The Exemplary Prince

The Aga Khan is the title of the Imam, or spiritual leader, of the community of Shia Muslims known as the Nizari Ismailis, a multi-ethnic group spread across the world, who also live in Goa. The title of the Aga Khan is of a comparatively recent origin when compared to the antiquity of the Ismaili Imamate which reaches into the very origins of Islam. Prince Karim Al-Husseini, the fourth bearer of the title of Aga Khan passed away on the fourth of this month. This news was not an anonymous fact to me, but part of personal history. Growing up in Panjim, the capital city of Goa, in the 80s, and ever since, one could not help but encounter images of his smiling face in the various shops run by members of the mercantile Nizari Ismaili, or Khoja, community in the city.

There was more to the fourth Aga Khan, however, than simply the image of a smiley face in Panjim stores. He was, as was his office, intimately tied with the Goan, and Portuguese, world.  Take, for example, the fact that part of the municipal garden in the centre of Margão, formally known as the Aga Khan children’s park, was constructed in 1959 by a Goan businessman named Abdul Javerbhai Mavany in the honor of the Aga Khan III. The Aga Khan visited Goa in 1960, because he was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Prince Henry the Navigator by General Vassalo e Silva, the last Governor General of Portuguese India. And why wouldn’t he visit, given that his murid, his spiritual wards, were an integral part of the Portuguese nation in India and Africa. When the future of this population was threatened at the time of the independence of the territories of Angola and Moçambique, not only did the Aga Khan IV smooth the way for their move to Portugal, but counseled their integration into Portuguese society. “This is your country now. Stay loyal to your country,” he advised the Ismaili retornados, as he did other Ismailis dislocated from their homelands. More recently, he established the Diwan of the Imamat in Lisbon. While many speak of this shift from France to Portugal as a part of a strategy of asset management, the fact is that the Aga Khan, and the Nizari Ismailis he leads, have had a long, and storied relationship with Portugal, to the extent that one could consider him, and the Ismailis, as integral to Portuguese history as Vasco da Gama.

His reign of 67 years as Imam was almost as long as that of Queen Elizabeth, who reigned for 70 years, and time will come to recognize him, if the world has not already, as a prince in the same model as that of Queen Elizabeth, and closer home like Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman. Like Elizabeth II, the Aga Khan IV presided over his community at times of dramatic geopolitical changes.  Like Sultan Qaboos, he was a practitioner of quiet diplomacy for peace. Succeeding his grandfather to the Imamate in 1957, he reign saw him successfully deal with the expulsion of Asians from East Africa, and their resettlement in Canada and other parts of the developed world, the relocation of Ismailis from Portuguese Africa, the independence of Central Asian countries such as Tajikistan in the wake of the collapse of the former Soviet Union, and the political unrest in Afghanistan and Pakistan, not to mention India.

His response to all of these changes was to use his personal wealth, and the contributions of Ismailis, to set up a vast network of institutions that sought to respond not merely to the interests of Ismailis, but the quality of life of the communities among whom the Ismailis lived. It is the hallmark of great men, that we are inspired by them even in, and after, their death. The Aga Khan IV, one realizes, spent his life in inter-religious dialogue, a dialogue marked not simply by conversation, but in actively collaborating for the common good with those of other faiths.

What is astounding is the absolute gamut of concerns the Aga Khan’s network of institutions took up, ranging from developmental concerns, education, microfinance, to architecture – establishing the now prestigious Aga Khan Award for Architecture. In India, the Aga Khan Foundation has intervened in restoring the monuments in the Deccan, as well as more famously the gardens around Humanyun’s tomb.

