A Sign in the End Times: Fourth Sunday of Advent

Therefore the Lord himself will give you this sign:
the virgin shall conceive, and bear a son,
and shall name him Emmanuel.

Here we are dear brothers and sisters in Christ, at the fourth Sunday of Advent. It would be a good time to ask ourselves, how have I spent this Advent season? Has it been in the spirit of fast and abstinence. Has it been in preparation for the final coming of Our Lord. Or has it been one of pre-Christmas feasting, and living as if nothing has changed? If our lives this Advent has not been one of patient preparation for the final coming of Our Lord, then shame on us.

God the Father offered us a sign, not so that our lives would remain unchanged, but so that we could learn to live eschatologically – to live knowing that the end times have begun, and that any moment now the King will return and put a permanent end to all evil and reign in triumph forever. To empower us on this journey to the end, He came to live among us, not just in the Eucharist, but through the Eucharist in our hearts and our bodies!

So, how does one live as a sign of Our Lord in the end times? As always, St. Paul offers us an answer; as:

a slave of Christ Jesus,
called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God

My dear brothers and sisters, we are not free to do our own will, but having been rescued from the useless ways of our ancestors (1 Peter1:18), we are called to be His servants. We are not only called to be apostles, to proclaim the Gospel, but as the words “set apart” indicate to us, we have to zealously separate ourselves from all things, and persons, who do not live according to the Gospel.

As Saint Paul says later in this reading from the letter to the Romans, we:

are called to belong to Jesus Christ;

… called to be holy.

To be holy is to consent to being set apart, to belong to Jesus Christ, and to Him alone.

And it is not just for our own little lives that we are called to be holy. As the Lord says through the Prophet Isaiah (49:6):

It is too light a thing that you should be my servant
    to raise up the tribes of Jacob
    and to restore the survivors of Israel;
I will give you as a light to the nations,
    that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.

And this is precisely what, through the words of St. Paul, Holy Mother Church teaches us on this final Sunday of Advent. We are called to be holy:

to bring about the obedience of faith,
for the sake of his name, among all the Gentiles

This, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, fellow Christians, is what we are called to be Christian for. To be obedient to the faith, and to bring others, the Gentiles we live among, and the Gentiles we can often become, to the faith. This is all we must live for, to bring others to obedience of the faith, all the while operating as a sign of what this kind of life must mean.

There may be costs to this separation, in fact I am dead certain that there are costs, but this we can gladly bear because we know what the end will be, both for all things and persons, and particularly for ourselves and those who repent and believe.

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, if we have not spent this Advent in any kind of fast and penitence, without preparing ourselves to be the signs of His first coming and preparation for His second, there is still time. We have a few days, when we can embrace the spirit of Advent and triumph, for remember, God is with us and He makes all things possible.

Let the Lord enter; he is king of glory.

(A version of this homily was first preached to the faithful in Concanim at the parish church of St. Catherine of Alexandria, Old Goa on 21 Dec 2025.)

(Image reference: The Baptism of Christ, Master of the Saint Bartholomew Altar, c. 1485/1500, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC.)

Vita Sacramentalis: Homily for the Third Sunday in Advent

Amen, I say to you,
among those born of women
there has been none greater than John the Baptist;
yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

It occurred to me, not a few days ago, that the kingdom of heaven is in fact nothing other than the sacramental life. With this insight, Our Lord’s saying; “The kingdom of God is among you” (Lk 17: 21) is instantly understood.

Way back in the fifth century, St. Augustine, doctor of the Church, defined the sacraments as a visible sign of an invisible grace. This sharpens the insight that the kingdom of God is the sacramental life, and that the kingdom is already among us; because this is what the sacraments are, and what they do; they bring us into communion with the body of Christ.

