The Beauty of Christ: Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Easter

Behold, I am laying a stone in Zion,
a cornerstone, chosen and precious,
and whoever believes in it shall not be put to shame.

My dear brothers and sisters in Our Lord Jesus Christ. The point of this reference to the prophet Isaiah (28:16) in the first letter of St. Peter is quite simply that if we place our trust in this chosen and precious corner stone, if we allow ourselves to be obedient to the will of the Father, to be moulded as per His will, we too shall become like him, precious stones:

built into a spiritual house
to be a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices
acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

Reading this promise of our future, our minds should race to that wonderful portion in St. John’s Revelation (21) which speaks of the New Jerusalem descending from heaven:

 It has the glory of God and a radiance like a very rare jewel, like jasper, clear as crystal. (11)

The wall is built of jasper, while the city is pure gold, clear as glass. The foundations of the wall of the city are adorned with every jewel; the first was jasper, the second sapphire, the third agate, the fourth emerald, the fifth onyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, the twelfth amethyst. And the twelve gates are twelve pearls, each of the gates is a single pearl, and the street of the city is pure gold, transparent as glass. (18-21)

This description is as much a description of a city, as it is a description of a jewel, which contains every kind of precious stone, all set in gold. The description can therefore be that of a city. i.e. the Church, or the citizen of that heavenly city, a Christian.

My dear brothers and sisters, last week when we celebrated Good Shepherd Sunday, I shared with you the fact that the Good, in Good Shepherd, is a translation of the Greek work kalos, which also translates to beautiful. Christ is the Beautiful Shepherd, and those who associate with him, also become beautiful. A beauty that is manifest in the spiritual house, the Church of God, that they cooperate in building with God.

In the book of the Revelation, every one of the twelve foundations of the New Jerusalem was carved with a name of the apostle (21:14).  This is to say, through their association with Him – the corner stone of this entire edifice – the apostles became the foundation for something beautiful that we should be honoured to be a part of.

the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. (Rev 21: 23-24)

Through our baptism, we are already a part of this beautiful city, the New Jerusalem. However, if we commit ourselves to Christ, if we make Him the cornerstone of our lives, the foundation on which we build our lives and our every action, we can more fully, more completely, be a part of this Heavenly Jerusalem.

The beauty of Our Lord, however, is not a beauty that the world recognizes immediately. Recall the words of the Prophet Isaiah (53:2-3):

he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
    nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by others;
    a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity;
and as one from whom others hide their faces

This was a prophetic description of the crucified Christ and knowing that Our Lord identified Himself to Thomas and the others by His wounds, we know that His Resurrection, that we are still celebrating today on the fifth Sunday of Easter, did nothing to erase these wounds. His beauty, therefore, was more than skin deep.

Christian beauty is often not immediately apparent to the world, which is why the beauty of the liturgy, of religious life, of classical music, of Gregorian chant, is often ignored for more immediate pleasures, which are confused for beauty, but which, in time, we recognize to be vulgar, and gross.

St. Thomas Aquinas, the foundational theologian of the Catholic Church, identifies three features of beauty: integritas, consonantia, and claritas. The beautiful object must have integritas i.e. coherence of the whole; Consonantia a proportional, or harmonious, relationship among parts, and claritas, reflect the radiant and attractive power of truth – who is a person, Our Lord Jesus Christ. It is when an object, or a person, possesses these qualities that they can be recognized as beautiful.

May Our Lord grant us the grace to strive to realise these three features of beauty in our lives.

(A version of this homily was first preached to the faithful at the Cathedral parish of St. Catherine of Alexandria, Old Goa, on 4 May 2026.)

(Jesus monogram, Dominikus Zimmermann, 1720, Bayerisches Nationalmuseum.)

Cor Ad Cor Loquitor: Homily for Good Shepherd Sunday

I am the good shepherd, says the Lord;
I know my sheep, and mine know me.

and the sheep hear his voice,
as the shepherd calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.
… and the sheep follow him,
because they recognize his voice.

My dear brothers and sisters in Our Lord Christ Jesus, today, the fourth Sunday of Easter, we celebrate Good Shepherd Sunday, and these verses I just recalled, first from the Gospel acclamation and subsequently from the Gospel, offer us great insights into the heart of the Good Shepherd.

The sheep recognize his voice. How do they recognize his voice? St. John Henry Newman’s motto provides the answer: Cor ad cor loquitor; heart speaks to heart. His sheep, hear Him, because there is a resonance of His voice in their hearts. This is to say, their hearts start vibrating to the same pitch as that of His voice. This motto is relevant because it resonates with the response of the crowd to St. Peter’s words in the first reading from the Acts of the Apostles:

Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart

It is to our hearts that the voice of the Good Shepherd is directed, my dear brothers and sisters, and his voice is directed towards all of us Christians, and to every single person in the world. He speaks to us through His apostles, and His people, who were, and are, charged with proclaiming the Good News to all the earth. Blessed are those who hear this news, who hear His voice, and whose hearts are moved, whose hearts are cut, so that they accept baptism into the faith, and practice the spiritual and corporeal acts of mercy of our faith.

Resonance, my dear brothers and sisters, is manifest when one object responds to a vibration in the other by vibrating similarly. That the life of virtue would allow one’s heart to resonate when called by the Good Shepherd should not be strange. “I am the Good Shepherd” in the Greek original reads:

              Egō eimi ho poimēn ho kalos

The word kalos could translate to good, but it could also translate to noble or beautiful. The Good Shepherd is simultaneously the noble and beautiful shepherd. If our lives are already marked by the practice of beauty or nobility, it is logical that our hearts will resonate with that of the Noble and Beautiful Shepherd.

It needs to be pointed out, my dear brothers and sisters, that Christianity does not have a monopoly on virtuous living. It was possible for the crowd that St. Peter addressed to be cut to the heart because they were following the law of Moses. Similarly, the pagans themselves knew the virtues and many tried to follow them. God speaks to all peoples in every age and gives them the tools necessary – beauty, virtue, nobility – so that their heart may resonate when they hear the proclamation of the Gospel.

A life of virtue alone, however, is not enough to get to heaven, and to avoid eternal death. It is only through baptism and through this baptism becoming worthy to consume His flesh that we can enter heaven. But a life spent in the practice of virtue does allow us to respond to the call of the Good Shepherd.

But what of those who hear His voice, preached through his missionaries, through Christians at work in their daily lives, and yet choose not to respond, not to be baptised. What of these people?

Once again, the voice of St. Peter offers us insight: they choose to remain with the “wicked generation.” And because they choose to do so, be sure that these people cannot enter into eternal life, for these are the words of the Master:

I am the gate.
Whoever enters through me will be saved,
and will come in and go out and find pasture.

Those who do not enter through this gate, those who do not accept baptism do not receive the reward of the salvation. They cannot receive salvation because it makes no sense that Our Lord suffered and died so that salvation may be gained, that He asks that we be baptized in the healing waters He provides, and we reject this path to eternal life.

Beloved brothers, let us set out for these pastures which are the spiritual joys of heaven. There those who respond to the call of the Good Shepherd, look upon the face of God with unclouded vision and feast at the banquet of life for ever more.

(A version of this homily was first preached to the faithful at the Cathedral parish of St. Catherine of Alexandria, Old Goa on 26 April 2026.)

(Image reference: Christ the Good Shepherd (mosaic detail), anonymous artist, Basilica San Lorenzo fuori le mura, Rome.)