Saturday, September 13, 2025

Ave Crux Spes Unica: Homily for the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross

Today is a doubly auspicious day, for not only is it the day of the Lord, but we also have the privilege of being able to celebrate the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross on a Sunday, which happens once in about seven years. This feast originates from the time when the relic of the true Cross – discovered by St. Helen, mother of the emperor Constantine – was first exposed for veneration in 335 A.D. in front of the newly constructed church of the Holy Sepulcher.

This is the historical context of this feast, but how do we exalt the Cross, and why should we?

My dear brothers and sister, the ancient Fathers of the Church loved Our Lord, and the Cross, so much that when they read the Old Testament, they looked everywhere in it for a prefiguring of Our Lord, and in some cases, His Cross. Before I move on, let us pause and think for a second, they looked for Our Lord and His Cross everywhere! If only our hearts and eyes were filled with such fire my dear brothers and sisters.

It is because the Fathers read the scriptures with this eye, and of course, because Our Lord himself made the analogy, that we read about the episode of the bronze serpent on the cross raised by Moses, from the book of Numbers.

"And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert,
so must the Son of Man be lifted up,
so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life."

But why a serpent? Is the dying, or dead, body of Our Lord to be compared to that of a serpent? The answer in someways, is yes! Listen to St. Paul in the second letter to the Corinthians (5: 21):

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

The human body, after the Fall, the same fall engineered by the ancient serpent, is sinful. This is not say that there is no good in our bodies, but that it is also the storehouse of much that is ill.

What was nailed to the cross, therefore, was not just the body of Our Lord. It was also our sinful nature, tied to this flesh, that was nailed to the cross. We were rescued from the second, spiritual, death because even in pain, when temptation is greatest, Our Lord resisted temptation, and triumphed. In so doing, He, “who knew no sin”, and who willingly took on sinful human nature, but did not sin, also ensured that it was human nature that triumphed with Him.

It is through the death of this man on the cross that we know that there is life after death, and we know how to resist temptation, why we must resist temptation, and to what end to put suffering, which is the product of sin. Accept suffering, embrace the cross and we will triumph with Christ.

Listen to the exultation of St. Gregory Nazianzus, the first two sentences of which we often hear at Easter time:

O death, where is your sting? O grave, where is your victory? You are overthrown by the cross. You are slain by him who is the giver of life. You are without breath, dead, without motion, even though you keep the form of a serpent lifted up high on a pole.

As Saint Bede, patron of the seminary I was sent to, teaches;

Because death was from a serpent, it was represented by the brazen image of a serpent in the account in Numbers.

In other words, what was nailed to the cross was not just a sinful body, and human nature, but death! The snake represents the reign of the serpent, the Evil one, who introduced death into the world. His eventual death, through the cross, is foretold, through this episode in the book of Numbers and realized eventually by the sacrifice of Our Lord on the Cross.

And so, the Cross does not exist for its own sake, as a pretty marker of our sect. But, as in the words of St. Andrew of Crete:

It is raised, not to receive glory (for with Christ nailed to it what greater glory could it have?) but to give glory to God who is worshiped on it and proclaimed by it.

So should it be with our lives, where we not just embrace the cross, but seek it, desire it, and love it, accepting our suffering because as in the words of St. Andrew the apostle, it is the cross which will carry us; no (!), restore us, to our maker.

O Bona Crux (O Good Cross), made beautiful by the body of the Lord, long have I desired thee, ardently have I loved thee, unceasingly have I sought thee, and now thou art ready for my eager soul. Receive me from among men and restore me to my Master, so that He, who redeemed me through thee, shalt receive me through thee. Amen.

(A version of this homily was first preached to the faithful gathered at the Royal Chapel of St. Anthony, Old Goa, on 14 Sep 2025.)

(Image reference: Exaltation of the Holy Cross, Luigi Gregori, late 1870s, Basilica of the Sacred Heart, University of Notre Dame, Indiana.)

