The Triumph of Tortured Flesh: Homily for the Solemnity of Corpus Christi

Dearly beloved in Christ; this Sunday we celebrate the solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, a feast also known in its Latin form: Corpus Christi.

A little detour into the historical origins of this feast tells us so much about the miracle that we celebrate on this day. In 1263, during the celebration of a Mass in the city of Bolsena, a consecrated host began to bleed onto the corporal. This bleeding was not coincidental, the priest – Peter of Prague – who was celebrating the mass had been privately nursing doubts whether the bread was really transformed into the Body and Blood of Our Lord. With the bleeding of the host, Peter of Prague’s doubts were cleared.

But this private revelation to the priest, did not remain private. Word spread, like wildfire and reached the ears of the Pope, Urban IV, who was resident in the city of Orvieto nearby. Popular belief holds that Pope Urban IV was prompted by this Eucharistic miracle to institute the feast day, and that he commissioned Thomas Aquinas to compose the Office for the Mass and Liturgy of the Hours to honor the Holy Eucharist as the Body of Christ. From that order, we receive the great hymn Pange Lingua, the last verses of which are the Tantum Ergo which we sing at the exposition of the Blessed Sacrament – the Most Holy Body and Blood of Our Lord.

In other words, on this great solemnity, we celebrate the flesh of Our Lord, which, as He tells us, in the Gospel today, is given:

for the life of the world.

Life, whether in this world or the next, is not possible without consuming the bread of life that He provides. And what provision, for the flesh that we celebrate today is not just flesh, but flesh that was tortured on the cross, the effects of which remained present even after His resurrection!

The great solemnity of Corpus Christi, my dear brothers and sisters, is the celebration of tortured flesh!

Recollect the words of St. Peter (1 Pet 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.

My dear brothers and sisters, I wish to remind you once again of a fact that I enjoy repeating. That of the five Eucharistic miracles that have been subjected to clinical examination, all five have been marked by the presence of suffering myocardial tissue.

This detail is important, because it reminds us of the great cost with which our salvation was won, and the great cost that we must be willing to pay to participate in the salvation of the world. In other words, we adore, and consume, this tortured flesh so that we may gain the confidence and courage to subject our own flesh to the test. Recall the words from the first reading:

Remember how for forty years now the LORD, your God,
has directed all your journeying in the desert,
so as to test you by affliction
…

He therefore let you be afflicted with hunger,
and then fed you with manna,
…
in order to show you that not by bread alone does one live,
but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of the LORD.

My dear brothers and sisters, it is not from the bread of this world, that we live, but from the bread provided by the Word of God. And this bread is given to us to sustain us in the afflictions of this world, so that it is not this world that will triumph, but the world to come. And this offers us a useful little lesson.

The world is not unaware of the value of the torture of the body. We exercise, go to the gym, we diet, deprive ourselves of food. We are happy and willing to torture ourselves, but too often the torture is so that we can gain the limited gifts of this world. But listen to the words of St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians (25-27):

Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable wreath,

but we an imperishable one.

So I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air;

but I punish my body and enslave it,

so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified.

On the day when we celebrate and venerate this Most Precious Body and Blood of Our Lord, let us remember that He permits us to consume Him, so that He may transform our lowly bodies into His glorious body. We have a role to play in this transformation, the mortification of our flesh. Let us hasten to do so, so that we may win forever this promised crown of glory!

(Image reference: The Mass of Bolsena, Raphael, 1512 and 1514, Apostolic Palace, Vatican City.)

Show Glory to the Holy Trinity: Homily for the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, how fitting it is that my last day as assistant to the parish priest of the Cathedral of the Archdiocese of Goa and Daman is a Sunday – the beginning, and end, of a new week. How even more fitting that this closure of a cycle is on the Sunday when we celebrate the solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity. Fitting, because the theme that I will develop, animated by the teachings of the lectionary for this great feast, has been the theme that has animated my first year in pastoral life.

In the first reading we hear the words that Moses addresses to God

If I find favor with you, O Lord,
do come along in our company.
This is indeed a stiff-necked people; yet pardon our wickedness and sins,
and receive us as your own.

We are as stiff-necked and wicked and sinful as the people of Israel, our fathers in faith, and yet, the Triune God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – chose to come into our company and pitch tent among us. This tent is present in every Catholic Church in the world, and in this Cathedral our forefathers built a particularly beautiful tent for Him in the form of the Chapel of the Most Blessed Sacrament.

This chapel of the Blessed Sacrament is precious not only because God – the Most Holy Trinity – dwells there, but also for the instruction we receive on our faith and the importance of the Blessed Sacrament through the paintings on the walls. One of these paintings is a representation of the vision of Jacob, where he saw a stairway leading to heaven, and angels ascending and descending between heaven and earth. This place was where Jacob set up a shrine to honour God.

As I have preached so many times before, every tabernacle of the Blessed Sacrament is the site of the ladder that allows us to reach heaven, and there are countless angels ascending and descending at this spot praising the Triune God in His glory.

My dear brothers and sisters, when Our Lord Jesus Christ is present in the Blessed Sacrament, He is not present alone. Recall His words to the disciples in the Gospel according to John (14:10):

I am in the Father and the Father is in me

And further in the same chapter (14:21):

Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them,

and we will come to them and make our home with them.

Where the Son is, there is the Father; where the Father and Son are, the Holy Spirit who is born of their love also is. In other words, in every tabernacle where the Son – the ladder that bridges heaven and earth – is, the Father and the Holy Spirit are also present.

