to establish the law of filial piety before the universe, move forward, and attend to the True Parents. This is the principle of the creation of heaven and earth. (012-257, 1963/05/22)
11. The blessed family trinities must become completely one. They should help each other economically.
Trinity families should not be concerned about their individual and family problems.
Rather, each family should comfort and assist the other families in the trinity so that they can all move forward together as one.
Through this, when the families in the trinity attain the standard where they can transcend economic problems, unite together in spirit, eat, and live together, they will do new work.
An enemy may attack them, but if the three families in the Trinity stand together completely united, they can repel the attack. Therefore, let us strengthen a system centered on the Trinity.
This is an important condition in establishing the standard for families and preparing the new beginning for this era. The Trinity must live for the sake of 12 families.
These 12 families must stand before God in a public position and devote themselves to contributing something. The trinity families should become the center of this, representing the east, west, south, and north.
They must become absolute in the view of the public, taking a form that can represent the year's four seasons and 12 months. Your family should motivate you to reach that standard, and then in turn you should raise your family.
When your three families motivate and raise each other, then these three families, as a trinity, can raise 36 families. This is the principle of development in the Unification Church. We must create this family-centered system.
(033-174, 1970/08/11)
12. When your trinity carries out group activities, have a clear concept of subject partner and object partner. In other words, always think about the relationship between subject and object partners when you stand before God.
You should always be aware of whether your position is that of the subject partner or the object partner. This awareness is necessary for the object partner to be an absolute object partner, and the subject partner to be an absolute subject partner. Without this, you cannot accomplish any group activities.
Once three families have formed a trinity, one family should stand in the subject partner position, and the other two families in the object partner position. These families should become one centering on the family in the subject partner position and should rally other heavenly families.
When there is a relationship between subject and object partners, there should be give-and-receive action. When there are 100 percent giving and receiving, God can dwell there. If not, God cannot dwell there. (033-175, 1970/08/11)
13. We must have a subject partner and object partners among ourselves. The relationship between subject and object partners is a vertical one. The relationship between public and private matters is horizontal. The relationship between the subject partner and object partners, between Cain and Abel in other words, is the problem.
Then, who will become the subject partner?
The person with the most earnest heart becomes the subject partner. The subject partner is the one who, when one among the three in the trinity is facing death or a most difficult situation, helps take care of them with a warm heart. The subject partner is the one who works more from heart than intellect, more from spirituality than theory.
Therefore, in the future, when you choose the subject partner in your trinity, you should choose the person who has worked very hard and shed the most blood, sweat, and tears for the sake of the Will and the public standard. In the secular world, people vote for someone smart, knowledgeable, and efficient, but heavenly law is not like that. It is the broad-minded and warmhearted person who becomes the subject partner.
All issues are concluded here. The question is whether we invite God or Satan into the relationship between the subject and object partners, and the relationship between public and private affairs. (033-176, 1970/08/11)
14. We have still not been able to stand in the position of true parents in the family.
We have to find this position of true parents in the family, but it cannot be found so easily. Because we fell out of it, to find our way back, we need to build a bridge of brotherhood.
Even if we have to sacrifice everything, we must set the standard of having paid indemnity and accomplished the condition of historical liberation to find true parents or become true parents.
If you do not do this, God cannot pardon you. You have to attend True Parents, so you must establish a foundation of siblings that enables you to attend True Parents.
This is the meaning of the Trinity. Only when the trinity of brothers unites and attends Heavenly Parent, and the larger group of 12 brothers become one, can they be recognized as a family belonging to the heavenly nation.
That family can take on a form that represents the church, race, and nation and, based on that, prepare the standard to attend True Parents. Thereafter, you must set a foundation of churches and prepare to attend the True Parents on a worldwide level. (005-124, 1959/01/04)
15. The blessed families should form a four-position foundation centering on my family. The family established by doing this is the family that Adam was originally supposed to realize. If this is not realized, I cannot take on the will of Jesus and make a start as a tribal messiah.
Centering on God, if the families that form a trinity face four directions, 12 families will be realized. Centering on Jesus, the three disciples should have received the Blessing and realized the four-position foundation.
Then they would have numbered eight people and stood in the place of Adams or Noah's eight family members. But Jesus could not fulfill this. If you do not receive the marriage Blessing, you cannot become children of God.
If my family and your trinity families become one centered on God, we can cut off all the conditions for Satan to accuse us, and we can move toward the world in the position of tribal messiahs. We should realize the four-position foundation in this way, and the eight members must become one. (021-015, 1968/08/13)
16. The physical world became the stage where Satan could carry out his activities and the spiritual world became the stage where God could carry out His activities.
These two worlds have always been at cross-purposes. There is no doubt that this has remained a source of bitter pain in the eras of providential restoration, and we cannot leave the situation as it is.
The realm of the mind must have God at the center, and the body must be disciplined to be the same. As we develop this in our daily lives, the foundation for unity will be established.
Then, when a man and a woman who have oneness in mind and body, unite together, they become the point of oneness in the family. Then three families that have this point of oneness must become one centered on their trinity.