In so doing, Mawlana Hazar Imam Aga Khan IV, demonstrated for us, the unfortunate souls that live in an age of venal mediocrity, the standards for what it is to be an exemplary prince. Niccolo Machiavelli’s sixteenth century opus The Prince offers us the model of a prince who is cunning, conniving, manipulative, and believes that the ends justify the means, giving us the term we use today for particularly wily politicians: Machiavellian. Machiavelli’s prince has unfortunately come to be what we expect from the princes of our age, and it is therefore only with the deepest regret that one sees the passing of the Aga Khan IV who embodied the idea of the ideal prince, one who operates out of a sense of noblesse oblige – the sense that nobility comes with a set of responsibilities, obligations, to those who do not share the same fortunate situation as those with lesser privileges. That wealth does not exist for its own sake, and for personal pleasure alone, but to aid the pursuit of excellence, and the common good.

The exemplary nature of his politics emerged in the course of an interview offered by his daughter, Princess Zahra Aga Khan. She pointed out that her father had always taught her that institutions were to be built with a hundred to five hundred years perspective, and crises were not to be responded in the immediate perspective, unless it threatens the livelihood and life of the jamaat. The long-term well-being of the jamaat was always of greater importance than an immediate response to a political crisis. What was important was to build institutions and ensure that the institutions would outlast the people that currently populated them. Vision, restraint in response, a concern for lives and livelihoods, and institution building, all the hallmarks of a great prince’s politics!

It was, therefore, with more than just the pain of a cherished childhood memory passing away that one encountered the news of the death of Prince Karim al-Husseini, but with the realization that the world was deprived of a stellar example, at precisely the moment one requires someone of his stature. We pray that God will grant Prince Rahim al-Husseini Aga Khan V, the grace to fill the huge void that his father has left behind.

To the Aga Khan IV in the meanwhile, in addition to the traditional Muslim prayer for the dead, we can, and indeed must, offer the words of immortal bard in his play Hamlet:

“Now cracks a noble heart. Good-night, sweet prince;

And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest. ”

For indeed, we belong to Allah, and indeed, to Him we return (Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji'un).

(A version of this text was first published in the O Heraldo dated 18 Feb 2025.)

Fountain of Grace: Homily for the Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

One of the great tendencies of twentieth century theology and spirituality has been to reduce the words of Our Lord, and this applies particularly to the beatitudes we just heard in the Gospel, to the material alone. The spiritual, or the transcendental, element of Our Lord’s teachings were either forgotten or underplayed. And so, it is good that today, after we heard a series of “Blessed are those”, Our Lord speaking through the Gospel tells us:

Blessed are you when people hate you,
                        and when they exclude and insult you,
                        and denounce your name as evil
                        on account of the Son of Man.[italicized emphasis added]

In other words, Blessed are you when you suffer, but only when you suffer on account of your confession of, or your belief in, the Son of Man, that is, Our Lord. This, of course, makes a lot of sense, because it is not the desire of Our Lord that we be poor, hungry, or weep in our material lives. That we are poor, hungry or sad, is not His desire, or intention. If He desired, or even praised these conditions it would be perverse. If at all any of these things exist in the world, they exist because of sin, not because of the will of God. If anyone suggests that poverty in itself is some spiritually beneficially hotspot, ignore them. They are simply wrong.

But let us return to the point I seek to make, we are blessed only when we suffer because of our confession of Christ. If you are merely virtuous, a good person who helps, who cries, with other people, you will not be counted among the blessed on the day of the Final Judgment. I think in particular of all those who believe that they do not need the support of the Eucharist, or the Catholic faith, because they are “good people.” You do not go to heaven for these acts of virtue, for the simple reason that those who do not genuinely confess Our Lord, effectively count on themselves. As the prophet Jeremiahs says in the first reading:

Cursed is the one who trusts in human beings,
                        who seeks his strength in flesh,
                        whose heart turns away from the LORD.

To trust in human strength, in our own capacities, and virtues, is to seek our strength in flesh alone, to place our faith only in the world of politics and man, and to not recognize the grace that flows from the heart of Christ. To trust in the human and physical alone, is to turn our heart away from the Lord.