It should not, therefore, surprise us, that two of the prayers of Fatima, mention the Holy Trinity and the Blessed Sacrament in the same breath.

Most Holy Trinity, I adore Thee! My God, my God, I love Thee in the Most Blessed Sacrament.

And

Most Holy Trinity—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—I adore Thee profoundly. I offer Thee the most precious Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, present in all the tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges, and indifferences whereby He is offended. And through the infinite merits of His Most Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I beg of Thee the conversion of poor sinners.

If this is the case, if God, the Holy Trinity dwells with us, should we not be more careful in our behaviour before the Blessed Sacrament? As we read in the first reading, the moment Moses realized he was in the presence of God, he:

at once bowed down to the ground in worship

This is the place where angels ascend and descend, and we should genuflect at the very least before the tabernacle, yet we are so stiff-necked, wicked and sinful that most people simply walk past the tabernacle without recognizing the God who dwells there, for no other reason, than for us! As I have said before, dear brothers and sisters, a mere bow is not sufficient, what makes us Catholic is the fact that we genuflect to demonstrate that we recognize the true and real presence of God among us.

In a recent catechism offered at the Wednesday public audience, Pope Leo appealed to us:

let us allow ourselves to be shaped inwardly by the rites, symbols, gestures and above all the living presence of Christ.

My dear brothers and sisters, the living presence of Christ is the presence of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. With Him are the Father and the Holy Spirit. Let us allow, therefore, the traditions of our fathers, that showed profound respect to the Blessed Sacrament, to shape our lives and our souls as well.

And so, let us make the words of the Gospel acclamation today our own and promise to give:

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

May the Triune God bless you all. Keep me in your prayers.

(A version of this homily was preached in Concanim to the faithful at the Cathedral parish of St. Catherine of Alexandria, Old Goa on 31 May 31, 2026.)

(Image reference: The Holy Trinity, Sebastiano Conca, Chiesa di San Francesco Saverio, Rome.)

Remain in Jerusalem! Homily for Pentecost Sunday

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ Our Lord; in the first reading last Sunday, we read that Our Lord commanded the disciples to not depart, or remain, in Jerusalem, and,

wait for “the promise of the Father
about which you have heard me speak;
for John baptized with water,
but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”

This Sunday, when we celebrate the feast of the Pentecost, and the fulfillment of the promise of Our Lord, we read:

When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled,
they were all in one place together.

Remain in Jerusalem, was the command of Our Lord to the disciples, and they were faithful to this commandment, remaining “all in one place together,” and earlier in Acts (1: 14) we read that:

They all joined together constantly in prayer,

along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers.

The word, the command, the request; “remain” is not foreign to the language of Our Lord. Listen, for example, to His words to His disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane, on the night before His Passion.

“I am deeply grieved, even to death; remain here, and stay awake with me.” (Mt 23. 38)

These words allow us to understand that Jerusalem is not just a definite geographic location, it is also an attitude. It is an attitude of remaining in unity – with Holy Mother Church, an attitude of unity in prayer, an attitude of waiting for the Passion (including our own) to unfold, and an attitude of waiting for the fulfillment of the divine promises.

In the Gospel according to John (15: 9) Our Lord says to his disciples:

As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide [or remain] in my love.

We understand Jerusalem, therefore, to be the place of the love of God the Father and God the Son; the Love of the Father for the Son, and of the Son for the Father. And where these two persons of the Holy Trinity are, can the third, the Holy Ghost be far behind?

And suddenly there came from the sky
a noise like a strong driving wind,
and it filled the entire house in which they were.

With the entry of the Holy Spirit into the room, we have the laying of the foundation of the New Jerusalem which will be completed at the end of time.

Let us contemplate an aspect of St. John the evangelist’s vision of the New Jerusalem for just a moment:

It has a great, high wall with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels (Rev 21: 12)

Its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. (Rev 21: 25)

The book of Revelation teaches us that the New Jerusalem has no gates because it will receive the nations and the kings of the earth (24) – in other words people will come in. But Our Lord’s words to Peter “and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it” (Mt 16: 18) teach us also that the task of the New Jerusalem is to go out through these open gates and combat the world.

Listen to the words from the first reading:

And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit
and began to speak in different tongues,
as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim.

Those of us who are filled with the Holy Spirit from the moment of our Baptism, are enabled to proclaim the Kingdom of God to those people who have lived in darkness. As we hear in the Gospel today, through the apostles Our Lord Himself instructs us of our task, as citizens of His Jerusalem:

As the Father has sent me, so I send you.

To employ the words of St. Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians:

Brothers and sisters:
No one can say, "Jesus is Lord," except by the Holy Spirit.

We have all been given the great gift of the Holy Spirit so that renewed at every Eucharist, we might sally forth from the great city of God, and do battle with the forces of darkness that lurk around us. It is our obligation to bring light to the world and convert the world to the recognition of the triumph of Our Lord. We are not alone in this battle, we have with us the Advocate, who will teach us what to say (and do) (Jn 14: 26).

Remain, therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, faithful to your tasks, and strong in His Love!

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

(A version of this homily was first preached to the faithful at the Cathedral parish of St. Catherine of Alexandria, on 23 May 2026.)

(Image reference: Pentecost (detail), El Greco, c. 1600, Museo del Prado, Madrid.)