Take Up the Nature of Christ: Homily for the Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

In his letter to the Philippians(2:5) Saint Paul urges us: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.” The mind of Jesus is revealed to us with substantial clarity in the Gospel this Sunday, where we continue to hear, as we did last Sunday, what is called the Sermon on the Plain.

In this sermon on the plain, which began with the beatitudes last Sunday, Our Lord recommends to us things that He did in the course of His own ministry, and above all while on the Cross. He loved his enemies, did good to those who hated Him. He blessed those who cursed Him, and prayed for those who mistreated Him (Lk 23: 34). When struck on the cheek, in the course of his interrogation by the High Priest (John 18:23), he effectively offered his other cheek as well. While on the Cross, he did not murmur when they first stripped Him of His clothes, and took His tunic (John 19:24). In other words, the best examples of what our Lord recommends to us in the Gospel today, is found in the course of His blessed Passion. The Gospel acclamation itself makes this clear:

I give you a new commandment, says the Lord:
love one another as I have loved you.

There is a small problem with His advice, however. No man would wish to die on the cross, even if it were for his own benefit, leave alone die for others. What Our Lord recommends is not natural to the human being. It is our natural desire to run away from hurt, to return the attack when attacked, to prepare a defence, or better make a pre-emptive strike when we know that someone is going to attack us.

But Our Lord recognizes this fact. In the course of His sermon, Our Lord recognizes the limits of natural virtue, i.e. the extent to which sinners, relying on their own goodness, can be virtuous. The limits of natural virtue are to love those who love us, do good to those who do good to us, and lend money only to those whom we know can be relied upon to return our money. He recognizes that the acts He is urging us to do are not the acts of sinners, that is, normal people in the natural order; he is asking us to be merciful, and perfect, like His Father, and for us to be supernatural. In other words, he is asking us to be divine!

In his first letter to the Corinthians, which we read today, Saint Paul acknowledges the differences between our natures and that of Christ:

The first man [Adam] was from the earth, earthly;
the second man [the second Adam, i.e. Jesus], from heaven.
As was the earthly one, so also are the earthly,
and as is the heavenly one, so also are the heavenly.

We, who are sons of Adam, are as Saint Paul indicates, natural, not spiritual.  So how then are we, sinners that we are, going to reach the heights of divine compassion? Simply knowing, or having, the mind of Christ is not enough. We are going to need more than intellectual knowledge if we are to be able to act in a way that is against our earthly nature. Yet, in the same, first, letter to the Corinthians, Saint Paul assures us that:

Just as we have borne the image of the earthly one,
            we shall also bear the image of the heavenly one.

It is because Our Lord is compassion itself, that He does not leave us with knowledge alone, but provides us with His own nature, which He displayed to the fullest extent while on the Cross, so that we can become like Him.  I am referring, of course, to His Precious Body and Blood, which allows us to gain his divine nature.

Listen to the words of Bishop Procopius of Gaza (ca. 465–70 AD –526/30 AD),

To those who still lack the works of faith and the higher knowledge which inspires them he [Our Lord Jesus Christ] says; “Come, eat my body, the bread that is the nourishment of virtue, and drink my blood, the wine that cheers you with the joy of true knowledge and makes you divine. For in a wonderful way I have mingled my divinity with my blood for your salvation.”

My dear brothers and sisters, I have a very earthy way to elaborate this idea for you. Have you not noticed that when you eat, or drink, cashew, the next day our sweat, our body, even our urine (!), smells of cashew? The principle of nature is that we become what we eat. And this is the principle through which Our Lord transmits His spiritual, or supernatural, nature to us. By consuming the Eucharist, in small steps we begin our process of partaking of His spiritual and divine nature. In other words, when our Lord calls us to practice the supernatural virtues which he demonstrated to us, He does not leave us without help to realize this otherwise impossible task. He offers His own body to help us become like Him, which is why Paul recognizes that Jesus Christ “the last Adam [is] a life-giving spirit” It is because HE is a life-giving spirit that for two millennia, the saints of the Church have been able to give up their lives and embrace the Cross, showing us how to be divine, even though, like us, they were born as sinners.

For this great gift He has offered us, to become divine, let us make the words of the psalm our own, as we say:

Bless the LORD, O my soul;
            and all my being, bless his holy name.
Bless the LORD, O my soul,
            and forget not all his benefits.

(This homily was first preached to the faithful in Concanim on 23 Feb 2025 at the parish of Our Lady of the Rosary, Fatorda.)

(Image reference: The Communion of the Apostles, Luca Giordano, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.)