Consider the words of St. Paul to the Romans (Rom 6: 4):

Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

In baptism we are incorporated into the Church, the mystical body of Christ, and remain in Him through the rest of our lives, unless we willfully separate ourselves from him. From the moment of our baptism He holds us by our hand and carries us through this vale of tears, strengthening us through the other sacraments which are opened to us through baptism. In Confirmation we are sealed with the Spirit, with Confession our sins are forgiven and we can return to communion with Him, in the Eucharist He gives us bread for our journey, with the Anointing of the sick He heals our physical and spiritual wounds.

Those of us who are introduced to the sacramental life and remain with Our Lord are already in the kingdom of Heaven and this is so great a reward that Our Lord indicated that those who were in the kingdom of heaven by being His disciples were greater than John the Baptist. Recollect, that at this moment John the Baptist was locked away in prison by Herod and was soon martyred. After death he did not enter heaven, but had to wait for Our Lord to descend into the dead so that he could be liberated from hell – which is where everyone who died before Christ went. We are indeed blessed that our pathway to heaven has been cleared for us by Our Lord, a privilege that even St. John the Baptist did not enjoy.

My dear brothers and sisters. We celebrate today the third Sunday of Advent, known as Gaudete Sunday. The word Gaudete, or rejoice, comes from the first word of the entrance antiphon for this mass:

            Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice.

            Indeed, the Lord is near. (Phil 4: 4-5).

This is also one of the themes of the lectionary this Sunday, as we hear in the words of the prophet Isaiah. We can rejoice because we are given hope that in the sacramental life:

they will see the glory of the LORD,
the splendor of our God.
Strengthen the hands that are feeble,
make firm the knees that are weak,

Then will the eyes of the blind be opened,
the ears of the deaf be cleared;
then will the lame leap like a stag,
then the tongue of the mute will sing.

This is precisely what Our Lord asks John’s disciples to communicate to their master:

the blind regain their sight,
the lame walk,
lepers are cleansed,
the deaf hear,
the dead are raised,
and the poor have the good news proclaimed to them.

My dear brothers and sisters, all that the prophet Isaiah foresaw, and Our Lord worked are what the sacraments do for us. We have been ransomed from death and can enter the heavenly Zion through baptism. Our spiritual sight is restored, our paths are made straight, our bodies are cleansed. This is our reason to rejoice.

There is one more theme to this note of rejoicing, which is in keeping with the spirit of Advent: patience. St. James counsels us today:

Be patient, brothers and sisters,
until the coming of the Lord.

We must be patient because as in the words of St. Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians (13:12):

For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, St. Augustine teaches us that the sacraments are visible signs of invisible grace. In the Tantum Ergo, his great hymn to the Blessed Sacrament, St. Thomas Aquinas sings:

Præstet fides supplementum
Sensuum defectui.

faith for all defects supplying,
where the feeble senses fail.

We are already in the kingdom of heaven, but our feeble physical senses can still not perceive the glory of God. This will be revealed to us fully at the second coming of Our Lord, which is what we prepare for in this season of Advent. May our waiting be short but never lacking in intensity, and may we esteem the sacramental life, for:

Those whom the LORD has ransomed will return
and enter Zion singing,
crowned with everlasting joy;
they will meet with joy and gladness,
sorrow and mourning will flee.

(A version of this homily was first preached to the faithful at the Cathedral parish of St. Catherine of Alexandria, Old Goa on 14 December 2025.)

(Image reference: The Seven Sacraments, Rogier van der Weyden, 1440-1445, Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp.)

Hail, full of grace! Homily for the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception

Hail, full of grace!

My dear brothers and sisters, we are gathered today, on this great solemnity of the feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary to reflect precisely on these words of the angel Gabriel to Our Lady: “Hail, full of grace!”

We are here to celebrate these momentous words because from the moment of Her conception, Mary – our Blessed Mother, was free from the stain of original sin. To quote from Ineffabilis Deus, the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception which was pronounced by Pope Blessed Pius IX in the year 1854:

Mary, the most holy Mother of God, by virtue of the foreseen merits of Christ, our Lord and Redeemer, was never subject to original sin, but was completely preserved from the original taint, and hence she was redeemed in a manner more sublime.

