Pray Unceasingly! Homily for the Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica

Brothers and sisters:
You are God's building.

Do you not know that you are the temple of God,
and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?

These words are a mashup from St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, which we read as the second reading for the feast of the dedication of the Basilica of St. John Lateran – the seat of the Bishop of Rome and the mother church of all churches across the world. Dedicated in 324, it was the Basilica of St. John Lateran that was the first public church, and seat of a bishop, in the entire Roman empire, and it is right and proper that we celebrate this day.

As the words of St. Paul remind us, however, we do not simply celebrate the dedication of a building of bricks and stone. Rather we celebrate the dedication of our own bodies which serve as temples of the Holy Spirit ever since the time of our baptism.

Recollect the words of St. Paul in his letter to the Romans (6:6):

We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin.

This new self, that of the Son, is the self that as St. Paul says in the letter to the Hebrews (9:12),

entered once for all into the Holy Place

This is to say, that which was cast out of Eden, and the presence of God, has entered once more into the presence of God. It was a human body that entered into heaven with the ascension of Our Lord, a body just like yours and mine; save that it was a body free from sin, just as yours and mine are at baptism, and after every confession, when the Holy Spirit is once again pleased to dwell in it.

I have chosen and consecrated this house, says the Lord,
that my name may be there forever.

And how must this house of the Lord be protected? Once again, St. Paul comes to our rescue, teaching us

each one must be careful how he builds upon it,
for no one can lay a foundation other than the one that is there,
namely, Jesus Christ.

In other words, it is Jesus Christ who must be the foundation of this temple, and, as the acclamation to the Gospel indicates to us, His name must be in this house forever. This can only mean that the name of Our Lord, His Blessed Mother and His angels and saints must be on our lips all the time.

The suggestion, therefore, dear brethren is that of what we call ejaculatory prayer. Little phrases that constantly stream from our lips, little prayers that like the words from the book of Genesis, which prefigures the stream we heard of today, rises from the earth, and waters the whole face of the ground (Gen 2: 6). Prayers like:

              Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.

              Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place all my trust in you.

              We praise you O Christ, and we bless you, for by Your Holy Cross You have redeemed the world.

              Pray for us O Holy Mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

              St. Catherine of Alexandria (insert name of preferred saint), pray for us.

A stream of such prayers, rising from the soil of our hearts, and spilling down from our lips, will keep the temple of our bodies clean from any temptation and sin. More so, like the stream that emerged from the temple in the vision of Ezekiel that we read about in the first reading, it will make its way to the sea – the great host of people who languish in purgatory – and make that anguished pit of waiting fresh. In other words, it will provide hope to those who wait, precisely by aiding in the release of some.

Wherever the river flows,
every sort of living creature that can multiply shall live,
and there shall be abundant fish.

Such a stream of prayer will have an impact on the lives of those around us:

Along both banks of the river, fruit trees of every kind shall grow;
their leaves shall not fade, nor their fruit fail.
Every month they shall bear fresh fruit,
for they shall be watered by the flow from the sanctuary.
Their fruit shall serve for food, and their leaves for medicine.

In the synoptic Gospels – Mark, Mathew, and Luke – Our Lord explained His actions as He cleansed the courts of the Temple of traders – the version of which episode we read today from the Gospel of John:

‘My house shall be called a house of prayer’;
    but you are making it a den of robbers.”

Our body, God’s house, was built for prayer. On this day when we celebrate the dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome, let us dedicate ourselves to constantly cultivate a stream of prayer that will “gladden the city of God, the holy dwelling of the Most High!”

(A version of this homily was first preached to the faithful at the Convent of St. John of God, Old Goa.)

(Image reference: Convent Thoughts, Charles Allston Collins, 1851, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.)

Recordare Iesu pie: Homily for All Souls Day

At the heart of most religions, is the fear of death. While on earth we seem to think that we can command and control our circumstances. We can offer sacrifices to the (false) god(s), we can amass money, prestige, and power. But what after death? In the face of this existential question, the answers of all religions fall flat, and fail. They fail because they simply don’t know! They can only offer conjecture. All religions, that is, except the Christian, and more particularly the Catholic, faith.

