Key of David: Homily for the Third Sunday of Easter

Lord Jesus, open the Scriptures to us;
make our hearts burn while you speak to us.

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, these words from the Gospel acclamation rephrase the words of the disciples at Emmaus that we just heard proclaimed in the Gospel:

Were not our hearts burning within us
while he spoke to us on the way and opened the Scriptures to us?

These words, dear brothers and sisters, permit us to reflect on how to read the scriptures.

Ever since the Vatican Council II, Catholics have been encouraged to engage with the scriptures more actively. This is a good initiative, but we should be careful to not become like the Protestants, who with their cry of “Sola Scriptura” tend to read the scriptures literally, not relying on any other aid. If we adopt this principle, there is a danger that we will not be reading scripture correctly, because the reason to read the scriptures is to get to know Our Lord Jesus Christ more intimately. Indeed, we should allow Him to open up the scriptures for us, so that our hearts will burn while He speaks to us.

And how do we allow Him to open up the scriptures for us? By recognizing His presence in the scriptures, especially in the Old Testament! My dear brothers and sisters, what we need to recognize is that the Old Testament is not simply the history of Israel before Jesus came. On the contrary, the Old Testament has been preserved because it is composed of prophecies about Our Lord, as we learn in the first reading today, where St. Peter demonstrates how Psalm 16 is not about King David, but about Our Lord. The Old Testament is composed of prophecies, yes, but it is also about Our Lord acting silently in the history of Israel, even prior to His incarnation.

Take, for example, the pillar of fire, and the pillar of cloud that accompanied the Israelites as they fled Egypt – this was the Son accompanying His people in the wilderness.

The fourth of the O antiphons of Advent acclaims Christ as:

O Key of David,
opening the gates of God’s eternal Kingdom:
come and free the prisoners of darkness!

Jesus is to be the key through which we understand the Old Testament, and the Old Testament is to be the context through which we read the New. Once understood correctly, the scriptures open up not just our minds, but our hearts too!

For example, at the Paschal vigil this year, while lighting the new fire, because the kindling and wood had been well prepared, we soon had a pillar of fire before us, and my mind was taken to that first Passover, when the pillar of fire led the Israelites through the desert. Some years earlier, as a deacon, I had the privilege of carrying the freshly lit Paschal candle through a darkened church, and received the powerful sensation of the pillar of fire that had cut through the darkness of the Egypt and led Israel through the waters of the Red Sea. And finally, when taking the Blessed Sacrament back to the tabernacle, and have to – in the unusual arrangement within the Sé of Goa – pass through the people who bow in adoration, I think of the pillar of cloud that dwelt with the people of Israel as they sojourned in the desert and pray:

You are in our midst, O Lord, and we bear your name. (Jer 14: 9 NCB)

But the Old Testament does not merely provide us with a deeper sense of Our Lord’s personality; it is also the framework within which we can understand the New Testament. This past Tuesday, we read from the Acts of the Apostles that there was no needy person among them, because:

those who owned property or houses would sell them,
bring the proceeds of the sale,
and put them at the feet of the Apostles,
and they were distributed to each according to need.

If we recognize that the young Church, described in the Acts of the Apostles, is the new Israel, following Christ, the pillar of light that destroyed death and darkness, then we realise instantly that this verse from Acts is teaching us how Israel rescued from Egypt ought to have behaved. When gifted with the manna they were assured they would keep receiving, some still chose to take more than their need (Ex 16: 15-20). The New Israel, however, purified by the Lord, and empowered by the Spirit, thought not of tomorrow, but placed all their trust in the Lord. In this way, we see how the New Testament, is a fulfillment of all the prophecies in the Old.

In this Easter season and beyond, so that Our Lord will be the key that opens our hearts and our minds to the scriptures, let us pray every day of our lives:

Lord Jesus, open the Scriptures to us;
make our hearts burn while you speak to us.

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

The Economy of Divine Mercy: Homily for the Feast of Divine Mercy

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today our Holy Mother Church celebrates Divine Mercy Sunday in response to the desire of Our Lord, revealed to St. Maria Faustina Kowalska in the 1930s, that the first Sunday after Easter be celebrated as a feast of His Divine Mercy.

While this feast usually focuses on the mercy of Our Lord, this mercy of the Son is imbricated in a Trinitarian economy of mercy.

In the second reading today, the first letter of St. Peter proclaims the mercy of the Father:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,

who in his great mercy gave us a new birth to a living hope

through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,

This is the mercy of God the Father is that even though we sinners deserve eternal death, there is, nonetheless, life after death. This is the living hope which we celebrate at Easter. The mercy of God the Father is the actualization of the ancient promise of life after death. Actualization, because, as we hear in the Gospel today, the apostles and disciples saw and touched the man who had been certifiably dead and was now living and breathing among them.

