Given by Archbishop Richard Moth for Trinity Sunday on 30th May 2026.
Dear brothers and sisters,
This weekend, we celebrate the Solemnity of the Holy Trinity. Both the opening prayer and the prayer after Communion express the reality we celebrate: ”Trinity of eternal glory, Unity powerful in majesty,” “eternal Trinity and undivided Unity.”
This reality is a mystery. Much ink has been spilt by great theologians, exploring the wonder of Trinity. Ultimately, all is mystery. This is something that we see in today’s first reading. Moses, who would have had no concept of God as Trinity, experiences God in the cloud of Sinai. His response to God’s coming to him is to bow his head in wonder and to worship. This is what we do every time we come before God in prayer and worship: we recognise the greatness of God, the power of forgiveness and the wonder of being called into closeness with the God whom no word can fully describe.
In our prayer, we begin with the words of the sign of the Cross: “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” This sign not only reminds us of the Lord’s sacrifice for us; it is also a reminder that, at the moment of our baptism, we are called into relationship with the Blessed Trinity. Perhaps the making of the sign of the Cross has become too routine, rushed, hardly noticed, the movement of the hand vague or lazy. This simple action and prayer is one we should make slowly and with great care – for it is an expression of all that we are: people called into relationship with Father, Son and Spirit – as Paul expresses in his words to the Corinthians.
Let us think for a moment of the call that is given to us at Baptism. Those same words are used, in response to Jesus’ command: “I baptise you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” We no longer live alone; we are not simply individuals – or even families or communities in the purely human sense. No, at that moment of Baptism, we are called to live our whole lives in the love of the Father, who sends His only Son to us, to die and rise that we might have life to the full[1], and in the power of the Holy Spirit, who proceeds, as we express in the Creed, from Father and Son. It is this same Hole Spirit who dwells in us, prompting and guiding our every action, our every word.
It is in the love that exists between the three persons of Blessed Trinity that we are held, cherished and empowered. Just as God is a God of relationships, so our lives are lives in relationship with God.
In his encyclical letter, Magnifica humanis, that Pope Leo gave to us only last Monday, he reminds us that: “the mystery of the living God, revealed in Jesus Chrst, who, as a communion of Persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – is love itself in relationship, expressed in the mutual gift of self and in sharing with the world.” Our “deepest vocation,” Pope Leo tells us “is to enter into the Trinitarian dynamic of love received and shared.”[2]
These words of the Holy Father, call us to reflect on our lives: the wonder of what it means to live life caught up, held constantly in the love of Father, Son and Spirit. These words call us, also, to ponder on the consequence of this relationship: the call to share this experience in a world where so many experience isolation, loneliness and unreality of so many virtual encounters in today’s world.
We are called to “build the civilisation of love.”[3] This requires us to “engage in dialogue”. Just as God, Who is Father, Son and Spirit, is a God of relationship – so our witness to our brothers and sisters, to the wider world at every level – is a witness of relationship, a witness of nothing less than the relationship that we celebrate today: “Father, Son and Holy Spirit, eternal Trinity and undivided Unity.”
[1] Jn. 10:10.
[2] POPE LEO XIV, Encyclical Letter Magnifica humanis on safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence, n. 48.
[3] ibid., n.219.