After this, if there are 12 families, they should all become one. Through this, they can go beyond the tribal stage and stand on the national stage. To establish a unified origin, a new tradition must be formed. (045-213, 1971/07/01)
17. Similarly to the 36 Couples in our church, which are centered on me, if your last name is Kim, for example, then you should form 36 couples revolving around the first blessed family in the Kim tribe.
If you cannot form 36 couples, you should become the ancestor of at least 12 families. You should do this by forming a trinity based on your sons and daughters.
By forming this new clan that has your family at its center, you can become the ancestor of your tribe, which is the formation of 12 clans.
You must have 12 disciples for the formation of those 12 clans and, with those disciples at the center, you must have 70 followers and then 120 followers. This is your immediate, direct tribe. (031-277, 1970/06/04)
18. It is through my special authority that I can bestow the Blessing upon you, and through my special authority that you can receive the Blessing.
This Blessing is conditional. To receive it in reality, you have to establish the internal standard representing that position as an internal and external family. In other words, your family should stand in the position of Cain's family in front of my family, which is the Abel family. There is no other way.
This means that, although your family has not reached that standard, it can do so with my family at the center. For this to happen, you need to stand in the position of the Abel family as my family does, and then find and raise a family that can be in the Cain position to yours.
As you raise that family, you will restore your tribe. That is what I mean when I tell you to become a tribal messiah.
By restoring your tribe, your family becomes the ancestor of the Cain-type family as well as that of the firstborn son's family, while my family becomes the Abel-type family.
Therefore, you have to restore the trinity on the family level and establish a four-position foundation centering on my family. This is the formula.
To go to heaven, you must raise three spiritual children, have them completely unite with your family, and attend the True Parents' family. That is how you can enter heaven. (034-209, 1970/09/06)
19. Regardless of who you are, young men and women who want to receive the Blessing from the Unification Church must find three spiritual children and realize a family. You cannot do much just by restoring your family.
We cannot restore the world with families alone. Therefore, we have to form clans. To restore a tribe, you need to receive the marriage Blessing representing the family in place of Adam's three sons.
That is why, after having received the marriage Blessing, you need to form a trinity on the family level.
The three families of your trinity then complete the four-position foundation by centering on me and my family. Your family's trinity should become one by completely uniting with my family.
Without doing this, you cannot enter heaven. When this is completed, the trinity on a tribal level will be realized, which goes beyond the individual four-position foundation. Families will be formed and, as a result, clans will be formed. (160-085, 1968/08/11)
20. You have to establish the principled order. You must graduate from the positions of servant and adopted child. When your level of loyalty toward God reaches an apex through your relationship with God based on heart, and when your family and the other families in the trinity are completely loyal, God will recognize such blessed families as the sons and daughters who can represent heaven.
God will then regard such sons and daughters as husband and wife. This is the path of restoration.
When you cannot love your family, you cannot walk this path wholeheartedly. If we consider this path as the new tradition, the origin of our culture, and the seed of our life, and pass it down forever to our nation and the world, the heavenly nation will be established. This is the philosophy of Unification Thought.
When this happens, you will become the ancestors who will establish this tradition in the world.
The blessed families must become such ancestors. You have to become the tribal messiah for your tribe.
This is something everyone must do. Do not think of any other things or do any other actions than this.
This is what the Unification Church members have to do. No one who has received the Blessing should object to this. (045-087, 1971/06/13)
Trinities and community life
True Parents said the world cannot be unified unless we unite as trinities. They emphasized that the three families in each trinity should live together as one family for three years, experience the heart of brothers and sisters in one family, and train themselves to love one another.
True Parents added that the tradition of community life wherein trinities go beyond their tribe to unite the nation and world is the direct route to heaven.
21. You must form a trinity. Three families must live together in one house. Until now, since we were all fallen people, we lived separately. However, after passing through the era of restoration, what was separated will be reconciled.
Therefore, the era when you were only concerned about your family centering on yourself has passed. From now on, you should not live centered on your family but live together with two other families. Centering on these three families, at least 12 families should become one.
Your lifestyle should be that when you have visitors you should always treat them with a sincere heart.
For example, if I were to come and ask for a meal, you should be ready to prepare it at any time. This is the kind of public mind you need to have.
(150-297, 1961/04/15)
22. Originally, a trinity of three families should live together for more than three years. Within the trinity you should be able to take turns and live with the children of the other families, treating them the same way you treat your children. If you consider this to be bothersome, you are a failure.
Living this way, you do not have to worry if one of the husbands in the Trinity dies. In that case, the other two families would shoulder the responsibility together.
How far away are we from the Will of God? We must set the standard by which Satan can recognize that we have loved Cain just as profoundly as we have loved Abel. Only then will Satan fall away.
When you are raising the babies of one of the families in your trinity, you should take care of them twice and even three times the devotion you would give to your child. How can you unite the world if you cannot unite even your trinity? Three nations have to become one.
You must love the world even more than you love Jesus. Your brothers and sisters are your trinity. If these three families can become one, they can represent you. If you forget the trinity and only think of your family, you will perish.