Saturday, September 6, 2025

Foundation: Homily for the Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time

The two parables offered by Our Lord in the Gospel today offer us a way to deepen our appreciation of the spiritual life.

after laying the foundation
and finding himself unable to finish the work
the onlookers should laugh at him and say,
‘This one began to build but did not have the resources to finish.’

The question, of course, is; why should anyone spend one’s own resources to lay the foundation of a tower, when the foundation of our tower ought to be Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself? As Saint Paul teaches us in his first letter to the Corinthians (3:11),

no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ.

In fact, Our Lord asks that we consider His words our firm foundation:

Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock (Mt 7: 24-25).

If we found our lives on the rock which is the confession that of Peter – “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (Mt 16:16) – we will be able to build a tower that reaches up to heaven. Unlike the tower of Babel, which aimed to give glory to its builders, a tower of virtuous living, built on the living foundation of the Son of Man who died, and was resurrected, will give glory to Our Father in heaven (Mt 5:16).

The fact is, that Our Lord does not expect us to build the tower by ourselves, but offers to do so much of the heavy lifting for us. As He promised in the Gospel according to John (14:2):

In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?

In other words, if we accept Him as our foundation, and work with Him by leading a holy life on earth, He will work with us to ensure we have a place in heaven. And this is important, my dear brothers and sisters, for heaven is the only club which is worth getting into.

Getting into this club, however, involves certain renunciations, the conditions for holiness. As Our Lord continues to teach us today,

anyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions
cannot be my disciple.

Friends in Christ, when we hear these words, our minds are often taken to the episode of the rich young man who “went away grieving, for he had many possessions” (Mt 19:22). We think instantly of the material goods we may have, and we viscerally understand how that young man may have felt. Our Lord, asks for too much.

However, it is not only the material renunciation that Our Lord is thinking of, and in fact, He is thinking of much more! What Our Lord asks of us is to recognize that everything we have has been given to us by Him, and we should, considering Him our foundation, return them back to Him, and follow Him.

Pray the Suscipe prayer of St. Ignatius, dwell on it for a while, and you will realise how great is the leap of faith Our Lord expects us to make.

Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty,
my memory, my understanding,
and my entire will,
All I have and call my own.

You have given all to me.
To you, Lord, I return it.

Everything is yours; do with it what you will.
Give me only your love and your grace,
that is enough for me.

If everything that we have is God’s, and we are only the servant who takes what the Master gives him and then works to increase it (Mt 25:14-30), we have really nothing to fear. Easy to say, and as I myself confess, not so easy to put into practice. We can try though!

This urging to build our foundation on Christ makes more sense when we see who are the enemies that are ranged against us. As St. Cyril of Alexandria teaches:

We do not wrestle against blood and flesh, but against governments, empires, the world rulers of this present darkness, and wicked spirits in the heavenly regions. We also have a crowd of other enemies. They are the fleshly mind, the law that rages in our members, passions of many kinds, the lust of pleasure, the lust of the flesh, the lust of wealth, and others. We must wrestle with these. This is our savage troop of enemies. How will we conquer? “We will conquer believing that in God we shall do courageously”… “and he will bring to nothing those that oppress us.

None of these enemies we can hope to fight by ourselves. We need grace. The grace of a solid foundation, and the infusion of the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love. These, my dear brothers and sisters, we are provided weekly in the Eucharist, so that our foundation may be Christ.

May God bless you.

(A version of this homily was first preached to the faithful at the anticipatory Mass on 6 Sept 2025 at the Sé Catedral, Old Goa.)

(Image reference: The (Great)Tower of Babel (detail), Pieter Bruegel the Elder, c. 1563, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.)

Saturday, August 30, 2025

Humble Yourselves: Homily for the Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time

In the book of Genesis, God asks Adam, “Where are you?” (Gen 3:9). Now God, who is omnipresent, and omniscient, had no need to ask Adam where he was; He knew exactly where Adam was. He was, instead, asking Adam to introspect as to where he was in relationship to God.

