Trinity Sunday, Year A (2026) - Fr Paul Rowse, OP

Believing in God is a risky affair.  Pick the wrong one, and it's over.  Israel alone enjoys the certainty of revelation: the true God made himself known to them.  We know that many of our Old Testament heroes and heroines spoke with God.  Moses, for example, saw the Burning Bush and was given the tablets of God’s perfect law.  This revelation by God gives us far superior knowledge of him than we can arrive at by ourselves.  When it comes to believing in God, we take up what Israel has long known about him by revelation.

Taking up God's revelation to Israel for ourselves entails responsibilities: we must serve him well.  In this, Moses’ response is exemplary: he falls to his knees, and asks for forgiveness and adoption, mercy and love.  What angers God more than anything else is idolatry.  Introducing a false God brings on the divine love of a betrayed spouse or a disavowed parent.  For their idolatries, the Israelites suffered humiliation and exile, famine and death.

So, talk of there being a Son of God is perilous.  Israel’s monotheism will not tolerate such a human intrusion into divine faith.  God's anger is sure to follow for those who say there is a Son of God and for those who allow that talk to go on.

And then we are reassured: no one who believes in the Son of God will be condemned, but all who refuse to believe is condemned already, because they have refused to believe in God's only Son.  To prove this claim of his, the Son of God puts his life on the line: he dies on the cross.  And being restored to life in the glory of the resurrection, he becomes for us the source of all-truth.  If the one who rose from the dead is untrue, nothing is true.  And because he speaks truly, the Son of God is teaching us well and for our good.  This is grace, the prevailing condition of divine favour towards us.  We do not live in fear of getting God wrong, but in loving reference towards him who wants to be known.

The Father answered Moses’ prayer for forgiveness and adoption in the most wonderful way.  He sent his Son from heaven to earth to take flesh by the power of the Holy Spirit.  When blood and water flowed from his side as he lay dead on the cross, there would be mercy an endless supply and many children reborn to grace through baptism.  By this great Easter act, we know God as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  So, we put our faith not in our own power to deduce God's essence for ourselves (because then we would come up with the least bad option).  But rather we put our faith in God, who shows himself on Calvary as the God of mercy and love, all so that we would know him and love him, and one day join him in heaven.

It is a mistake, then, to think of faith as just an intellectual action or process.  If we say faith is only in the mind, that would be like saying marriage is only when she says Yes to the ring-bearing boy.  Faith is sharing our mortal life with the eternal God.  We who believe in him live through him, with him, and in him.

And from this, we have to ask ourselves: how would believers live?  Given that we accept what God has told us about himself, how do we then live in him?  Those who trust others share their experiences, do favours for each other, invite each other.  And those who believe in God do likewise: they pray to him, do works in his name, and above all worship him, which means coming to Sunday Mass every week.  Even if some part of us is riddled with questions, Wayne must still reach out in trust towards God in mercy and love. I assure you, there is an answer for every question if we ask in faith.

We are now on our way towards the altar, from which we shall receive the sacred body of Christ.  This is the high price that was paid so that we would know in the Holy Spirit that the Son of God speaks truth about his Father.  The Son of God is about to become one with us, so that the Father will recognise his beloved Son in us through the Holy Spirit.  May we always receive the Son of God in living faith and so obtain the mercy and love Moses sought long ago, and so have hope of arriving at our final destination: the heaven of the blessed Trinity.  To him be the glory forever and ever.  Amen.

Fr Paul Rowse, OP is the Parish Priest of Camberwell East, Victoria