We have certainty about the response to this question, because of the Man who died on the cross, was buried, and then came back from the dead. It is because of Him, and His Resurrection from the dead, that we accept in confidence what the first reading, from the book of Wisdom, proffers to us:

They seemed, in the view of the foolish, to be dead;
    and their passing away was thought an affliction
    and their going forth from us, utter destruction.
But they are in peace.

Brothers and sisters, we hold as an article of our faith, that all those who are baptized, and die in God's grace and friendship, that is, in communion with the Holy Catholic Church, are assured of their eternal salvation (CCC 1030). When our dear ones die, we shed tears; but if cry it must be because we do not know what will become of them; because we do. If we cry, it is only because we are being temporarily separated from them. Because of the passion and death of the Man who was resurrected, we know that we will be reunited with them, and then be separated from them no more.

In the course of this separation, the book of Wisdom we have just read goes on to teach us:

chastised a little, they shall be greatly blessed,
    because God tried them
    and found them worthy of himself.

It is another article of our faith, that those who – and this is the great majority of us –having died in communion with the church are still imperfectly holy, must engage in purifying ourselves before we may be admitted into the holy presence of God. Brothers and sisters, one of the things that struck me during my seminary life was how logical, and reasonable, our Faith is. There is a reason for everything, and the entire complex edifice of the Faith ties up in the end! There are no loose ends! Thus, it makes perfect sense that unholiness cannot stand in the presence of holiness. Just as the two poles of a magnet always repel each other. As such, unholiness, even the smallest iota of it, may not be admitted into the presence of God, who is all holy.

It is to get into this sacred, and holy space, that those of us who are still impure, despite having died in communion with the Church, must undergo purification. This place of waiting, of purification, the Catechism teaches us, is purgatory (CCC 1031).

The thing about purgatory, however, is that we can no longer do anything to help ourselves. It is too late to repent once you have died. We do spend time in prayer, as we would when we get to heaven, but it is not for ourselves that we pray, but for others. But all is not lost, of course, because it is through these acts of charity that we purify ourselves and prepare ourselves to enter into the presence of Him who, as Saint Paul teaches today in his letter to the Romans, offered the most perfect act of charity, dying for us while we were still sinners.

Since they cannot in this sense help themselves, the Church has always honored the memory of the dead and offered prayers in suffrage for them, above all the Eucharistic sacrifice, so that, thus purified, they may attain the beatific vision of God. In addition to the most perfect sacrifice of the Eucharist, our Holy Mother, the Church also recommends almsgiving, indulgences, and works of penance undertaken on behalf of the dead (CCC 1032).

This is the teaching of the Church my dear brothers and sisters, so why should we doubt that our offerings for the dead bring them some consolation? Let us not hesitate to help those who have died and to offer our prayers for them.

There is additionally, dear brethren, a bonus to our sacrifices and offerings for the dead – they aid in our own purification and preparation for our own death. In his encyclical Rerum Novarum Pope Leo XII teaches us the eternal truth that has always been the teaching of the Church, that the things of earth cannot be understood or valued aright without taking into consideration the life to come, the life that will know no death (§21). Life on earth, however good and desirable in itself, is not the final purpose for which man is created; it is only the way and the means to that attainment of truth and that love of goodness in which the full life of the soul consists (RN §40).

Let us, therefore, dear brothers and sisters, who are blessed by God, by being baptized into this perfect faith, prepare ourselves, and those who are in purgatory, to “inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. Alleluia, alleluia.”

(A version of this homily was first preached to the faithful in Concanim in the Cathedral parish of St. Catherine of Alexandria, Old Goa on 2 Nov 2025.)

(Image reference: Mass for the Holy Souls in Purgatory, anonymous author of woodcut.)