Where was Adam? Even though not yet expelled from the Garden of Eden, Adam was now fallen from his relationship with God. And he fell, my dear brothers and sisters, because of his sin of pride, in other words, because of a lack of humility.

Today, inspired by these words from Genesis, and from the second reading, I too ask you, do you know where you are, when you come to Mass. In the second reading, St. Paul, tells us exactly where we are when we come to Mass.

you have approached Mount Zion
and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem,
and countless angels in festal gathering,
and the assembly of the firstborn enrolled in heaven,
and God the judge of all,
and the spirits of the just made perfect,
and Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant,
and the sprinkled blood that speaks more eloquently than that of Abel.

This is where we are dear brothers and sisters, we are in the heavenly Jerusalem, participating in the commemoration of the sacrifice of Our Lord, whose blood is on the altar. A sacrifice which is attended by countless angels, and the saints, all of us in the presence of God the Father, who receives the sacrifice of His Son, who mediates between us, imperfect sinners, and the perfection of the Father.

My dear brothers and sisters, St. John Marie Vianney is credited with saying that “If we really understood the priest on earth, we would die: not of fear, but of love.” My dear brothers and sisters, if we knew what the Mass was, we too would die.

We would die, not of fear, like Adam, not the spiritual death, like Adam, but we would die to ourselves. That is, we would die to pride and grow to new life in humility, grateful that we have been permitted to attend this divine gathering; this place where the ladder of Jacob has been set up, where the angels ascend and descend praising God; and we too, through the gift of the Body and Blood of Our Lord, can ascend to heaven. If we do not recognize the reality of the Mass, then it is because of the often undignified manner in which the Mass is celebrated.

The question posed to Adam, can also be posed to us in another way, in the context of the Mass. Do we know where we are in our relationship to God when we come to Mass? In His teaching in the Gospel today Our Lord counsels humility when we come to Mass. When he refers to the wedding banquet, He is referring to the Mass – the wedding banquet of the Lamb, where He is both priest, and sacrifice. At this banquet, he counsels us,

When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet,
do not recline at table in the place of honor.

Rather, when you are invited,
go and take the lowest place

In other words, when we come to the banquet table, let us come with humility.

We can be sacramentally humble before God, and be worthily present for the divine banquet, by making a good confession before receiving communion, which is the bread of angels that we are privileged to receive. Accusing ourselves of our sins before God is to take the lowest place at the banquet to which we have been invited. It is the best way to grow in humility! Too often, my dear brothers and sisters, we invite censure on ourselves, by receiving communion unworthily. Remember, that we may not receive communion if we are not in a state of grace. Communion is not a prize for attendance at Sunday mass! Therefore, every time you go to Mass, take the lowest place, by recognizing before God – through the priest in the confessional – that you are a sinner.

It is on recognizing ourselves as sinners, on taking the lowest place at the banquet, that we create the opportunity for the host, our Master, to come up to us and say ‘My friend, move up to a higher position.’

And then, as the Gospel says,

Then you will enjoy the esteem of your companions at the table (italicized emphasis added).

And who are these companions at the table? These companions, my dear brothers and sisters, are not just those physically present at the Mass, we, the spiritually, “poor, the [spiritually] crippled, the [spiritually] lame, the [spiritually] blind.”  As Saint Paul teaches us today, these companions are also those who are spiritually present, the angels and the holy ones, the saints, of God.

My dear brothers and sisters, the response to the psalm this Sunday is “God, in your goodness, you have made a home for the poor.” Let us give thanks to God, for creating this home for us, and for creating this opportunity for recognize ourselves as poor, for as the words of the hymn go:

Let the weak say, “I am strong”

Let the poor say, “I am rich

Because of what the

Lord has done for us”

(This homily was first preached to the faithful at the Cathedral parish of St. Catherine of Alexandria at the anticipatory Mass on 30 Aug 2025.)

(Image reference: The Confession (detail), Giuseppe Molteni, 1838, Gallerie di Piazza Scala, Milan.)