On Care for Our Common Home

On 8 June this year, the Dicastery for Divine Worship and theDiscipline of the Sacraments, the Vatican’s department that oversees the appropriate celebration of Catholic liturgy, issued the formula for a new votive Mass, the Mass for the Care of Creation. Those who had been following the pontificate of the late Pope Francis, will know that care for the environment was something close to his heart. He chose the name of a Saint, Francis (of Assisi), who has garnered fame universally, and not just among Catholics, for his love of the natural world – famously addressing the creations of God as brothers and sisters in his Canticle of Creatures. Pope Francis took his concern for the environment further in his second encyclical Laudato Si – another reference to St. Francis’ Canticle – which was subtitled “Care for our common home,” and raised a critique of consumerism and irresponsible economic development. In offering this critique, Pope Francis expanded the Catholic Church’s social teaching, offering Catholics concrete directions on how to lead their lives. Of course, Pope Francis was not the first Roman pontiff to do so, having been preceded by Pope Benedict XVI who similarly offered a critique of the modern developmental paradigm in his encyclical Caritas in Veritate. He was also known as the Green Pope for a variety of initiatives he encouraged toward expressing environmental care, including installing solar panels, promoting a ban on non-organic pesticides, and encouraging tree planting, all with a view to achieve carbon neutrality for Vatican City. His own predecessor, Pope Saint John Paul II was similarly aware of the connections between a degradation of the environment and our insistence on instant gratification and consumerism. As he pointed out in his message for the World Day of Peace on 1 January 1990, “the seriousness of the ecological issue lays bare the depth of man's moral crisis.”

And yet, despite these important steps, there is a need for a more critical look at the tiny details of our lifestyles. Take, for example, my experience in the Vatican City, on an Easter Sunday some years ago. Part of a choir that would sing at St. Peter’s Basilica before the morning mass on Easter Sunday, I was shuffling around in the portico of the Basilica, converted for the day into a sacristy of sorts, looking for water to quench my thirst – we had been up since very early in the morning. I spied a case of plastic water bottles and headed in their direction. Now, while I normally eschew drinking from plastic bottles, I was so crazed with thirst I was willing to let all my principles slide. Looking for someone who might be responsible for them, I asked a nearby service person if I could have one of those bottles. “No!” he responded, somewhat imperiously, “They are for the Holy Father!”

Now, I am sure that the Holy Father, after all his exhortations, was not going to drink from those very bottles; but this little episode said a lot about how much work needs to be done at the bottom of the pyramid if we are to take ecological responsibility and care for our common home seriously. It should also be said, that at least in Rome, one can safely drink from the tap, as well as the many public fountains where water flows freely and continuously, so that there is no need to carry or purchase the plastic water bottles that are the bane of contemporary existence.

Speaking of working at the bottom of the pyramid, there is much that can be done in parishes across Goa, at least at the level of formal worship. Directed by a misguided understanding of participation and creativity, most liturgical celebrations in our State unleash horrific amounts of single use decorations, which are invariably produced from very synthetic products that do not safely bio-degrade. One of the very succinct teachings of Pope Francis was his warnings, and indeed his condemnation, of the “throwaway culture” that treats people as if they were disposable. This disposable culture, where we treat human beings as if they were disposable, exists only because of the prior existence of a culture where precious resources are treated as if they were disposable – blindly throwing them away after a single use.

Traditional Catholic worship was not like this. Even until a few decades ago, bunting was carefully folded and stowed away until they could be used the following year. Altar decorations made of wood and silver or gold leaf, or silver repoussé would be brought out annually to lend dignity to the occasion. Things were even better before the age of plastics burst upon us, when decorations were made, not just of cloth, but of precious fabrics that were taken proper care of so that they could be used year, after year, after year, for decades.

A contemporary emphasis on creativity, has ensured that liturgical worship, rather than seeing quality products being used with spectacular effect, has become the staging ground for cheap, disposable products being used in a most banal manner. The producers are invariably congratulated for their mediocre productions and this only serves to entrench the illness further into our consciousness. Similarly, social celebrations are marked by distribution of trophies that owe their origins to silver cups distributed to winners but are now made of cheap plastic and tawdrier sensibilities. And then there is the gift giving, that marks every celebration, where we gift plastic objects that have no real value. And of course, it is recognized that they have no value, but are tolerated because they fulfill the requirements of the mindless social norms that we have set in place.