The Exemplary Prince

The Aga Khan is the title of the Imam, or spiritual leader, of the community of Shia Muslims known as the Nizari Ismailis, a multi-ethnic group spread across the world, who also live in Goa. The title of the Aga Khan is of a comparatively recent origin when compared to the antiquity of the Ismaili Imamate which reaches into the very origins of Islam. Prince Karim Al-Husseini, the fourth bearer of the title of Aga Khan passed away on the fourth of this month. This news was not an anonymous fact to me, but part of personal history. Growing up in Panjim, the capital city of Goa, in the 80s, and ever since, one could not help but encounter images of his smiling face in the various shops run by members of the mercantile Nizari Ismaili, or Khoja, community in the city.

There was more to the fourth Aga Khan, however, than simply the image of a smiley face in Panjim stores. He was, as was his office, intimately tied with the Goan, and Portuguese, world.  Take, for example, the fact that part of the municipal garden in the centre of Margão, formally known as the Aga Khan children’s park, was constructed in 1959 by a Goan businessman named Abdul Javerbhai Mavany in the honor of the Aga Khan III. The Aga Khan visited Goa in 1960, because he was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Prince Henry the Navigator by General Vassalo e Silva, the last Governor General of Portuguese India. And why wouldn’t he visit, given that his murid, his spiritual wards, were an integral part of the Portuguese nation in India and Africa. When the future of this population was threatened at the time of the independence of the territories of Angola and Moçambique, not only did the Aga Khan IV smooth the way for their move to Portugal, but counseled their integration into Portuguese society. “This is your country now. Stay loyal to your country,” he advised the Ismaili retornados, as he did other Ismailis dislocated from their homelands. More recently, he established the Diwan of the Imamat in Lisbon. While many speak of this shift from France to Portugal as a part of a strategy of asset management, the fact is that the Aga Khan, and the Nizari Ismailis he leads, have had a long, and storied relationship with Portugal, to the extent that one could consider him, and the Ismailis, as integral to Portuguese history as Vasco da Gama.

His reign of 67 years as Imam was almost as long as that of Queen Elizabeth, who reigned for 70 years, and time will come to recognize him, if the world has not already, as a prince in the same model as that of Queen Elizabeth, and closer home like Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman. Like Elizabeth II, the Aga Khan IV presided over his community at times of dramatic geopolitical changes.  Like Sultan Qaboos, he was a practitioner of quiet diplomacy for peace. Succeeding his grandfather to the Imamate in 1957, he reign saw him successfully deal with the expulsion of Asians from East Africa, and their resettlement in Canada and other parts of the developed world, the relocation of Ismailis from Portuguese Africa, the independence of Central Asian countries such as Tajikistan in the wake of the collapse of the former Soviet Union, and the political unrest in Afghanistan and Pakistan, not to mention India.

His response to all of these changes was to use his personal wealth, and the contributions of Ismailis, to set up a vast network of institutions that sought to respond not merely to the interests of Ismailis, but the quality of life of the communities among whom the Ismailis lived. It is the hallmark of great men, that we are inspired by them even in, and after, their death. The Aga Khan IV, one realizes, spent his life in inter-religious dialogue, a dialogue marked not simply by conversation, but in actively collaborating for the common good with those of other faiths.

What is astounding is the absolute gamut of concerns the Aga Khan’s network of institutions took up, ranging from developmental concerns, education, microfinance, to architecture – establishing the now prestigious Aga Khan Award for Architecture. In India, the Aga Khan Foundation has intervened in restoring the monuments in the Deccan, as well as more famously the gardens around Humanyun’s tomb.

In so doing, Mawlana Hazar Imam Aga Khan IV, demonstrated for us, the unfortunate souls that live in an age of venal mediocrity, the standards for what it is to be an exemplary prince. Niccolo Machiavelli’s sixteenth century opus The Prince offers us the model of a prince who is cunning, conniving, manipulative, and believes that the ends justify the means, giving us the term we use today for particularly wily politicians: Machiavellian. Machiavelli’s prince has unfortunately come to be what we expect from the princes of our age, and it is therefore only with the deepest regret that one sees the passing of the Aga Khan IV who embodied the idea of the ideal prince, one who operates out of a sense of noblesse oblige – the sense that nobility comes with a set of responsibilities, obligations, to those who do not share the same fortunate situation as those with lesser privileges. That wealth does not exist for its own sake, and for personal pleasure alone, but to aid the pursuit of excellence, and the common good.

