To Your Name the Glory: Homily at Mass of Thanksgiving Monday of the Fifth Week of Easter

This morning, whilst singing the psalm after the first reading, we repeated the words:

Not to us, O Lord, but to your name give the glory.

The point of the response in the psalm, as with anything that we repeat, is that its message should go deep into our head, and into our heart. This should also be the case with the response to the psalm we heard this morning.

Not to us, O Lord, but to your name give the glory.

As the Apostle Paul tells us in his letter to the Romans (14:8),

If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.

This is to say that as Christians, we must live only to bring glory to our God, and the way we die should similarly bring glory to our God. None of the acts we commit in our life ought to be about bringing glory to us, or our name, but to God, and His holy Name.

There is a good reason to reflect on this message today. There is a tendency in the Masses of thanksgiving of freshly ordained priests to make the homily about the young priest, rather than offer a reflection on the scriptures that have just been offered on the altar of the word. But this is a danger not just for young priests. Very often, perhaps all too often, the homily becomes the most important part of the Mass. We choose the places where we go to Mass based on the kind of preacher we will find there. As a result, the Mass becomes less about the obligation of sacrifice we have, less about communion with the parish community gathered together for this sacrifice, less about giving glory to God, and more about the pleasure we get from a good speech. Even worse, is when the Mass becomes about the personality of the priest, which overflows from the homily and then into the Mass itself. The altar of sacrifice becomes the stage of performance, where the priest demonstrates his ability to attract and hold the attention of the people, who for their part encourage him. I can recollect one anecdote shared with me by a friend, who recounted how the women in his family were discussing which priest sounded “more like Jesus!”

If such is the case, my dear brothers and sisters, be sure that we are directing the glory not to the name of Our Father in heaven, or His Only begotten Son, but towards ourselves, and this would be a great sin.

In the first reading, we heard that the “Apostles Barnabas and Paul tore their garments
when they heard” that they were being acclaimed as gods and,

rushed out into the crowd, shouting,
"Men, why are you doing this?
We are of the same nature as you, human beings.
We proclaim to you good news
that you should turn from these idols to the living God,
who made heaven and earth and sea and all that is in them.

After the Vatican Council II, much effort went into challenging the sin of clericalism, stressing against the tendency to deify priests, and asserting that they were of the same human nature as the laity. As such, my dear brothers and sisters, it is my intention to make my own the voice and warning of the apostles. Let us make our lives about always proclaiming the Good News, and turning away from idols of our own creation, and above all turning away from worshiping the idol of our own glory, rather than that of God’s.

And how do we do this? By first correcting the way in which we engage with the Mass. In the Gospel today, Our Lord tells us that we should love Him, and keep His word. To love Him and His words will ensure that “The Advocate, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send” in his name will teach us everything and remind us of all that He told us.

In other words, we must develop a relationship with His words. Too often, hearing the readings at the Mass is the first time we engage with His words. This needs to change if we desire a relationship with Our Lord. We need to spend some time reading the lectionary before we go to Mass. Having done that, when we hear the words spoken, in the presence of our brethren (I am making here a reference to the motto of Bishop Erik Varden coram fratribus intellexi), we will be inspired by the Holy Spirit and see the deeper meaning of those words. We can then spend the rest of the Mass contemplating those words, preferring silence, and not fixating on the performance of the priest, allowing him to do his work of sacrifice, and allow us to do our work of contemplation, and communion.

My dear brothers and sisters, I prefer to end homilies offering little prayers that we can repeat through the day, whenever we have spare moment. Today, I would like to suggest to you the response of the psalm, which would develop in us the disposition to work not for our own glory but for His.

Non nobis, Domine, non nobis, sed nomini tuo da gloriam

Not to us, Lord, not to us, but to your name be the glory!

And pray that my ministry may be directed not to my glory, but to His.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit; Amen.

(A version of this homily was first preached to my maternal family gathered in the parish church of St. Francis Xavier, Bejai for a Thanksgiving Mass celebrated there on 19 May 2025.)