Both the reading from Jeremiah and the psalm today repeat the same image, telling us that he who trusts in the Lord;

 is like a tree planted beside the waters
                        that stretches out its roots to the stream:
            it fears not the heat when it comes;
                        its leaves stay green;
            in the year of drought it shows no distress,
                        but still bears fruit.

In other words, when we trust in the Lord, then whenever we suffer; whether hunger, or poverty, or grief, then, we are able to respond to these situations of misery in a way that is different from when we trust only in our own capacities. In the words of the Prophet Jeremiah, we show no distress, but still bear fruit!

These images of tree and river of life are very usefully repeated in the final book of the Bible, Revelation (22:1-2), where we read:

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb  through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.

Having read from the book of Revelation we see that this image of the tree that stretches its roots to the stream can be very usefully compared to our relationship with the Sacred Heart of Jesus. We are the tree, and the stream of the living waters is that which springs from the Sacred Heart of Jesus!

My dear brothers and sisters, the comparison to the Sacred Heart is not an idle comparison. As Pope Francis teaches in his recent encyclical Dilexit Nos, because of the resurrection of His body, the Sacred Heart of Jesus is a heart that physically exists. His Glorious Body exists with all the wounds that were inflicted on it in the course of His Passion. For this reason, His Sacred Heart functions with a hole in it from the lance that pierced His side, and from that side, from that wound in His Most Sacred Heart, flow the life-giving waters of grace that ensure that we are not “like a barren bush in the desert that enjoys no change of season,” “like chaff which the wind drives away.”

One final point; a few paragraphs earlier I had suggested that when we trust in the Lord, we are able to respond to situations of misery in a way that is different from when we trust only in our own strength and capacities. How exactly do we do this? One way to do this is to realize that when we suffer, we can choose to suffer with Christ, and in this way contribute to His task of redeeming the world. To do this, I often use the following words of St. Paul in his letter to the Colossians (1:24): “in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ for the sake of His body, …the church.” In the face of crisis, of troubles, I repeat these words as a prayer, over, and over again; I invite to do similarly.

My dear brothers and sisters, Our Lord suffered as we do, and His wounds were transformed into the glorious signs of His victory over death and sin. If we join our sufferings with those of Christ, then our sufferings too will be transformed into banners in the war against the Devil, and as St Paul assures us today in his first letter to Corinthians, we will be raised from the dead, and as then, as the Gospel acclamations assures us; “your reward will be great in heaven.”

God bless you all.

(A version of this homily was first preached in Concanim to the faithful at the parish church of Our Lady of the Rosary, Fatorda, on 16 Feb 2025.)
(Image reference: “The Fountain of Grace” (detail), Workshop of jan van Eyck, 1441, Museo del Prado.)

Presented and Confirmed in the Lord: Homily for the Feast of the Presentation

 

My dear brothers and sisters,

The feast of the Presentation we celebrate today is not unlike the sacrament of confirmation which all of you have just received. Our Lord was taken to the temple by His parents and presented to His Father, as were you; He was consecrated to God, as the law of Moses required of every first born, and through the process that began at your baptism, and concluded in confirmation, so have you been. Indeed, like Our Lord, you are now confirmed also in His triple office, of priest, prophet, and king.

There is another similarity between the feast we celebrate today, and the sacrament of confirmation, and this is the presence of the Holy Spirit. In the Gospel reading today we hear that the Holy Spirit was upon Simeon, and that “He came in the Spirit into the temple,” in other words, dear brothers and sisters, he was possessed by the Holy Spirit. You too, beloved, are possessed by the Holy Spirit, you belong now to Him and it must be your desire to do His bidding.

What is it to be possessed by the Holy Spirit. We can turn to the Fathers of the Church for a little help here, who speak of two kinds of fire; the fire of purification, and the fire of burning. Through confirmation and possession by the Holy Spirit, you are now subjected to the fire of purification, as we hear in the first reading today from the prophet Malachi;

For he is like the refiner’s fire,
    or like the fuller’s lye.
He will sit refining and purifying silver,
    and he will purify the sons of Levi,
Refining them like gold or like silver
    that they may offer due sacrifice to the LORD.