At the end of the day, it appears that we are faced with a choice between the solemn, the expensive and resuable, versus the discardable objects that are the products of a system that privileges spontaneity and creativity. The first is responsible, the second is responsible for a disregard for the creations of the creator.

“May the sacrament of unity

which we have received, O Father,

increase communion with you and with our brothers and sisters,

so that, as we await the new heavens and the new earth,

we may learn to live in harmony with all creatures.” – (Post communion prayer from the Mass for the Care of Creation.)

(A version of this text was first published in the O Heraldo on 9 July 2025.)

(Image reference: “St. Francis receiving the Stigmata,” Paolo Vernonese, ca. 1582, Gallerie dell'Accademia di Venezia.)

Boast Only in the Cross: Homily for the Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

 

The readings today present us two very related themes. The first, is the call of Our Master to the task, or in other words, our vocation. The other, is the place within which, and for which, this vocation is to be lived out, the Church. It is within the Church alone that our vocation can make sense, for outside of it we have no life.

But I jump ahead of myself. I was led to this insight by two verses from the lectionary today, the first being the words of Our Lord in the Gospel:

The harvest is abundant but the labourers are few;
so ask the master of the harvest
to send out laborers for his harvest.

We often pray for vocations, and particularly for vocations to religious life and the priesthood; but what is often missed in this prayer for vocations is that it is not only future priests who have been given a vocation. In fact, all of us, who through our baptism are configured to the triple office of Christ: of priest, prophet and king, have a vocation. Every Christian, has a vocation to support the proper worship of God, the task of the priest; all of us have an obligation to fulfill the task of the prophet – to preach and proclaim the kingdom of God; and all of us must appropriately be king – whether in our families, as father or mother, in our job; in charge of the tasks given to us by God; or as citizens, ensuring that we follow the rules of civilized society and in this way ensure that others too may follow the rules.

Understood in this sense, we now begin to understand the enormity of the task before us, and the shortage of labourers for this task.

The second prompt, I received was from the first reading from today’s lectionary. Speaking through the Prophet Isaiah, the Lord says:

Rejoice with Jerusalem and be glad because of her,
 all you who love her;

And then again:

Lo, I will spread prosperity over Jerusalem like a river,
 and the wealth of the nations like an overflowing torrent.
 As nurslings, you shall be carried in her arms,
 and fondled in her lap;
 as a mother comforts her child,
 so will I comfort you;
 in Jerusalem you shall find your comfort.

Now, we know that the reference to Jerusalem in scripture has traditionally been understood to mean our Holy Mother Church. And so, what Isaiah is teaching us, is that our salvation is not to be obtained individually, but in the company of others, and in the embrace of Jerusalem. In the Church, we are all one. We are all members of the Church, the head of whom is Jesus Christ Our Lord. The members of the body must, therefore, cooperate with each other and work with each other. This is our vocation, for it is not by ourselves that we shall find our comfort, but only in the lap of Jerusalem, our Holy Mother, the Church.

One more thing; it is not by accident that Jerusalem is understood as a city. Psalm 122 sings: “Jerusalem is built as a city.” While our salvation is to be gained through the Church, we are also required to go out and conquer the city – or the state – for Christ. Too often, too many of us have abandoned our obligation to Christianize the city and the state. We restrict our Christianity solely to our coming to church once a week, forgetting the obligation to spread the love of Christ in the world outside the doors of the church.

My dear brothers and sisters, there is a need for Catholics to step up and fulfill the vocations that Our Lord has entrusted to each and every one of us. Instead of chasing wealth, or the security of our children alone – and I must stress that in themselves these are noble goals in life – we also need to invest our energies in Christianising society and state, not abandoning them. In other words, there is a need for more Catholics to look for posts in Government services, in the police, in the postal service, in the banking sector, in the civil services, in the armed forces and bring the Gospel to these institutions through the way we work in them. For too long, Catholics in Goa – and God knows elsewhere too – have ignored exercising their vocation in these areas in favour of personal growth alone.

