Firstfruits of His Creatures: Homily for the Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time

"Well did Isaiah prophesy about you hypocrites, as it is written:
This people honors me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
teaching as doctrines human precepts.
You disregard God's commandment but cling to human tradition."

Brothers and sisters,

Pope Francis has often pointed out to us, precisely what Our Lord quotes from the Prophet Isaiah, we honour him with our lips, but our hearts are far from Him. In vain do we worship Him formally, if we disregard God’s commandments while clinging purely to human traditions.

So, what is it that Our Lord wants from us? What will make us pure in His eyes so that we can benefit from the sacrifice that is conducted on our altars?

The psalm today has a full list of things that good and righteous people do. But before I get to some of those, let us listen to the second reading, from the letter of St. James, which says that the righteous:

care for orphans and widows in their affliction

And that the righteous man will:

keep oneself unstained by the world.

How do we keep ourselves unstained by the world? By not doing what the world does; which Our Lord helpfully listed in the Gospel:

evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly

In other words, the world does the opposite of what the righteous man, who is guided by God, does. And this is one of what the righteous man does:

lends not his money at usury

It is in fact an ancient, and still mandated, teaching of the Church, that Catholics do not lend money at interest. This is something we should take, very, very, seriously.

I can understand that, living as we do in a capitalist world, many of you may consider it impractical to not place money in the bank and gain interest. Fine. But there are further evils that we can avoid in the spirit of this teaching. For example, there are some, who in their lust for greater returns, give money to private money lenders so that they can get a higher interest rate. But do we know what is the cost of this money brothers and sisters?

Money that is given at a higher rate is taken by people who cannot get money from the banking system, by people who are desperate, and very often have no way to repay the money. And to get the money back all kinds of violence is done to them by the moneylenders. My dear brothers and sisters, if you “invested” money by giving money to private money lenders, please, at the end of the period you invested it for, take back the money, and give most of the interest acquired for charity, to make penance for the wrong you have done.

I should not fail to mention the very worthy initiative of the Archdiocese of Goa and Daman, the institution of the Good Samaritan fund, which seeks to provide financial support for those in financial need – an understanding that is presently restricted, as I understand it – to health care. This is a truly laudable activity and something that we must all wholeheartedly support.

The psalm also tells us that the righteous man

accepts no bribe against the innocent

If you have ever accepted, or given a bribe, this is something that you must confess to a priest as soon as possible. Only true repentance for this sin, will allow the Eucharist to do its work properly in your heart.

The righteous person, the psalm tells us:

thinks the truth in his heart
and slanders not with his tongue.

Once again, if you have ever spoken ill about someone, especially if you do not know whether it is true or not, even if you know it is untrue but you said it anyway because you simply do not like them, this is something that is coming between you and God, and you must confess it, and genuinely promise to never repeat it.

My dear brothers and sisters, in the acclamation to the Gospel we heard:

The Father willed to give us birth by the word of truth
that we may be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.

This is to say that even before we were born, even before each and every one of us was born, God had a special plan for each and every one of us sitting here. He chose to have us born into our families, here, in Goa, and that we should be Catholics. He wanted us to be Catholic so that we could show those living around us, how to lead good, moral, righteous, and sanctified lives. So that people would see the way we live, the goodness of our lives, and choose to become like us, both in practice, and in faith.

My dear brothers and sisters, during this Mass, let us ask ourselves if we are doing what God planned for us. If not, let us be truly repentant, make a confession after Mass, and then with the grace that we receive from the sacrament and from the Eucharist, go out to make the world a better place.

(A version of this homily was first preached in Concanim to the faithful at the parish of Our Lady of the Rosary, Fatorda.
Image reference: 'The Calling of Saint Matthew,'Marinus van Reymerswaele, c.1530, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid.)

A Love Born(e) On the Cross: Homily for the Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time

My dear brothers and sisters,

This Sunday we come to the end of our long reflection on the sixth chapter of the gospel according to John. This sixth chapter which we have been discussing is, as I have mentioned earlier, concerned with Jesus’ Bread of Life discourse. As we wind down this Sunday, however, the more alert among you would have noticed a troubling little detail. After speaking to us for four weeks about the Bread of Life, which is His flesh, and the need to eat it, all of a sudden, Our Lord seems to backtrack!

