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.)

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.)