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.)

A Trinitarian Love: Homily for the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

The feast of the Most Holy Trinity is said to be a nightmare for most preachers, and rightly so, for how does one communicate one of the most complex mysteries of the Catholic faith, within the space of a few minutes? One cannot, and therefore, I will not try.

What I will do, however, is to point out that at the heart of understanding the Trinity is a relationship, that of love, a love that is so strong, that each person of the Trinity is present in each other. As Saint Augustine put it: “Each are in each, and all in each, and each in all, and all are one.”

There is much that this love can teach us, who are Catholic, and in fact, this is the love that should inspire our daily living, for this is what Our Lord taught us. The first location that this love can inspire, must most surely be the nuptial love between husband and wife.

In the Gospels (Mt 19; Mk 10) responding to the question from the Pharisees on the question of divorce, Our Lord teaches:

“Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” (Mt 19: 4-6)

First, let us bear in mind that when Our Lord says “the one who made them at the beginning”, He is referring to Himself. This is the teaching also of the first reading today, from the Book of Proverbs. It is generally understood, that the reference to Wisdom in the Bible is to Christ Himself. The first reading teaches us today, that God the Son existed at the side of the Father before time, was by the side of the Father when the world was crafted, and indeed, was the craftsman of the world.

Thus, when Our Lord says “the one who made them at the beginning”, He is referring to not only to Himself but to Himself in union with the Father, and the Holy Spirit that is born from their love for each other.

And so, in this episode when the Pharisees seeks an answer on the question of divorce, the creator is telling us that he seeks to see married couples united in love just as the Holy Trinity is united in love. So united must married couples be, that despite maintaining the distinct identity, they cannot, simultaneously, be distinguished as anything but one flesh.

This imitation of Trinitarian love need not be restricted to married love alone, however. This morning, we celebrate the inauguration of the Youth Group of this parish. Youth is often marked by vigour, and this vigour is made all the more beautiful when it is directed towards the common good. Indeed, in the two weeks that I have been here, I have seen evidence of this Trinitarian love that animates the parish youth group, when they offer their personal efforts for the group, seeing in the group an extension of themselves. In doing so, they recognize the great Catholic truth; that the person finds fullest articulation and coherence of themselves, not in a selfish individualism, but in cooperation with the group. In other words, the success of the group does not imply a loss for the person, both grow; and a loss for the individual is a loss for the group.

Indeed, the very technical understanding of indwelling which marks the theological understanding of the Most Holy Trinity, can be explained through these human loves that we have. In a good marriage, the spouse see themselves fulfilled in the other. They are so invested in, to use a term popular today, or so much in love with the spouse, that they cannot see themselves alive in any other way. The good Catholic, works for the common good because she or he realise that is the only way in which they can truly achieve personal growth!

For the model of love that the Most Holy Trinity offers us, dear brothers and sisters, let us give thanks in the words of the Gospel acclamation today:

Glory to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit;
to God who is, who was, and who is to come.

(A version of this homily was first preached to the faithful at the Cathedral parish of St. Catherine of Alexandria, Old Goa on 15 June 2025.)

(Image reference: “The Most Holy Trinity,” Laurent Girardin, c.1490, The ClevelandMuseum of Art, Cleveland.)

An Identity Renewed: Homily for the Solemnity of Pentecost

Some time ago, while interacting with a group of seminarians I heard the following anecdote from their life in the seminary. The question was of identities, and they were taught that we are first human, then Indian (assuming the seminary is in India), and only then, in the third place, Christian.

My dear brothers and sisters, if what was reported to me is true, then it is not only a great shame, but a matter of great concern, that such unchristian knowledge is being propagated via seminaries.

It is not that this teaching is entirely untrue. Naturally, and chronologically, speaking, it is a fact that one is first born, and is hence human; that we are then registered in the State records, and receive our nationality and/or citizenship; and it is only then, after a period that in the old days was about 45 days, that one is baptized, and hence becomes Christian. 

But the life of Christians is not about the natural alone, but also about the supernatural! The feast of the Pentecost that we celebrate today, is indeed, all about the cooperation of the natural and the supernatural, and the priority of the supernatural over the natural. Through Our Lord Jesus Christ, and the gift of His Holy Spirit, the supernatural has not only triumphed over the world and the natural, but indeed, remade it! As in the case we just heard from the Acts of the Apostles:

there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven
staying in Jerusalem.

but they were confused
because each one heard them speaking in his own language.
They were astounded, and in amazement they asked,
"Are not all these people who are speaking Galileans?
Then how does each of us hear them in his native language?

How else, but because of the work of the Holy Spirit, that remakes the world?

I would like to return to the anecdote from the seminary; the formator who filled the seminarians with this nonsense seems to have misunderstood the very nature of baptism. When we are baptized, we are – through the power of the Holy Spirit – claimed for Christ, the stain of original sin is removed, and we are made worthy of entering heaven.

Listen to the words of St. Peter in his first epistle (1: 18-19):

You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish.

The ways of our ancestors, those who belonged to the world, were – and remain – useless, and it was only with the gift of the Precious Blood of Christ and His Holy Spirit, that we are renewed, or made anew. As the response to the psalm says:

Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth.

After Pentecost, and the sacraments of baptism and confirmation that flow from it, we are no longer anything first, other than Christian. If we are not Christian first, and we stress our natural identities rather than the supernatural then we have missed the point, and we are nothing. For, as St. Paul teaches, "the wisdom of the flesh is death" (Romans 8: 6).

This Christian identity, is not some mere social identity, that is, not a natural identity, but in fact, a supernatural identity. The Christian identity via baptism is something that changes the core of our being, an ontological change - to use a technical word - and is about acknowledging Christ as Lord. As Saint Paul says in the portion from his first letter to the Corinthians that we just read:

No one can say, "Jesus is Lord," except by the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit, which was poured on the world on Pentecost, continues to claim souls for Christ, and to guide these souls towards union with Him and the Father. More than this, as St. Paul continues to teach, it makes us one body. This is the body that we belong to, the mystical body of Christ, which is His Church. We are, through baptism, therefore, not Jews, or Greeks, or slaves or free persons, or Indians, or Pakistanis, or Portuguese, or anything else but Christians; which is to say, one body in Christ, who is our first identity.

Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful
and kindle in them the fire of your love.

Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created,
and you shall renew the face of the earth.

(This homily was first preached to the faithful at the Cathedral parish of St. Catherine of Alexandria, Old Goa on the 7 of June 2025, following the first vespers of the solemnity of Pentecost.)

(Image reference: Constantine the Great, accompanied by the bishops of the First Council of Nicaea (325), holding the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed of 381, anonymous icon writer, via Wikipedia.)