My dear brothers and sisters, the Gospel today contains a warning for those towns who do not welcome the seventy-two disciples. Our Lord warns “it will be more tolerable for Sodom on that day than for that town.” Just as with the town that refuses the preaching of the Kingdom, so too will it be for those of the baptized who have refused to preach, even when knowing that the “"The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few.”

May Our Lord grant us the grace to realise our vocations.

(A version of this homily was first preached to the faithful at the anticipated Sunday mass on 6 July 2025 at the Sé Catedral, Old Goa.)

(Image reference: Saint John the Baptist Preaching (detail), Mattia Preti (Il Cavaliere Calabrese), ca. 1665, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.)

On this Rock: Homily for the Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul

While in seminary in Rome, Monsignor Ciaran O'Carroll, our professor of Church history insisted that my companions and I as a batch make a pilgrimage to the archaeological excavations below the Basilica of St. Peter.  This is a visit that I recommend to all those who go to Rome, because it is through this space that one gets to encounter the bones of St. Peter. At the end of the visit through the excavated Roman necropolis, or cemetery, one reaches behind the ancient shrine that was built over the grave of the Prince of the Apostles, and here, one can see the some of the bones of St. Peter that have been preserved in little acrylic boxes.

There was something that Monsignor O'Carroll said before we made this visit, which has stayed with me until this day, and made all the difference to my visit, which I can now see was a pilgrimage. He reminded us of the words we heard in the Gospel today which Our Lord had said to Peter,

“Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! … you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.” (Mt16: 17-18).

Seeing these bones, he said, he realized that these fragile bones were the rock of which the entire Church, now spread throughout the world has been built on. Let me repeat this for emphasis, the fragile bones of Peter, is what the great edifice of the church has been built on.

This should be the context in which we reflect on the lines from the second reading – Saint Paul’s letter to the Galatians – today:

God, who from my mother’s womb had set me apart
and called me through his grace,
was pleased to reveal his Son to me,
so that I might proclaim him to the Gentiles,

My dear brothers and sisters, Saints Peter and Paul, whose precious memory we venerate today, were like us, mere men of perishable flesh and bone. And like them, we too have been set apart from our mothers’ wombs, we received the grace of having the Son of God revealed to us, not for any merit on our part, but so that we might proclaim Him to the world we live in. Some of us are lucky, we were introduced to the Catholic faith through our mothers’ milk. Others are luckier still, they were called to Christ, and set apart, as independent adults.

But if we have been set apart, if God has called us to Himself since the time we were conceived, this does not mean that Our Lord forces us to proclaim Him. He offers us the greatest gift the creator could offer, free will. He calls us to serve Him, but there is no force. If we serve Him, we do so because we wish to.

Which is why, as we see in the Gospel today, Our Lord asks Peter three times, if he loved Him. Three is a mystical number, my dear brothers and sisters, the number of fullness and perfection. To ask Peter thrice was to make sure that Peter really meant yes. It was only after he emphatically said yes that Our Lord entrusted to Peter the task to lead the church: “Feed my sheep.”

The task that was handed over to Saints Peter and Paul were not easy ones my dear brothers and sisters. Both lost their lives in the course of proclaiming Our Lord, and we too are called to lose our lives, though perhaps not in such dramatic ways – St. Peter was crucified upside down, and St. Paul was beheaded. But lose our lives for His sake we must, glorify His name through our lives we MUST, if we are to merit a place with Him and His saints for all eternity.

Sancti Petre et Paule; orate pro nobis.

(Image reference: “The Resurrected Christ with Saints Peter and Paul,” Antonis Mor, 1556 (?), Château de Chantilly, via Wikidata.)

Give us today our daily bread: Homily for the Feast of Corpus Christi

For in sacrifice you take no delight

Burnt offering from me you would refuse

My sacrifice a contrite spirit.

A humbled, contrite heart you will not spurn.