Through the rest of your life, but especially in times of trial, you must remember that you are being purified so that you “may offer due sacrifice to the Lord”.  Confirmed in the Holy Spirit, and constantly purified, you are also given the gift of being able to see the world not simply through material eyes, you can now see the world through spiritual eyes; you can see what is denied to other people. Even more importantly, however, once in the Spirit, you are worthy enough to become like Christ. You are all, other Christs!

Who is this Christ? We are given one insight into His character in the psalm we just heard:

Who is this king of glory?
    The LORD, strong and mighty,
    the LORD, mighty in battle.

And who is Our Lord doing battle with?  Saint Paul in his letter to the Hebrews which we just read tells us that he was born so that:

that through death he might destroy the one
who has the power of death, that is, the Devil,
and free those who through fear of death
had been subject to slavery all their life.

In confirmation, my dear brothers and sisters, you have pledged yourselves to offer support in Christ’s battle with the Devil. All of you will do battle with the Devil, and, “With the power of the Spirit” you will be “strong and mighty” and “mighty in battle.” You are called to do battle like Christ, and like Him, you will triumph.

However, to triumph, and to fully reap the power of the Holy Spirit, and to be in the Spirit, you will have to be righteous and devout, keeping your eyes always on His law. If you do this, then at the end of your life, after you have spent a lifetime doing battle with the Devil, you will be able to make your own the words of Simeon in the Temple, as he held the Lord in his hand, the words of our Holy Mother Church at the end of every day:

Now, Master, you may let your servant go 
        in peace, according to your word,
    for my eyes have seen your salvation,
        which you prepared in the sight of all the peoples:
    a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
        and glory for your people Israel.

May God bless and be with you, now and always.

(This homily was first preached to a group of newly confirmed parishioners of Ambarnath, at the mission station of Dapada, Silvassa on 2 Feb 2025.)

A Year Acceptable to the Lord: Homily for the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring glad tidings to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.

My dear brothers and sisters,

These words that we heard in the Gospel today would be familiar to many of us. To some of us, these words would have a special meaning, having provided the raison d’etre of our lives. Nevertheless, when I read these words today, I was struck by the last line “and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord,” because ever since the 29^th of December, we have been in a Jubilee year, which is Our Lord referred to in the portion of the Gospel we just heard.

The foundations of the Jubilee year were laid when, through Moses, God gave the law to Israel. Thus, in chapter 25 of the book of Leviticus we read:

You shall hallow the fiftieth year and you shall proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you: you shall return, every one of you, to your property and every one of you to your family (Is 25:10).

In this year of jubilee you shall return, every one of you, to your property. When you make a sale to your neighbor or buy from your neighbor, you shall not cheat one another (Is 25: 13, 14).

You shall not cheat one another, but you shall fear your God; for I am the Lord your God (Is 25: 17).

Brothers and sisters, from both, the verses read out by Our Lord, as well as in these verses from Leviticus, it is clear that a Jubilee year is about righteousness and justice. We make things right among our brothers, and God rights the relationship we have with Him. God’s mercy, freely extended in the form of an indulgence in the course of a Jubilee year, “transforms the boundaries of human justice” and “free[s] our hearts from the weight of sin because the reparation due for our sins is given freely and abundantly.”

The first reading today has something to teach us about our comportment in the course of a Jubilee Year. Ezra the priest reads out the law, forgotten by the people in the course of the Babylonian exile, and – we read – “the people were weeping as they heard the words of the law.” The people were weeping, dear brothers and sisters, because they realized that bereft of the law, they had been leading sinful lives and were filled with repentance. My dear brothers and sisters, this is the task before us in this, and any, jubilee year; return to hear the instructions of the law, and then filled with repentance for our sins, return to the law and the righteousness of God’s ways.