Blessed are the Poor: Homily for the Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

On the fourth of this month, Pope Leo XIV gave to the Universal Church the Apostolic Exhortation Dilexi Te (I Have Loved You) which encourages us to grow in concrete acts of love for the poor. While large portions of this exhortation, deal with those who suffer material poverty, Pope Leo also adds a useful caution, reminding us in §9 that “there are many forms of poverty,” including “moral and spiritual poverty.” Later, at § 87, he exhorts that in addition to reaching out to those suffering material impoverishment, we should reach out: “above all, [to] those without hope of a better future.”

This caution is well made, because all too often, misguided especially by Marxian ideologies, we assume that material poverty is the only poverty that matters, and that the materially rich may be ignored, do not need our ministerial actions, and worse, are evil.

Nothing could be further from the message in the first reading today:

The LORD is a God of justice,
 who knows no favorites.
 Though not unduly partial toward the weak,
 yet he hears the cry of the oppressed.

The God of justice, has no favourites. He opens His heart and His ears above all to the cries of the oppressed, be they the orphan or widow, as we hear in the first reading, or the poor, the brokenhearted and the crushed as we sang in the psalm.

Pope Leo’s caution in Dilexi Te is useful because the Christian understanding of the poor does not unduly fetishize the poor. It does not see them as innocents, as fashionable post-colonial and other leftist ideologies do, precisely because they are poor! As terribly as poverty is, and as much as it demands the action of selfless Christian charity, the poor are not simply those who are materially poor. Rather, the Faith recognizes as poor persons who, humble themselves like Our Lord, and accuse themselves of their sins.

The prayer of the lowly pierces the clouds

This is precisely the message from the Gospel parable today. We are introduced to two characters, the self-righteous Pharisee, and the penitent tax-collector. The Pharisee is convinced of having gathered the good graces of God, because he has fulfilled the letter of the law. But alas! He is filled with pride and arrogance, believing himself superior, particularly to the tax-collector. Our Lord, however, points out that it is precisely the tax-collector’s penitence, his acknowledgement of his sins, that makes him poor, and therefore deserving of the rich mercy of God.

In his discussion in Angels and Demons (no, not that book!!) of the angels’ fall from heaven, the Dominican Serge-Thomas Bonino points to their sin of pride. Drawing on St. Thomas Aquinas’ insights, he points out that pride is the disordered love of our own excellence; the love of the self, to the disregard, and contempt even, of the good of others (p. 203). This is not dissimilar to those people who come to the sacrament of confession, confident that they are good, and pure, and use the sacrament to confess the sins of others! Woe to them.

One can clearly see, that in the parable today, Our Lord was cautioning us against the sin of pride, which prevented the Pharisee from recognizing the goodness that the tax collector’s penitence represented. It is when we throw ourselves as the mercy of Our Lord, relying not on our good works, but on His mercy, recognizing our sins, no matter our good works, that we are truly poor in the eyes of Our Lord. For remember, his poverty lay, not merely in the humble economic circumstances into which He was born, but rather in the fact that He, who knew no sin, was made sin, so that we may become the righteousness of God (2 Cor 5:21).

This is not to suggest that the poor are inappropriately proud – though if they do not cry out to the Lord in their distress, but rely solely on their own strength, they might well be! This caution is also directed against those who perform acts of charity. As someone who has worked in what is known as the developmental sector, I can testify that there can sometimes set in a sense of smug satisfaction, arrogance even, among those who work in the sector. After our acts of charity, we come to believe that we are owed something, sometimes perversely expecting this from the very people we assist! If this be the case, we are not far from embodying the Pharisee who Our Lord is so clear does not find righteousness with God.

My dear brothers and sisters, the Lord of justice has no favourites, though he is especially attentive to the voice of the distressed. It is when we cry out to Him, recognizing the limits of our capacities that we are truly poor. It is when we, like the apostle Paul, pour ourselves out like libations in acts of Christian charity, and are attacked for this by the powers and principalities of this world that we become one with the poor and win for ourselves the crown of righteousness.

(A version of this homily was first preached to the faithful at the anticipated Sunday Mass on 25 October 2025 at the Cathedral parish of St. Catherine of Alexandria, Old Goa.)

(Image reference: The Pharisee and the Tax Collector, Jan Luyken, 1700, Rijksmuseum.)