It is the spirit that gives life, 

while the flesh is of no avail.

I must confess that, personally, I was a little flummoxed by this googly Our Lord throws us at this point. Help, however, was close at hand in the form of a trusty biblical commentary, and all became much clearer.

What Our Lord is doing when he says that “it is the spirit that gives life, while the flesh is of no avail.” Is to stress the difference between the flesh of this world and the flesh of His Body. This flesh is no ordinary flesh, it is a flesh that is imbued with the spirit that gives life. While the flesh of this world is of no avail, the Bread that has come down from heaven, offers us flesh that will give us eternal life!

With all this talk of flesh, it was little wonder that the extract from St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians also caught my eye. Now this text is often read at weddings, but I think that it gains much, MUCH, more in the context of the discourse on the Bread of Life. Listen:

For no one hates his own flesh

but rather nourishes and cherishes it,

even as Christ does the church,

because we are members of his body.

For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother

and be joined to his wife,

and the two shall become one flesh.

The nature of a Christian marriage, or perhaps the goal, should have become quite clear to all of you by now. Our marriages are constituted, and are intended to be, just like the marriage between Christ and His bride, the Church. Christ loves His bride so much, that He offers Her His own flesh, and blood, so that it may be sustained. He does so, because He does not “hate his own flesh but rather … cherishes it.” If our marriages are to be like Christ’s to His Church, then not only is there no space for divorce, but neither is there space for the acrimoniousness and viciousness that often accompanies divorces and separations. For while our bodies remain divided in a material - or natural - sense, in the spiritual - or supernatural - sense the two have “become one flesh”, and as Saint Paul has already taught us:

no one hates his own flesh

but rather nourishes and cherishes it

To hate your spouse – I will not use the word ex or former, because the Church just does not admit this possibility – is to hate your own body. Any psychologist sitting here today will, I am sure, support me in this assertion – to hate, or resent, someone who has been intimately associated with you, is to indeed hate your very self. And this could well apply to the hatred we bear towards our parents, and siblings, whether it be for real, or imagined, hurts.

The second portion of St. Paul’s words which I extracted a while ago, deepens our understanding of the relation of Christ to His Church and a Christian marriage.

For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother

and be joined to his wife,

and the two shall become one flesh.

Christ’s love for His Church is put in very fleshy terms here; Christ loves His Church with the same kind of passion, desire, and indeed hope, that a man goes to his wife; or a person in love desires their beloved. Think of your own passion, and you will know the depth of the passion that Our Lord has for His bride, the Church.

But it is not just fleshy passion that St. Paul is referring to, because this verse is taken from the second chapter of Genesis and comes immediately after Adam hails Eve who has been freshly created from his rib. This joining of man to a woman, therefore, is prior to the Fall and, consequently, prior to lust. The desire of Christ for His bride, as a result, while most certainly a passionate one, is spiritually charged, one that is unmarked by disordered sensibilities.

Indeed, this verse from almost the very start of the Bible could well be a prophecy of the way Christ would come to save mankind.

For this reason, a man [in this case, Jesus, the second Adam] shall leave his father [in heaven] and his mother [Our Lady who beheld Him on His Cross] and be joined to his wife [the Church which was born from the side of Our Lord on the Cross CCC 766], and the two shall become one flesh.

It is with this idea that I would like to leave you, my dear brothers and sisters, that Christ unites Himself in the flesh with each and everyone of us, individually, and together. He gives us His body, so that by consuming it, His flesh becomes our flesh, so that we are never alone, but indeed, nourished and cherished by Him who is our beginning and our end.

May God bless you all.

(A version of this homily was first preached to the faithful at the anticipated Sunday Mass in the parish of Our Lady of the Rosary, Fatorda, on 24 Aug 2024-
Image reference: Berswordt Altar, 14th Century, Marienkirche, Dortmund, Germany via picryl.com. )