Beloved, living in the times that we do it is easy to forget the law, but every Mass we attend offers us reminders of aspects of it. It is also essential that in the course of this Jubilee year we begin a practice of regular confession, so that we may be reconciled both with our brethren and God.

But a Jubilee year is not only about repentance and tears, for, as Ezra reminds us:

Today is holy to the LORD your God.
Do not be sad, and do not weep

Go, eat rich foods and drink sweet drinks,
and allot portions to those who had nothing prepared;
for today is holy to our LORD.
Do not be saddened this day,
for rejoicing in the LORD must be your strength!

Indeed, the Jubilee year is a year for rejoicing, but a rejoicing that is in the Lord, by keeping in His ways, and being reconciled with him. And once again, dear brothers and sisters, remember this call to “allot portions to those who had nothing prepared.” There is no jubilee year, when there is no distributive justice, when we do not share with others less fortunate.

There is another element to the righteousness of the Jubilee year. We cannot profane the year of the jubilee with works that are unworthy. Even the simplest of acts may be those that take away from our brothers. Let me end by proffering a small example. I was in a vehicle some days ago, which was flying down some of these new expressways that now contaminate Goa. Dissatisfied with the speed at which he was already travelling, the driver chose to overtake from the left! Overtaking from the left, as you know, is a violation of traffic regulations, and you can take someone’s life in the process. Every death on Goan roads, my dear brothers – and there are too many deaths on our roads – is a manifestation of the disregard we have not only for traffic regulations, but for life itself, and because we privilege our own pleasure. Every violation of a right of others demands restitution and it would be a good idea to begin our commemoration of the jubilee year, by the restraining of ourselves when in traffic, chastising ourselves when we break traffic norms, and then confessing that sin at the earliest possible opportunity. If we only did so much, we would be making “a year acceptable to the Lord.”

May God bless you and help you keep the Jubilee year holy.

(A version of this homily was first preached to the faithful at the parish of Our Lady of the Rosary, Fatorda on 25 Jan 2025.

This homily is dedicated to my brother Joel Albert Fernandes, whose generosity has made this homily possible. Do offer a prayer for him.)

Of Political Theology

Of the many homilies I heard during the recently concluded Exposition of the Sacred Relics of St. Francis Xavier, there was one which particularly stood out for reasons of expounding a very political theology. This homily was that of the Apostolic Nuncio to India, Archbishop Leopoldo Girelli, delivered on the fourth of December, the fourteenth day of the exposition. 

In his homily, the Nuncio referred to the rather impertinent demands made to test the DNA of St. Francis Xavier. Responding to this suggestion, Archbishop Girelli said; “Actually, the DNA [of St. Francis Xavier] resides in his faith in Christ; and whoever is interested to know it can find it in every Catholic in Goa, since every Catholic Goa is intimately united to St. Francis Xavier and receives from him his imprint, his Christian legacy. We are all Francis Xaviers in Goa. He is the model of our lives.”
Now some readers may dismiss these words as mere rhetoric. However, it is not mere words but fact, since it was on this rhetoric that history has been built, and this history has had very real implications for the lives of thousands of contemporary Goans – both Catholic and otherwise.

The fact that I refer to is the fact of baptism, which the pre-liberal Portuguese state in India took very seriously. Once a person was baptised, they became Catholic, and in principle were entitled to all the rights that other Catholics were entitled to. To this early Portuguese state in India, to be Catholic was to be synonymous with being Portuguese. As a result, those who were baptised, were now considered for all practical purposes, Portuguese. Given that these Portuguese did not live in a liberal world, with its rhetoric of equality, it did not mean that all Portuguese would be treated equally. However, they were all treated as Portuguese in the graded society that they lived in. And the long legacy of this Catholic politics resulted in the fact that even today the Portuguese-ness of the Goan (both Catholic and non-Catholic) is an undeniable fact of law! 