Brethren, we have lived so long within a Christian era, with the certainties of the Christian faith, that we do not really appreciate what it means to live with the certainty that there is life after death. That this life is not subject to the capriciousness of divine or other beings, but an invitation to eternal life with a loving God, in Paradise. There is no terror of unending cycles of life and death, each new life possibly taking us lower in the hierarchy of lifeforms. Indeed, so long, and so powerful has hope of Christianity been, that even non-Christians seem to now live with the idea that there is a good life after death, that paradise awaits us all.

Typically, with these non-Christians, there is no sense that a great price was paid for us to be able to live with this hope. We Christians, however, know that the price paid so that those excluded from paradise since the fall of Adam could return, was the brutal death of Our Lord Jesus Christ obedient to the wish of His merciful Father.

The mercy of this great price was that we now know that there is no need for us to sin. Until the death, and resurrection, of Our Lord, there was no certainty that there even was life after death. Like the atheists today, who simply believe that life ends with death and all we have is this one life. And since there is only this one life, one must make the most of it, whatever the cost! This cost is very often the abuse of, or lack of mercy to, others. After all, if there is no life after death, and all we have is this one opportunity, we ought to make the most of it, taking care of ourselves, leaving the rest to fend for themselves.

If the mercy of the Father was the giving of hope through the resurrection of Our Lord, Our Lord, the Son, offers His own mercy when He says to the disciples:

Receive the Holy Spirit.

Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them,

and whose sins you retain are retained.

The mercy of God the Son is the fact that despite His great sacrifice, which should prompt us to sin no more, He is willing to continue forgiving our sins and thus permit us to enter heaven. As Our Lord promised St. Faustina:

I pour out a whole ocean of graces upon those souls who approach the fount of My mercy. The soul that will go to Confession and receive Holy Communion shall obtain complete forgiveness of sins and punishment.

And so, my dear brothers and sisters, I urge you all; do not approach the altar for communion if you have not first confessed in the last fifteen days. Confess, and then worthily come to drink from the fountain of Divine Mercy.

The Spirit has its own role to play in this economy of mercy. The Holy Spirit, which is the mark of God’s ownership of us (Eph 1: 13-14) reminds us actively of what God the Son said to us (Jn 14:26):

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. (Mt 5:7)

Adding:

give, and it will be given to you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For the measure you give will be the measure you get back. (Lk 6: 38)

It is mercy that the Holy Spirit urges us to give to each other, whispering to us – those who are baptized – that it is in the measure that we give mercy, that we shall obtain mercy. It was mercy that animated the life of the early church as we hear in the first reading today from the Acts of the Apostles:

They devoted themselves…

to the breaking of bread and to the prayers….

they would sell their property and possessions

and divide them among all according to each one’s need.

It is in the act of confession, dear brothers and sisters, that we are enabled to articulate our desire to show mercy, and beg the grace of the Spirit to help actualize this mercy in Our Lives.

Through mercy, my dear brothers and sisters, we are invited into the inner life of the Trinity; we should grab this opportunity! May Our Lord grant us all the grace to humble ourselves in confession, and benefit from the flow of mercy from His open heart.

(A version of this homily was first preached to the faithful at the Cathedral parish of St. Catherine of Alexandria on 11 April 2026.)

(Image reference: The Throne of Mercy with the Virgin, St. John, and Angels with the Arma Christi, Anonymous artist, circa 1470, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin.)

Love Actually: Sermon for Good Friday

My dear brothers and sisters, some weeks ago, on the fifth Sunday of Lent, I pointed out that God is always accompanying us in our sufferings, and that even in the darkest moments of human history – like the World War II and the accompanying atrocities – Our Lord was present with us, through the witness given by Christian faithful, often at the cost of their own lives and well-being.

Responding to this homily a faithful interlocutor responded with thanks, indicating that while it was a “comforting insight that we are not abandoned in this suffering, and that Christ is with us through the sacrifices of others,” it was not, nevertheless, an “entirely satisfactory answer to ‘why does God allow terrible suffering on innocents through war and bigotry and persecution or natural calamities like earthquakes or tsunamis.’”