My dear brothers and sisters, these words from Psalm 51, verses 16 and 17, offer a very useful key to unlock the mysteries of the great feast of Corpus Christi – the Body and Blood of Our Lord – that we are celebrating today.

Reflecting on the words “You are a priest forever, in the line of Melchizedek” the response to the psalm we just sang, Saint Augustine, great doctor of the Church, teaches, “that is to say, not after the order of Aaron, for that order was to be taken away when the things shone forth that were intimated beforehand by these shadows.” In other words, according to Saint Augustine, David was prophesying the end of the system of sacrifices of the Jewish temple, officiated by the priestly order of Aaron. He was rejecting current customs, and foreseeing future ones, where another priesthood, one after the order of Melchizedek, was to be instituted. Like Melchizedek, who, as we learned from the first reading, offered a sacrifice of bread and wine, this priesthood would similarly offer bread and wine. We can see now that this new sacrifice, and the new form of worship, was, as Saint Paul wrote in the first letter to the Corinthians which we just read, that of Our Lord instituting the offering of his own humbled and contrite heart in the form of bread and wine.

Recall the words, dear brothers and sisters, of St. Paul to the Phillipians (2: 7b-8):

being found in human form,
    he humbled himself
    and became obedient to the point of death—
    even death on a cross.

It was so that we could offer our own human hearts, so often so hard, that proper and full contriteness is difficult, that Our Lord took up our nature and then possessed of a human body, offered a humble and contrite human heart as the perfect sacrifice to God. He was humbled not merely in his taking on human flesh, but had his heart broken – another way to understand contrition – through the betrayal of Judas, the denial of Peter, the abandonment by his disciples, the cruel treatment that he suffered at the hands of his torturers.

My dear brothers and sisters, today we celebrate a miracle that took place two millennia ago, and by divine will takes place every day and at every Catholic altar, the heart of Our Lord, His Most Precious Body and Blood, is offered by to the Father in the form of bread and wine.

And this heart that is offered is not a symbolic heart, my dear brothers and sisters, but a true, real heart. I would like to direct your attention to the work of Dr. Franco Serafini, a cardiologist from Bologna, Italy, who has dedicated his life to examining Eucharistic miracles. Of the five Eucharistic miracles that Serafini examined closely, he was able to identify four common features:

“five times out of five: [one finds] the presence of the heart, of myocardial tissue, and suffering myocardial tissue. Then we have blood, of course. And then we have a blood type. It is the AB blood type, the blood type that is also found in authoritative Passion clothes such as the Shroud of Turin.”

Bear in mind, of course, that not every consecrated host need display this bio-physical feature, since it is the substance of the bread that is transformed into the Body and Blood of Our Lord, and not its external features that remain as they are. It is to offer proof to those who doubt, and touch their hearts, that Our Lord will sometimes deign to offer us a Eucharistic miracles. Indeed, this great feast we celebrate today was the Church’s response to a Eucharistic miracle in Bolsena, Italy, in 1263.

Through our ingestion of this most Sacred Heart of Jesus, my dear brothers and sisters, our own hearts become like His, becoming the humbled and contrite heart that can be offered as acceptable worship of God. In this way, Our Lord, Jesus Christ, makes us – all of us – “a kingdom and priests to serve our God” (Rev 5:10), priests in the order of Melchizedek.

To be a priest, dear brothers and sisters, is to offer sacrifice and blessings. One of the lines of the English translation of Tantum Ergo St. Thomas Aquinas’ great contemplation of the Blessed Sacrament, reads:

Here is new and perfect worship

Brothers and sisters, this is the challenge for us, on this feast day, to make sure that our worship is perfect. It is when our worship, of Our God, in the Blessed Sacrament is new and perfect, that our service of our brethren will be new and perfect – offering them not curses but blessings, and not selfish acts but sacrifices. It is through new and perfect worship that the rivers of the New Jerusalem, whose arrival we await, will flow.

(A version of this homily was first preached to the faithful at the anticipated mass on 21 June 2025 at the Sé Catedral, Old Goa.)

(Image reference: Detail from “Allegory of the Eucharist,” Alexander Coosemans, between 1641 and 1689, Musée de Tessé, Le Mans, via Word on Fire.)