It is because she is without stain of original sin that, like Christians since the birth of the Church, we can sing:

Tota pulchra es Maria et macula originalis non est in te

You are most beautiful Maria and the stain of original sin is not in you

But as with all things Catholic, the mysteries of our faith are not only about Our Lord, His Blessed Mother, or just His angels and saints. It is also about us. So, what is it that the Immaculate Conception tell us about the human being? What is the message of the Immaculata today?

The most obvious lesson, of course, is that of dignity. The God bearer, the Theotokos, had to be so dignified, that sin could not have ever touched her. This is the dignity to which God the Father calls us as well; to be immaculate! In fact, this was the dignity for which we were intended! As we hear St. Paul teach us today:

he chose us in him, before the foundation of the world,

to be holy and without blemish before him

Remember that Eve was created immaculate. At her creation, Eve, our first mother, bore no stain of sin. It was because of her choice, and that of her husband Adam, that we today suffer the stain of sin. Nevertheless, through the passion, death and resurrection of His Son, God the Father enables us to ascend to the dignity he afforded at conception of Our Lady, and continues to afford Her, to be immaculate bodies in heaven, without the stain of sin.

The second lesson of the Immaculata is that of humility. Recall the words of Our Blessed Mother in response to the angel:

              “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.” (Lk 1:38)

Invitation to this dignity of immaculateness does not mean that we are equal to Our Blessed Mother. Living, as we do, following the French Revolution and in the era of democracy, we seem to think that equality is divine, and hierarchy unacceptable. We must remember, however, that there is – and will always be – a hierarchy in heaven. We are not now, nor ever will be, equal to Our Blessed Mother, just as Our Lady is not equal to Her Son.

Let us listen again to the words of St. Paul to the Ephesians:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who has blessed us in Christ
with every spiritual blessing in the heavens

Our Lady was one of these spiritual blessings. It was, to repeat the words of Blessed Pius IX ,

by virtue of the foreseen merits of Christ… [that Our Lady] was never subject to original sin, but …completely preserved from the original taint.

In other words, it was through the future merits of Her Son, foreseen by God the Father, that Our Lady could be full of grace.

And Maria continues to be the vessel through which the grace gushing from the Sacred Heart of Jesus drips down into our lives. She intercedes for us constantly in the court of heaven, so that our prayers may be answered.

My dear brothers and sisters, you must be scandalized to hear me preaching in favour of hierarchy. But I invite you to consider that to preach hierarchy is not to preach against dignity. To preach, “know your place”, is not to suggest that you should not reach for the stars, not aim for greatness. Rather, it is to preach, know how you go about this exercise in magnifying the Lord. Do so in a manner that imitates Our Lady’s dignity, which is to be without sin. You are called to this greatness, and you are aided by the sacraments of Our Lord, and the powerful intercession of His Mother. Aim therefore for greatness, but without succumbing to sin of desire, envy, jealousy, malice.

In her prayer, the Magnificat, the Immaculata, proclaims:

Our Lord lifts up the lowly and brings down the mighty.

What is clear is that Our Lord is not opposed to social mobility. However, in the larger scheme of things social mobility is not as important as the mobility – no, nobility! – that he afforded through the miracle of the Immaculate Conception. The mobility, the nobility, that ensured that human nature, which had willingly and knowingly sundered itself from the divine, could now be raised back up to heaven through the cooperation of Her who knew no sin. Let us, therefore, dear brothers and sisters, on this great feast day, dedicate ourselves to lives of impeccability so that we may be worthy of the heavenly blessings that have been given to us.

O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.

Ó Maria, concebida sem pecado, rogai por nós que recorremos a vós

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit; Amen.

(A version of this homily was first preached to the faithful at the Igreja da N.S. da Conceicão, Pangim, on 8 Dec 2025.)

(Image reference: The Immaculate Conception, Francisco de Zurbarán, 1628 – 1630, Museo del Prado.)