He went on to elaborate:

anything that gives answers to the troubling question of why God allows bad things to happen to good people is welcome. Yes, free will and consequent sin - but it doesn’t explain everything, including illness, genetic deformities, mental deficiencies that eliminate free will (are the victims not human, then, because they don’t have free will?), natural disasters……

Also, why are only some then chosen for miraculous cures or deliverances? Do these not contradict the freely chosen sins of others? And if they are justified in some cases, why not in others?

I know that it is not possible for us humans to fully understand the wisdom of God - but we try, don’t we? Isn’t that what theology is?

Formally speaking, my interlocutor is engaged in, and invites my engagement with, what is known as theodicy - a theological or philosophical attempt to justify the goodness and omnipotence of God in the face of existing evil and suffering. What better day to engage with this question, than on the Friday that we speak about as Good Friday; the Friday when we commemorate the death of not just a good man, but an innocent man! We Christians proclaim this day good, because it demonstrates the goodness of God, who willed that His son, His only son, whom He loved, be offered up as a holocaust (Gen 22: 2) so that we may be ransomed from sin.

What every Christian must understand when faced with the death of Our Lord, is to recognize that if it was only His death – the death of the lamb without fault – which could reconcile us with God, then there wasn’t anyone before, or after, who can truly claim to be innocent. As the verses of Psalm 51 (5) recognize about human nature:

Indeed, I was born guilty,
    a sinner when my mother conceived me.

The sin of Adam marked all humans fundamentally, so that the tendency to sin was written into our nature. None of us, therefore, are in that sense innocent, not even a newly born babe! We were all born with the stain of Adam, necessitating the purification of baptism that wipes away the stain of this sin – cleansed through the blood offered by the single innocent in history, Our Lord Jesus Christ. And while this stain is washed away in baptism, our tendency to sin is not. To take away our tendency to sin would require that the free will offered to us by Our God be taken away, reducing us to mere puppets. God gives us this great gift – of free will – so that our love for Him is always a choice we make. And yet, free will can so often lead us to sin, often right after receiving the absolution at the sacrament of reconciliation! Also, while the guilt of sin is washed away, the effects of the sin continue to echo through all time.

Bear in mind that the Catholic Church does not teach that the child born with genetic deformities is being punished for their own sin. It is the teaching of the Catholic Church that all sickness and death, is the result of the sinful condition we live in. Sin affects us at the level of human nature and manifests as the pain and suffering endured by those who may be personally devoid of fault.

So, the challenge before us is this: how do we deal with sin, and the suffering, which is the effect of sin? Our Lord demonstrated this not theoretically, but viscerally, by embracing the Cross and putting an end to the triumph of sin, that kept all humans out of heaven. No more do we have to live with the defeatism that we cannot stand up to sin, or worse, that there is no point defying sin. Our Lord’s death opened for us the gates of heaven and ensured that the gates of hell will not triumph over the prayers and sacrifices of His people that ever batter these ancient gates.

One of the learnings I made in my time as a scholar and professional in the world of developmental sector, which curiously echoes the idea of a God who is love and wishes no harm to His creation, was that there is no such thing as a natural disaster. All natural events, such as earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, et al, that are experienced as disasters are the result of human choices, and responses – whether social, political, infrastructural.  While one cannot stretch this observation too far, we must recognize that there is some fundamental truth to it.

We are now able, in some way, to appreciate that suffering in the world is the result of sin. What matters is our response to the existence of sin and its effects. The presence of a child with horrific genetic deformities that seems to make their life unlivable is an opportunity, not just for the family (nuclear or extended) but the entire community to embrace that child and give meaning and value, not just to the life of the afflicted, but to all our lives! As for that child, we know that Our Lord in His kindness has plans for those whom He has willed to be signs to elicit our goodness. So too in the case of anyone afflicted by trouble. To so embrace this effect of sin would be to defang it and bring the light of the cross into the darkness of sinful existence.

The care of the sick and the dying, by those completely unrelated by blood or circumstance, has been the mark of Christian communities since the time of Our Lord. The entire edifice of the contemporary health and social services is in fact built on the example offered by the many, and nameless, nuns, religious men, and priests who cared for their brethren because they saw in them Christ wounded for our sins.

Unfortunately, there are too few today who would strip themselves of their ties and offer themselves to religious life. It is for this reason that Christian, and particularly Catholic, life today is floundering. Today, from the Cross, Our Lord is calling all of us to take up a cross, any cross, and follow Him in the crusade against the devil. How many of us will respond?

Adoramus te, Christe, et benedicimus tibi,

quia per sanctam crucem tuam redemisti mundum

 

We adore you O Christ, and we bless you,

For by Your Holy Cross, you have redeemed the world.

(This homily was written only to be published on this blogspot.)