Most Reverend Vincent Long Van Nguyen OFM Conv DD STL, Bishop of Parramatta
2026 The Trinity inspires us to become a community of right relationships
Readings: Exodus 34:4-9; 2Cor 13:11-13; John 3:16-18
Dear brothers and sisters,
Today is the feast of the Holy Trinity which is the core of our Christian faith. In and through Jesus, God reveals himself as a communion of persons. The Father/Creator God who created us in his image; who sustains us and draws us into the circle of life and love; the Incarnate Jesus who is the Emmanuel God-with-us; and finally the Spirit/Sanctifying God who infuses the whole of creation with his divine presence and energy.
In celebrating the Trinity, we are moved to become a community that reflects the God of love among all peoples and the God of relational unity with all that exists. Just as the Trinity is a dynamic power of transformation, we are called to walk the transformative journey of growing into the full stature of Christ.
The Word of God highlights the call to be a believing community whose identity and mission is intimately bound up with relational transformation, both within and without. This is so because the God we believe in is fundamentally the God of right relationships.
In the first reading, God reveals to Moses as full of tenderness and compassion in spite of the betrayal and hardness of the heart on the part of his people. God is closely bonded with his people throughout the ebbs and flows of history. He delivered them from oppression and slavery in Egypt. Therefore, they are to form a post-exodus society, which would reflect the God of communion and love. This new society would be marked by concern for the God-given dignity of all and special attention to the most vulnerable. For Moses and the Israelites, worship of God is expressed in love of neighbour and human flourishing. At their best, Israel developed some of the most rigorous safety nets and a very sophisticated care economy in the Ancient Near East. Instead of the exploitation under Pharaoh, they enacted a divine mandate that protected those at the bottom of the society such as the orphans, widows and strangers.
In the Gospel, Jesus like Moses is depicted as one who leads humanity to freedom. However, the freedom he offers is not just socio-political but a freedom from within. Hence, he challenges Nicodemus who thinks he is a free man but in fact is enslaved to interior servitude. Nicodemus was a person of social distinction, privilege and entitlement. He was also a Pharisee who believed in self-made righteousness. Jesus’ challenge of being born again amounts to a conversion from self-entitlement to self-emptying. It is a breaking free from earning one’s privilege to caring for the underprivileged. Nicodemus was told a uncomfortable truth that God’s abundant life is not reserved for a few but to be shared with all. This God, quite unlike the way he had understood, requires a movement of letting go and emptying of love into others.
Dear sisters and brothers,
In celebrating the Trinity, we are to mirror the relational model of the Trinity that is revealed in Jesus’ style of radical self-emptying love, solidarity, simplicity and unity. In him, we see a God whose modus operandi is the antithesis of the power structures of this world that is tilted towards the privileged, the rich and the strong.
The Christian way of living cannot be other than the way shown in Jesus’ radical simplicity, solidarity and communion with God’s people and creation. Incidentally, this is also the message of Pope Leo in his first encyclical Magnifica Humanitas. We are all beloved children of God and this divinely given dignity must not be devalued in the name of technological progress. Like his namesake Pope Leo XIII who championed the rights of workers during the industrial revolution, the Augustinian Pope warns against the distorting effects of digital power including AI. Progress is hollow without ethical and social conscience. He indicts ideological interests and economic arrangements that exploit and disadvantage the powerless, the poor and the marginalized. It is in our Christian DNA to love and care for one another, especially those who are reduced to being a burden to the society.
We are to be a society, which is counter-cultural or even antithetical to the dominant social system. We are called to practice an ethic of concern, care, support for one another and for the long-term wellbeing of God’s beautiful world.
We are standing before the reality of a God who loves us so much that he communicates himself wholly to us. In Jesus who became one of us, who suffered and died for us, we see God so close, so self-giving that he held nothing back. He offered us everything in His Son. May the relational model of the Trinity be our strength and inspiration. May our lives and relationships reflect the communion of love of God the Father Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