Francis Xavier, as he was then, may have been born Basque, but when he passed through the port of Lisbon and headed to Goa, and indeed as he moved through the territories of the Portuguese crown in Asia, he would have operated as Portuguese. But Portuguese or otherwise, both he and the Portuguese crown were equally interested in that most noble of projects, the winning souls for Christ. Once these souls submitted to Christ in baptism, then as Archbishop Girelli pointed out, they were all equally imprinted with Christ.

Any argument in political theology must take theological truths as its point of departure. In this case, Archbishop Girelli is pointing to the fact that those who are baptised in Christ partake in His Spirit; and those who commune of His body, partake of His flesh. Having eaten of Him, He becomes an integral part of them, and they in Him. They are all one in Christ, just as St. Francis Xavier was one with Christ. Ergo, at the spiritual level, which any political theologian must take seriously, Christ is very much part of the DNA of every Catholic in India. By virtue of our veneration of St. Francis Xavier, by our kissing of his relic, by making him the model of our lives, and indeed, by virtue of our praying to him that he be the model of our lives, we are indeed imprinted with the DNA of St. Francis Xavier. At the end of the day, it was his total commitment to Christ which marked his DNA, to the extent that it did not corrupt!

It is unfortunate that there is no substantial amount of political theology, of the kind Archbishop Girelli articulated, being expounded in contemporary Goa, or indeed India. The theology that tends to be presented as political theology is dated, and cannot respond to the current situation in our country. Above all, it does not begin from spiritual premises, being silent on the fact that the transcendental, or supernatural, world has a very real impact on our lives. Rather, this theology remains almost entirely within an immanent frame, ignoring, if not denying (implicitly, though not explicitly) the transcendental, and sticking within the material, or natural, world. Where it attempts a political theology, it seems to remain at the level of the moral, be good to the poor, etc. etc. which while undeniably important and critical parts of the Christian project, gain importance only when they spring from a transcendental belief and truth. Indeed, what a shame, that it took a foreign diplomat to say what ought to have been on the lips of most Goans, especially the Catholic. But no matter! It is not too late for us to think more seriously about the way in which the Catholic faith physically imprints on the lives of Goans, both Catholic and non-Catholic.

(This text was first published in the O Heraldo on 21 Jan 2025.

Image Reference:St Francis Xavier baptizing Indians, by Luca Giordano, 1685, Museo di Capodimonte, Naples .)

Espouse Yourself to the Lord: Homily for the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

For Zion’s sake I will not be silent,
   for Jerusalem’s sake I will not be quiet,
until her vindication shines forth like the dawn
   and her victory like a burning torch.

My dear brothers and sisters, when I read these lines of the first reading from the prophet Isaiah, they urged me to proclaim the truth that I know must be proclaimed. Before I do that, however, I would like to quote from the words of the Brazilian poet Oswald de Andrade:

    Fizemos Cristo nascer na Bahia. Ou em Belém do Pará.
    We made Christ to be born in Bahia, or in Belém do Pará

Now the Oswald de Andrade was not proclaiming a Christian message, quite to the contrary! Nevertheless, I found these words useful to make the point that we must all recognise; that when the Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ was proclaimed by the good missionaries who came to us, they once again incarnated the Word in these lands. They then incarnated the Word once again when, through the power of the Holy Spirit, and the words of Our Lord, converted bread into body, and wine into blood, and then once again when they consumed this body and blood, and became the Incarnation of the Word, inviting our ancestors to the faith.

My dear brothers and sisters, when Christ is incarnated and proclaimed in a land, it does not stay the same, it becomes another Zion, another Jerusalem. As prophet Isaiah proclaims in the first reading:

    you shall be called by a new name
   pronounced by the mouth of the LORD.
You shall be a glorious crown in the hand of the LORD,
   a royal diadem held by your God.

