My dear brothers and sisters in Our Lord Jesus Christ; this Sunday, we can say that the liturgical life of the Church has calmed down after a very, very, long time. This period of intense activity began on Ash Wednesday, followed by the forty days of Lent, that then entered into the intensity of the Holy Triduum of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. Soon after we celebrated the great feast of Easter, which is celebrated not for a single day, but for an entire week! One whole week celebrated as if it were a single day! And then the fifty days of Eastertide, a period when we continue to remain in the high of Easter.
Some time ago, a wise Catholic pointed out to me that Our Holy Mother Church always ensures that the seasons of privation and penance are never longer than the season of celebration. Thus, the penitential period of Advent lasts for four weeks, but Christmastide lasts all the way to February with the feast of the Presentation of Our Lord! Lent may last forty days, but Easter lasts a whole fifty days until the great feast of Pentecost, which we celebrated a few weeks ago. We then celebrate the solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, followed by the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Our Lord, and finally the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Our Lord. Now, we can take a breath and settle down.
Or can we? Can a Christian ever settle down into a beige normality? From the readings for this Sunday, it becomes obvious that we may not. It becomes obvious that our calling as Christians is not to be regular Joes. Our calling, our vocation, is to the sacred priesthood of Our Lord Jesus Christ!
The last line of the first reading for Sunday, from the book of Exodus, makes this clear in no uncertain terms:
You shall be to me a kingdom of priests, a holy nation.
Of course, as is often the case in salvation history, we merit to become holy only if we fulfil certain norms, and the Lord is clear when He speaks with Moses:
if you hearken to my voice and keep
my covenant,
you shall be my special possession,
dearer to me than all other people,
though all the earth is mine.
You shall be to me a kingdom of priests, a holy nation.
On Saturday, we celebrated the feast of a great priest, St.Anthony of Lisbon (or Padua, it depends who you speak with!). And the lectionary for his priest is also redolent with tasks necessary for a priest.
the LORD has anointed me;
He has sent me to bring glad tidings to the lowly,
to heal the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives
and release to the prisoners,
To announce a year of favor from the LORD
and a day of vindication by our God,
to comfort all who mourn
Our membership, dear brothers and sisters, in God’s holy people is through the ritual of anointing at our baptism. Our priesthood requires that we share this oil of gladness with others, binding not just the wounds of those wounded physically, but the wounds of those who are brokenhearted. We clean, or purify them, of their wounds and make them holy. It is the job of the priest to make things sacred and maintain them in this condition.
The liberty and release that we are called to proclaim is from the false certitudes and games of this world. The devil offers us prizes in this world, suggesting that we should compete with our neighbours for attention and prestige. Sell our lives to him so that gaining homes, cars, jewels is more important than living a holy life.
The year of favour of the Lord, is what this Sunday’s second reading reminds us about: the opportunity to be reconciled with God, primarily through the sacrament of reconciliation! My dear brothers and sisters, if you have not experienced the caress of Christ in the confessional for more than fifteen days, return to Him, who can give you rest, and comfort.
These were the tasks that St. Anthony fulfilled; and, as we gather in the shadow of his home here in Lisbon, it is his help that we must petition so that we may keep the covenant of our God. It is His covenant that we must keep, if we are to be His holy people. And yet, we know how often we fail at living up to this requirement of fulfilling our obligations as members of His holy people. As Our Lord speaks to us in the Gospel for Sunday:
The harvest is abundant but the
laborers are few;
so ask the master of the harvest
to send out laborers for his harvest.
Our Lord asks that we commit ourselves to the task of bringing in the great harvest of souls who will be saved from the fires of hell on the day of judgement. This task belongs not just to the ministerial priesthood, but to all of us. Calling for the intercession of St. Anthony, let us commit ourselves to this task of becoming God’s holy people.
Santo António de Lisboa, rogai por nós.
(A version of this homily was first preached to the faithful in English at the Igreja da Madalena, Lisbon on 13 June 2026.)
(Image reference: Christening in Assisi, Vicente Poveda y Juan, 1899.)
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