The exemplary nature of his politics emerged in the course of an interview offered by his daughter, Princess Zahra Aga Khan. She pointed out that her father had always taught her that institutions were to be built with a hundred to five hundred years perspective, and crises were not to be responded in the immediate perspective, unless it threatens the livelihood and life of the jamaat. The long-term well-being of the jamaat was always of greater importance than an immediate response to a political crisis. What was important was to build institutions and ensure that the institutions would outlast the people that currently populated them. Vision, restraint in response, a concern for lives and livelihoods, and institution building, all the hallmarks of a great prince’s politics!

It was, therefore, with more than just the pain of a cherished childhood memory passing away that one encountered the news of the death of Prince Karim al-Husseini, but with the realization that the world was deprived of a stellar example, at precisely the moment one requires someone of his stature. We pray that God will grant Prince Rahim al-Husseini Aga Khan V, the grace to fill the huge void that his father has left behind.

To the Aga Khan IV in the meanwhile, in addition to the traditional Muslim prayer for the dead, we can, and indeed must, offer the words of immortal bard in his play Hamlet:

“Now cracks a noble heart. Good-night, sweet prince;

And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest. ”

For indeed, we belong to Allah, and indeed, to Him we return (Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji'un).

(A version of this text was first published in the O Heraldo dated 18 Feb 2025.)

Fountain of Grace: Homily for the Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

One of the great tendencies of twentieth century theology and spirituality has been to reduce the words of Our Lord, and this applies particularly to the beatitudes we just heard in the Gospel, to the material alone. The spiritual, or the transcendental, element of Our Lord’s teachings were either forgotten or underplayed. And so, it is good that today, after we heard a series of “Blessed are those”, Our Lord speaking through the Gospel tells us:

Blessed are you when people hate you,
                        and when they exclude and insult you,
                        and denounce your name as evil
                        on account of the Son of Man.[italicized emphasis added]

In other words, Blessed are you when you suffer, but only when you suffer on account of your confession of, or your belief in, the Son of Man, that is, Our Lord. This, of course, makes a lot of sense, because it is not the desire of Our Lord that we be poor, hungry, or weep in our material lives. That we are poor, hungry or sad, is not His desire, or intention. If He desired, or even praised these conditions it would be perverse. If at all any of these things exist in the world, they exist because of sin, not because of the will of God. If anyone suggests that poverty in itself is some spiritually beneficially hotspot, ignore them. They are simply wrong.

But let us return to the point I seek to make, we are blessed only when we suffer because of our confession of Christ. If you are merely virtuous, a good person who helps, who cries, with other people, you will not be counted among the blessed on the day of the Final Judgment. I think in particular of all those who believe that they do not need the support of the Eucharist, or the Catholic faith, because they are “good people.” You do not go to heaven for these acts of virtue, for the simple reason that those who do not genuinely confess Our Lord, effectively count on themselves. As the prophet Jeremiahs says in the first reading:

Cursed is the one who trusts in human beings,
                        who seeks his strength in flesh,
                        whose heart turns away from the LORD.

To trust in human strength, in our own capacities, and virtues, is to seek our strength in flesh alone, to place our faith only in the world of politics and man, and to not recognize the grace that flows from the heart of Christ. To trust in the human and physical alone, is to turn our heart away from the Lord.

Both the reading from Jeremiah and the psalm today repeat the same image, telling us that he who trusts in the Lord;

 is like a tree planted beside the waters
                        that stretches out its roots to the stream:
            it fears not the heat when it comes;
                        its leaves stay green;
            in the year of drought it shows no distress,
                        but still bears fruit.

In other words, when we trust in the Lord, then whenever we suffer; whether hunger, or poverty, or grief, then, we are able to respond to these situations of misery in a way that is different from when we trust only in our own capacities. In the words of the Prophet Jeremiah, we show no distress, but still bear fruit!

These images of tree and river of life are very usefully repeated in the final book of the Bible, Revelation (22:1-2), where we read:

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb  through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.

Having read from the book of Revelation we see that this image of the tree that stretches its roots to the stream can be very usefully compared to our relationship with the Sacred Heart of Jesus. We are the tree, and the stream of the living waters is that which springs from the Sacred Heart of Jesus!

My dear brothers and sisters, the comparison to the Sacred Heart is not an idle comparison. As Pope Francis teaches in his recent encyclical Dilexit Nos, because of the resurrection of His body, the Sacred Heart of Jesus is a heart that physically exists. His Glorious Body exists with all the wounds that were inflicted on it in the course of His Passion. For this reason, His Sacred Heart functions with a hole in it from the lance that pierced His side, and from that side, from that wound in His Most Sacred Heart, flow the life-giving waters of grace that ensure that we are not “like a barren bush in the desert that enjoys no change of season,” “like chaff which the wind drives away.”