Prior to the Portuguese, there was no Goa. Goa was the name of the little port which the Portuguese took in 1510 on the feast day of St. Catherine of Alexandria. And by divine providence various territories kept getting added to this little town, until the words of the prophet Isaiah came to pass “you shall be called by a new name.” That new name was Goa, and it represented a particular Christian project, the proclamation of the Gospel, and the incarnation of the values of the Gospel so that these values could be imitated by all – both Catholic and non-Catholic – who lived in this land with a new name.

The prophet Isaiah prophesied that this land would be a glorious crown in the hand of the Lord, a royal diadem; and so it was that Goa was also called the Pearl of the Orient.

The story I am trying to tell, my dear brothers and sisters, is of the salvific project in which Goa plays a role. The role of spreading the Gospel of Christ throughout the world. This is Goa’s special role in the evangelisation of the world. Like our Lord in the Gospel today, we are called to turn the waters of the peoples, into wine.

This role was amply fulfilled by earlier generations of Goans, who lived pious lives, and who sent sons and daughters into religious life so that they could become missionaries and preach the Word to people in all parts of Asia, Africa, and even Europe. But not just in religious life, even the lay Goan was known for virtuous living throughout the British Empire. Indeed, through their lives, they made their own the words of the psalm we heard today “Proclaim his marvellous deeds to all the nations.” St. José Vaz, whose feast we celebrated on the sixteenth of this month, is a notable example of this special calling of the Goan people.

And yet, dear brothers and sisters, it would not be an understatement to say that today we are failing in this duty to preach the Gospel and evangelize the world. It would not be wrong to say that with every day, the words of the Prophet Isaiah, “No more shall people call you “Forsaken, “or your land “Desolate,”” seem to be like a mockery of the Christian project in Goa. Our piety is being forsaken, and as we migrate or are forced into exile,  the land seems increasingly desolate. Ancient spirits once though vanquished are once again asserting themselves to the common detriment of all.
In his first letter to the Corinthians, from which we read today, St. Paul tells us:

To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit
is given for some benefit.

My dear brothers and sisters, it is our bounden obligation to discern, and then fulfill, the manifestation of the Spirit given to each of us. As St. Paul says earlier in the same letter to the Corinthians (9:16), “woe to me if I do not proclaim the Gospel.”

The proclamation of the Gospel requires that we enter into spiritual battle with all the evil spirits that seek to reclaim what was gained in the name of Christ. The spirits of envy, or jealousy, of greed, of licentiousness, of lust, of idolatry.

I began this homily with the words of the Brazilian poet, I would like to end with the words of an unknown Gujarati poet,

Mero gaam kaatha parey
Jaha doodh ki nadiya baahe

Translated these words mean:

My village is Katha Parey
Where rivers of milk flow

Our land blessed with so much water, once ran with the rivers of wine that flows from His Sacred Heart. These rivers have been blocked dear brothers and sisters, by our disinclination to preach the Gospel and live the Gospel in our lives. Let us, therefore, espouse ourselves to Our Lord that once more, to use the words of the prophet Isaiah:

you shall be called “My Delight, “
   and your land “Espoused.”

May Our Lord, and His Blessed Mother, bless you and those you encounter this week.

(This homily was written to be preached to the faithful at the parish of Our Lady of the Rosary, Fatorda on 19 Jan 2025.
Image reference: “The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine,” Barna da Siena, c.
1340, Museum of Fine Arts Boston.)

An Uncommon Righteousness: Homily for the feast of the Baptism of the Lord

The second reading for today, the feast of the Baptism of Our Lord presents us with a dilemma. In his letter to Titus, St. Paul teaches:

Beloved:
The grace of God has appeared, saving all
and training us to reject godless ways and worldly desires
and to live temperately, justly, and devoutly in this age,
as we await the blessed hope,
the appearance of the glory of our great God
and saviour Jesus Christ,

St. Paul explains that it is the grace of God that is necessary, and makes possible, to live a life that rejects godless ways and worldly desires. It is God’s grace that enables us to live temperately, justly and devoutly. Now so many of you will have encountered people who have said, “Going for mass does not make you a good person!” or perhaps, that one does not have to be a Christian, or Catholic, that is, one does not need to be baptised, to be a good person. Conversely, there are others who believe that the role of religion is so that we can be good persons.