(Image reference: Dish with IHS Monogram and Floral Pattern, Valencian artist, c. 1430-1440, Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Cloisters Collection via www.imaginemdei.blogspot.com/)

We Are His People: Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Easter

The fourth Sunday of Easter is known as Good Shepherd Sunday, when we, still in the season of Easter, contemplate Our Lord as the Good Shepherd. In the Gospel today Our Lord quite clearly uses the language of sheep and shepherd:

My sheep hear my voice;
I know them, and they follow me.

What is important to remember about this relationship is not, perhaps, the loyalty of Our Lord to those who belong to His fold, this cannot be denied (see 2 Timothy 2:13), but His power:

No one can take them out of my hand.
My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all,
and no one can take them out of the Father’s hand.

The “no one” being referred to here is, of course, the Devil and his minions. The devil can have no power over those who belong to Christ. Which is why, my dear brothers and sisters, we who belong to Christ must not fear demonic possession. Too often I have seen Catholics obsessed with the devil! Possession by the devil is nearly impossible for those who belong to Christ and remain faithful to the grace of God. More than once, I have heard priests assure us that most often what we think is demonic possession is simply psychological disorder and needs medical assistance. Demonic possession is rare, and we should not give the devil any undue attention.

This is not to say that the Devil, and his minions, do not attack us, or prey, on our fears and desires. Of course, he does! He has been doing so since the beginning of time. However, it is important to know that for those of us who cling firmly to Christ, there is no danger. Every time we are tempted, and succumb to this temptation, we can return to Our Lord through the sacrament of confession and subsequently through Holy Communion. Pope Francis has gained fame for saying that the shepherd must smell of his sheep. Our divine Shepherd, however, by giving us His Own Body and Blood, makes sure that we smell of Him!

These are the ones who have survived the time of great distress;
they have washed their robes
and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

All of this is to say that we are safe in the embrace of the Shepherd against all kind of demonic attack because no one can take us out of His hand. There is just one person who can do that, however, and that is ourselves. Our God is a generous God who gives us free will. He does not bind us to His love, even though it is the best thing that can happen to us. He gives us the will to accept or depart. And so, my dear brothers and sisters, while no one can snatch us away from the hand of God, we are able to fall from his hands only if we are negligent.

And our negligence is very difficult to come by if we follow the teachings of the Church and live a sacramental life: confess regularly, go to Mass every Sunday, receive Holy Communion, and make sure you do not receive Holy Communion unless you have made a good confession recently, especially if you have committed a mortal sin. One could also add that we should use the sacramentals frequently, blessed water, for example.

And there is one more thing, we must pray to the saints, not for any material favours, though it does not hurt to do so, but primarily to grow in virtue. We must ask the saints to help us to be more like them and imitate them actively. There are so many saints in the Church of Our Lord, each marked by definite virtues. Pray to a number of them that we may grow in the virtues they embodied! Growth in the virtuous life, supported by an active sacramental life, will ensure that we are always in the tight embrace of the Good Shepherd.

These are very, VERY, simple requirements my dear brothers and sisters, and if we reject them, then in the words of the apostles Paul and Barnabas, we condemn ourselves as unworthy of eternal life.

For this reason, I join my voice with that of the apostles and urge you “to remain faithful to the grace of God.”

(A version of this homily was first preached to the faithful at the Thanksgiving Mass celebrated with and for the parishioners of Our Lady of the Rosary, Fatorda on 11 May 2025.)

(Image reference: The Good Shepherd, Mosaic of the bezel above the entrance door of the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, c.425, via www.meisterdrucke.uk, Ravenna.)

Come and Worship: Homily for the Third Sunday of Easter

Just a few weeks ago, at the reading of the Passion of Our Lord we encountered the negation, or the denial, of Peter. Three times, Peter denied Our Lord and today, on the third Sunday of Easter we see that Peter, is offered the opportunity to affirm his love for our Lord three times.

Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?"
Simon Peter answered him, "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you."
Jesus said to him, "Feed my lambs."

And then to subsequent confessions of his love, Our Lord says to Peter, "Tend my sheep," returning after the final confession to: “Feed my lambs.”

