Return to Grace! Homily for the Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

My dear brothers and sisters in Our Lord Jesus Christ; Pope Leo XIV was quoting St. Augustine when, at the start of his pontificate, he said: “With you a Christian, for you a bishop.” Today, I would like to slightly alter those words saying, “With you a Christian, for you a priest.”

In the acclamation to the Gospel a few minutes ago we heard:

You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation;
announce the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.

These words profoundly mark one aspect of what a priest is. Taken from the already holy assembly of God, a people who are charged with making the world holy, with announcing the Good News to those who still live in darkness, the priest is one who acts to strengthen this task of the Christian people.

Like Moses in the Old Testament, he acts on behalf of this holy assembly in their interaction with God. The priest is, like the bishop, a pontiff, a bridge builder. He is charged with building bridges between people, but above all, with securing the bridge between the people and God, so that the grace of God may flow down, through the sacraments, renewing this already holy people of God, empowering them in their attempt to be just to one another, and to others. One thing we must remember, the priest deals with grace, because without grace, we can do nothing.

Grace is possible primarily through the sacraments. Without the sacraments we can do little. Since the past 200 years, ever since the French revolution, or perhaps for the past 500 years, since the Protestant reformation, we in Europe, and then subsequently across the world, have been under the impression that we can change the world without grace. We have taken pride in our industry, in our wealth, in our political and social institutions. But, we have failed to realise that all of this was possible only due to the grace that flowed, through the sacraments, and the structures and institutions of our Holy Mother the Church.

Today, as we see our institutions collapsing around us, as Europe seems to fade ever more into irrelevance, it is time for us to recognize that we have been arrogant and misled. The answer to the civilizational crisis that we are facing is not in state programs – though these might help – but in a return to the Church, and the grace she offers through the sacraments. As Saint Paul teaches us in his letter to the Romans:

We were indeed buried with him through baptism into death,
so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead
by the glory of the Father,
we too might live in newness of life.

Newness in life, is possible only through baptism, which is the gateway to the sacraments that the Church offers us, and with it the assurance of eternal life. This is the only utopia that we should be aiming for, the only utopia that is worth realizing.

To enter this utopia, we need priests because without the priests we cannot access the sacraments. For this reason, my dear brothers and sisters, I ask you to pray for your priests, and more specially, to pray for me.

In this context I would like to quote St. John Maria Vianney here:

When the priest is a saint, his people will be holy.

When the priest is merely good, his people will be bad.

When the priest is bad, his people will be beasts!

Pray, therefore, that I other priests, and myself, will be saintly priests, so that we may all be the holy people of God. And in return for your prayers, I will make my own the words of the psalm we sang today:

The promises of the LORD I will sing forever,
through all generations my mouth shall proclaim your faithfulness.

Louvado seja o Nosso Senhor Jesus Cristo, e para sempre seja louvada a sua Mãe Maria Santíssima!

(A version of this homily was first preached in Portuguese to the faithful gathered at the parish church of São Nicolau, Lisbon for the anticipated Sunday Mass which was offered in thanksgiving for the gift of the sacred priesthood in the presence of friends who have supposed me through my life in Lisbon, on 27 June 2026.)

(Image reference: Ordination and First Mass of St. Juan de Mata, Vicente Carducho, 1634 – 1635, Museo del Prado, Madrid.)

The Value of Life: Homily for the Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time

So do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows

My dear brothers and sisters, this line from the Gospel for this twelfth Sunday in ordinary time hit me like a blow. Our Lord Himself is telling us that we are worth than many sparrows. This assurance of our worth comes after the words “do not be afraid.” We have every reason to be afraid, human life in the contemporary world is severely devalued, and there is perhaps no bigger illustration of this than the fact that human lives are often seen as more important than those of animals. Take the case of India, where so many human lives are often ended because the meat they eat, and at times are presumed to eat, is considered to be of a sacred animal.

Another example, of animal lives being used to devalue human lives is when pets are referred to as babies, children, and the owners of these pets are hailed as the parents of these animals. Such comparisons are admittedly cute, but when a term for a human being is used for an animal, and an animal is anthropomorphized what we are effectively doing is demeaning human life. And the reason for this is that despite all the emotional drama around pets, at the end of the day, when push comes to shove, it is unlikely that we will treat animals as human beings, and perhaps not accord them the same consideration we might have offered a human being.

But perhaps that boat has sailed, so many of us have come so far in treating animals as human beings, that we do not treat human beings with the respect and dignity that they deserve. Indeed, it could be safely said that animals are so often anthropomorphized because we have lost communion with other human beings, trapped as we are in bubbles of hyper-individualism.

It is for this reason that Our Lord assures us today as insists, “do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.”

Like Moses (Deu 30: 19), leader of Israel, Pope Saint John Paul II placed the choice that lies before us: a culture of life, or a culture of death. The culture that anthropomorphizes animals is, as should already have been obvious, is part of a culture of death. St. Paul, in the second reading today, in his letter to the Romans explains for us:

Through one man sin entered the world,
and through sin, death,

Any lifestyle, any cultural practice, that is not ordered towards Christ, and His teaching – of love of God and our neighbour – is one that is disordered. To suggest that a human life is equal to, or worse less, than that of a human being is to live a life that is disordered. To recognize that a animal life is to be respected, that animal must not be treated cruelly, but that their lives are not equal to that of a human being is to recognize the order of the universe ordained by God.

Last week, offered occasion to observe how Holy Mother Church has now entered the liturgical season of ordinary time. One the one hand this term ordinary is unfortunate, because it suggests to us that there is nothing special about this liturgical season. However, when we read ordinary, as a form of saying ordered towards Christ, we recognize that this is the time when we place the learnings of the previous liturgical seasons as signposts to direct our life deeper into the territory of Our Lord.

Ordinary time is the time to return to contemplating the great mysteries of our faith, of patience and perseverance, of sacrifice and penance, of death and the sure truth of the resurrection. With these mysteries guiding our lives there is no way we can slip into a culture of death, no matter how seductive they are.

(This homily was written after concelebrating a Mass at the Sanctuary of Fatima. A Mass which I offered for those who read this homily.)

(Image reference: Agnus Dei, Francisco Zurbaran, c. 1635 – c. 1640, Museo del Prado, Madrid.)

A Holy Priesthood: Homily for the eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

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.)