And it is a fact that it is possible to be a good, and virtuous person even, without going to Mass, or being baptised. After all, as even Biblical history will testify, there were lots of virtuous people who lived prior to the Incarnation, the birth of Our Lord. 

And yet, dear brothers and sisters, we must remember, that good deeds alone cannot get us to heaven. And this is what the Christian life is all about, getting to heaven, that is, living life eternal in our glorified bodies in the presence of God, and His Mother and saints. We must also remember that Holy Mother Church teaches that the virtuous who died before Our Lord did not go to heaven; rather they waited for the Resurrection of Our Lord, for Him to open the doors to heaven. This is why we assert in the Creed “He descended into Hell.” As the Catechism of the Catholic Church (§633) teaches us, “Jesus did not descend into hell to deliver the damned, nor to destroy the hell of damnation, but to free the just who had gone before him.” Heaven was impossible prior to the death and resurrection of Our Lord. 

And so it is, dear brothers and sisters that baptism is necessary for us to get to heaven. For what is it that baptism does but remove from our souls the stain of original sin! Prior to Fall, our first parents lived in a rightly ordered relationship with God, they walked with Him in the Garden of Eden. Their Fall resulted in an impossibility to have a relationship with God which is why the Son incarnated to return us to the embrace of the Father, to make us right with God.  

Brothers and Sisters, St. Paul’s letter to Titus makes the limits of our righteousness very clear:

the kindness and generous love
                        of God our saviour appeared,
            not because of any righteous deeds we had done
                        but because of his mercy,

The last verse of the psalm this Sunday sings to God and affirms that:

If you take away their breath, they perish and return to the dust.
     When you send forth your spirit, they are created,
and you renew the face of the earth.

My dear brothers and sisters, it was the mercy of our God that restored to us the possibility of living in our bodies for life eternal. Were it not for this mercy, we would have been like those who perish and return to the dust, unable to live in the presence of God. It was His mercy that brought to human existence a quality of goodness that is undeniable. When we are pointed to non-Christians who are good and virtuous, we should also look for the Christian institutions and lives of Christian holiness that make this non-Christian virtue possible! This is to say, when He sent for His spirit, He renewed the face of the earth. Virtue was no longer what it had been!

Bishop Saint Maximus of Turin (c. 380 AD – c. 465 AD) identifies the correct relationship between virtue and holiness when he teaches:

When the Lord is Baptized, then, Righteousness does not justify Christ, but Righteousness is itself made Holy by Christ, and unfulfilled virtue is Fulfilled by Him in Whom is the Fullness of Virtues.

In other words, in submitting Himself to Baptism, Our Lord was opening the way to us not just to virtuous living, but to holiness, and through this, opening the route to heaven and eternal communion with God. 

My dear brothers and sisters, the life of the Christian is not meant to be merely the life of secular virtues, though of course this is encompassed in the Christian life. The Christian life is the life of holiness, a life that is not possible without the infusion of the grace of the Holy Spirit; a grace that is particularly promised to us through the sacrament of baptism, which is the gateway to all other sacraments and therefore the graces that they provide. As we leave the graced period of Christmastide behind, mark the commencement of Our Lord’s public life, and look forward to the penitential season of Lent, let us strive, to lead not just virtuous lives, but holy lives by rejecting godless ways and worldly desires, and living temperately, justly, and devoutly.

May St. Paul in his prayers aid us in this life. Amen.

(This homily was written to be preached to the faithful of the parish of Our Lady of the Rosary, Fatorda on 12 Jan 2025.
Image credit:'The Baptism of Christ,' Antoine Coypel, c.1690, Los Angeles County Museum of Art.)