Brothers and sisters, I feel particularly grateful to be able to reflect on these words at my first public mass of thanksgiving because in a way it sets the tone for what my priestly ministry must be: Feeding, and tending to, God’s people. Feeding, must of course, refer to the gift of the Eucharist, the bread of angels and food from heaven, and tending refers clearly to the sacramental care that flows from the Eucharist. St Bede, the patron of the seminary at which I received priestly formation, says “To feed Christ’s sheep is to feed the faith of those who believe in him by exercising proper pastoral care.” Too often in our times, pastoral care is understood to be making the person feel comfortable. Love is mistaken for being cute all the time. But Saint Bede allows us to understand that pastoral care is primarily about feeding the faith to those who believe in Our Lord, and I would add bringing Him to those who do not yet believe.

And in this way, my dear brothers and sisters, the Gospel today can be read in a way that is not limited to freshly ordained priests; on the contrary! If the denial of Peter is a useful location from which to think about our own denials, I would suggest that Peter’s affirmation allows us to contemplate how we can confess our love for Our Lord.

One of the great fruits of the Vatican Council II was that it made us aware of the fact that by virtue of their baptism, the laity too share in the priesthood of Christ (Apostolicam Actuositatem §2). As in the words from the book of Revelation (5:10):

you have made them to be a kingdom and priests to our God,
    and they will reign on earth.

This verse from Revelation makes it very clear, we are here, called to serve our God through worship, and being worship due to a king, must be noble in every way.

This quality, and indeed the scale, of worship is made very clear to us in the second reading today, also from the Book of Revelation.

every creature in heaven and on earth
and under the earth and in the sea,
everything in the universe

Gives praise to God in the act of celestial worship that John witnesses in his vision. And then, after this act of praise, “the elders fell down and worshiped.”

Too often in our times, my dear brothers and sisters, our worship is casual, and sloppy, if not marked by the vice of sloth. My dear brothers and sisters, we are called to be noble, not just in our worship, but in our every action. Indeed, work and worship exist in a tight relationship with each other. One cannot be noble in worship, if one is not noble in our daily life, and inversely, without nobility in our daily life there will be no nobility in worship.

But our life must begin with worship, and this obligation is made obvious also by today’s Gospel. A question that seems to have exercised, and bothered, several early Christian commentators on the Bible was what were the apostles doing fishing? What were they doing, when they should be out proclaiming the Gospel! And so, dear brothers and sisters, we could consider it telling, that they did not catch any fish on that night expedition. And now listen to the words of Our Lord from the shore:

"Children, have you caught anything to eat?"

Note, the word, children, as if to suggest, you innocents, have you learned nothing? And to their negative response he then replies

"Cast the net over the right side of the boat
and you will find something."

My dear brothers and sisters, the message that Our Lord intended for the apostles, and for us, should be clear. You are not called to be immersed in the world. Hence forth, spend your lives in nothing but the service of the Church. You have been called to be fishers of men, to proclaim the Gospel to the farthest ends of the earth. And, more importantly, without Him we can do nothing, and more particularly, without worshiping Him, we can do nothing.

Our Lord, in His infinite wisdom follows up this lesson by pointing the apostles in the direction of worship. He gives them bread and fish, echoing not only his miracle of the multiplication of bread and fish, but also of the miracle of the Eucharist. In other words, when lost in the world, return to the Eucharist, and throw yourself down before Him, be fed and then strengthened, proclaim the Gospel.

But let our worship, dear brothers and sisters, be noble. Like the Magi, let us bring our finest gifts to the altar, silks and gold thread, silver and gold, incense and the finest music. Let us wear our finest clothes, genuflect in respect, kneel in worship, and receive communion in a way that acknowledges that it is the most important thing in the world. Let us pursue beauty in our every action, so that this beauty can then be offered to Our Triune God in worship that imitates the worship that is going on in heaven all the time.

(A version of this homily was first preached to the faithful gathered at the parish church of Our Lady of the Rosary, Caranzalem on the occasion of my First Mass of Thanksgiving on the 4^th of May 2025.)

(Image reference: “Adoration of the Magi,” Gentile da Fabriano, 1423, The Uffizi Gallery, Florence.)