One final point; a few paragraphs earlier I had suggested that when we trust in the Lord, we are able to respond to situations of misery in a way that is different from when we trust only in our own strength and capacities. How exactly do we do this? One way to do this is to realize that when we suffer, we can choose to suffer with Christ, and in this way contribute to His task of redeeming the world. To do this, I often use the following words of St. Paul in his letter to the Colossians (1:24): “in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ for the sake of His body, …the church.” In the face of crisis, of troubles, I repeat these words as a prayer, over, and over again; I invite to do similarly.

My dear brothers and sisters, Our Lord suffered as we do, and His wounds were transformed into the glorious signs of His victory over death and sin. If we join our sufferings with those of Christ, then our sufferings too will be transformed into banners in the war against the Devil, and as St Paul assures us today in his first letter to Corinthians, we will be raised from the dead, and as then, as the Gospel acclamations assures us; “your reward will be great in heaven.”

God bless you all.

(A version of this homily was first preached in Concanim to the faithful at the parish church of Our Lady of the Rosary, Fatorda, on 16 Feb 2025.)
(Image reference: “The Fountain of Grace” (detail), Workshop of jan van Eyck, 1441, Museo del Prado.)

Presented and Confirmed in the Lord: Homily for the Feast of the Presentation

 

My dear brothers and sisters,

The feast of the Presentation we celebrate today is not unlike the sacrament of confirmation which all of you have just received. Our Lord was taken to the temple by His parents and presented to His Father, as were you; He was consecrated to God, as the law of Moses required of every first born, and through the process that began at your baptism, and concluded in confirmation, so have you been. Indeed, like Our Lord, you are now confirmed also in His triple office, of priest, prophet, and king.

There is another similarity between the feast we celebrate today, and the sacrament of confirmation, and this is the presence of the Holy Spirit. In the Gospel reading today we hear that the Holy Spirit was upon Simeon, and that “He came in the Spirit into the temple,” in other words, dear brothers and sisters, he was possessed by the Holy Spirit. You too, beloved, are possessed by the Holy Spirit, you belong now to Him and it must be your desire to do His bidding.

What is it to be possessed by the Holy Spirit. We can turn to the Fathers of the Church for a little help here, who speak of two kinds of fire; the fire of purification, and the fire of burning. Through confirmation and possession by the Holy Spirit, you are now subjected to the fire of purification, as we hear in the first reading today from the prophet Malachi;

For he is like the refiner’s fire,
    or like the fuller’s lye.
He will sit refining and purifying silver,
    and he will purify the sons of Levi,
Refining them like gold or like silver
    that they may offer due sacrifice to the LORD.

Through the rest of your life, but especially in times of trial, you must remember that you are being purified so that you “may offer due sacrifice to the Lord”.  Confirmed in the Holy Spirit, and constantly purified, you are also given the gift of being able to see the world not simply through material eyes, you can now see the world through spiritual eyes; you can see what is denied to other people. Even more importantly, however, once in the Spirit, you are worthy enough to become like Christ. You are all, other Christs!

Who is this Christ? We are given one insight into His character in the psalm we just heard:

Who is this king of glory?
    The LORD, strong and mighty,
    the LORD, mighty in battle.

And who is Our Lord doing battle with?  Saint Paul in his letter to the Hebrews which we just read tells us that he was born so that:

that through death he might destroy the one
who has the power of death, that is, the Devil,
and free those who through fear of death
had been subject to slavery all their life.

In confirmation, my dear brothers and sisters, you have pledged yourselves to offer support in Christ’s battle with the Devil. All of you will do battle with the Devil, and, “With the power of the Spirit” you will be “strong and mighty” and “mighty in battle.” You are called to do battle like Christ, and like Him, you will triumph.

However, to triumph, and to fully reap the power of the Holy Spirit, and to be in the Spirit, you will have to be righteous and devout, keeping your eyes always on His law. If you do this, then at the end of your life, after you have spent a lifetime doing battle with the Devil, you will be able to make your own the words of Simeon in the Temple, as he held the Lord in his hand, the words of our Holy Mother Church at the end of every day:

Now, Master, you may let your servant go 
        in peace, according to your word,
    for my eyes have seen your salvation,
        which you prepared in the sight of all the peoples:
    a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
        and glory for your people Israel.

May God bless and be with you, now and always.

(This homily was first preached to a group of newly confirmed parishioners of Ambarnath, at the mission station of Dapada, Silvassa on 2 Feb 2025.)