Please represent me not in name only but with responsibility and heart.
(021-177, 1968/11/20)
23. You are indemnifying the three vertical eras horizontally. That is why I have bundled you all into trinities. The trinity has to go through formation, growth, and completion. That is the value of the formation, growth, and completion stages, and why you cannot reach perfection by yourself.
Three families have to become one. A single-family alone cannot accomplish that. Your family cannot stand alone. That is why I formed trinities of three families.
If there is something good to have, you should not say “Me first!” To stand in the perfected position, you have to go through the realm of the benefits of two stages formation and growth.
If you reach completion, it means that you are standing on the foundation of having gone through the formation and growth stages. If you have something good, you should share more than two-thirds of it with others.
You should all treat each other like that. Therefore, in the future, you have to live together. The trinity should live together and be able to say that regarding everything from A to Z, “undoubtedly, even Satan cannot accuse us.” Only then can you separate from Satan. (156-337, 1966/12/31)
24. What do you have to do to realize a trinity? You did not live in one house, so you must restore that through indemnity by living together in one house.
Therefore, I am planning to build apartments where Japanese, Koreans, Americans, and Germans live together. This will train them in life.
Likewise, in Korea, the trinity families should live together in one house, moving out only after living together. Whether you eat rice or porridge, the three families should eat and live together.
You should never receive financial support from above; rather, you should get support horizontally from one another. You have to be financially independent.
When the three siblings unite and the six people in the trinity become one, you can do anything.
You can even turn heaven and earth upside down. It has been said that when two or three people pray together, God will be with them. When the trinity becomes one, there is nothing you cannot do.
This is something the Unification Church can be proud of. From now on, I will give direct orders so that starting from the 36 blessed couples, three families will live together in one house. The three families must live together as brothers and sisters and then go out into the world.
It is the principle that no family can leave that place unless the three become one. That is why we have to establish restored families that can be closer than secular brothers and sisters. If we cannot unite, then we cannot unite the world.
(136-093, 1985/12/20)
25. You enter heaven as a family. From now on, three families should become one, in a four-position foundation centering on True Parents. You should become one, achieving integration and making use of the heavenly rules I teach you.
Black, white, and yellow people have to train for three years to become one as a trinity of faith. Therefore, you cannot lead an individualistic lifestyle.
If the surrounding 12 families or 36 families identify themselves as one group, the family that can gain the recognition of that whole group is the one that can be said to be free and liberated. (287-205, 1997/10/03)
26. When Adam and Eve can unite, then Cain and Abel can also unite and make a new start. When that happens, we will have the beginning of a new ideal, centered on Korea and Japan in the East. Then the integration of East and West can be realized. Furthermore, True Parents will return to the nation of Korea.
This is the era of God's return to His nation. In other words, Heavenly Father and the perfected True Parents are returning to their nation for the first time.
Both ideologically and at heart, it is possible to have a unified world community. Japanese, Koreans, Germans, and Americans should all be trained to live as one family.
Satan is the false leader of a past that is entangled with different things, such as national sentiments and the details of the tribes, nations, and cultures. All of these have to completely digest the authority of Satan and create an environment of oneness. To achieve that, we are entering an era of living together as communities.
The blessed family does not consist of two people only. It should come to consist of eight people.
Families from four nations should train together for the sake of True Parents. If four people find partners and form couples, it will make a community of eight people. Koreans, Japanese, Americans, and Germans should live together like twins or quadruplets that are born in the same family.
From now on, let us train ourselves in this lifestyle. Japanese people should not live in their own way, nor should Koreans live in their way. By remodeling our living environment according to the principled tradition, the future world will follow suit and your descendants will be able to enter directly into the completed realm of heaven. (230-300, 1992/05/08)
27. Between four and 12 nations must connect with Korea as the center. If we can connect just 12 nations, then we can form 12 clans. This will lead to a mass migration in the future.
Koreans will go abroad and foreigners will come to Korea. Therefore, you need to learn Korean. However, not everyone can do that, and therefore you should go abroad and build elementary schools to teach Korean.
Henceforth, families who have received the Blessing should build elementary schools. You should go out to teach Korean in the churches in every nation.
Blessed families should live together practicing the traditional standard of faith, and they should build elementary schools where their children can be nurtured. (194-091, 1989/10/17)
28. If we consider the world to be one big tree, our family is like one of its tiny branches. Your family is a branch of a big 1,000-year-old tree.
If you form a pure community in which to offer yourselves with all your heart for the sake of that branch, which is the foundation of the community's love, new buds will appear, which will grow naturally into an ideal realm, enjoying the protection of heavenly fortune.
Your family does not exist for itself alone. The man and woman representing that family also should live as citizens of the world and cosmos. Each one of those dozens of branches is filled with love. Every one of them participates in love.
Therefore, a family that is completely united in true love can be connected to the cosmos. Thus, people who think only of their family do not last long. People who only think of their country do not last long either.
(227-056, 1992/02/10)
Sun Myung Moon