The Friendship of the Saints: Homily for the Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

I recently heard a person comment; “People nowadays give more importance to the saints than Jesus Himself.” This is not the first time I have heard this kind of comment, having heard this often during the Exposition of the Sacred Relics of St. Francis Xavier, where there was an opinion circulating that we seem to be giving more importance to St. Francis than to Jesus.

But could our Lord be jealous of His saints? Could His saints lead people anywhere else other than to Our Lord? These opinions are, in fact, profoundly uncatholic, and the lectionary this Sunday offers us multiple examples of how recourse to the intercessory power, and prayer, of the saints is deeply rooted in Catholic tradition and teaching.

In the first reading we read of the awesome encounter between Abraham and God, where Abraham, quite literally bargains with God to ensure that should there be only ten innocent people, God would not destroy the towns of Sodom and Gomorrah. While there is a tendency when reading this episode to focus on the merciful nature of God, when saint Ambrose commented on this episode, he also saw in it the value of saintly people, teaching that:

from this we should understand what a powerful bulwark a just person can be for the country and how we should not be jealous of saintly persons or criticize them with temerity. In fact, their faith saves us, their rectitude preserves us from destruction.

My dear brothers and sisters, these words of St. Ambrose should remind us of not just the nature of the relationship with the saints, on which I will reflect in just a while, but also the power of the relics of the saints. The physical presence of the saints preserves us from destruction. We should remember that no matter how bad things are in Goa, the fact that we have the relics of St. Francis Xavier, and so many other saints in altars across God, keeps our land safe from the eve greater destruction that the powers and principalities of the world would seek to wreak on our land.

This teaching should not be seen as merely some innovation introduced by St. Ambrose. If we pay attention to the day’s Gospel, we see that Our Lord Himself sets up a culture of intercessory prayer. Indeed, as the Catechism teaches us (CCC 2634- 2636), Our Lord himself intercedes for us before the Father, and no matter whom we pray to, it is eventually the Father, our Father in heaven, who heeds and answers our prayers.

In the Gospel today we hear Our Lord telling us a parable of a man who wakes up a neighbour at midnight, so that he can host visitor who had just arrived. The neighbour refuses to extend his hospitality, but Our Lord recommends persistence, because:

I tell you,
if he does not get up to give the visitor the loaves
because of their friendship,
he will get up to give him whatever he needs
because of his persistence.

Our prayers to the saints are often insistent, and persistent. We keep turning to them and asking them for the favours we require. And Our Lord assures us, and not just in this parable, but in other parables as well (Lk 18: 1-8), that if we are persistent, our prayers will be answered.

Our Lord does more than recommend intercessions. He also indicates to us the nature of the relationship between the saints and ourselves.

"Suppose one of you has a friend”

Just as He teaches us that the Almighty God in heaven is our Father, He teaches us that the saints are our friends in heaven. And because they are our friends, we can be sure that they want to help us, and are in fact, waiting to help us. All we need to do is petition them.

And how should we be asking? And what should we be asking for? Once again, Our Lord offers instruction in the parable about the good father. Contrasting our Father in heaven with good earthly fathers, He asks us

how much more will the Father in heaven
give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?"

In other words, petition like we were children, that is with full trust and confidence; and petition, not necessarily for this, or that, but for the Holy Spirit, for the grace that “thy will be done”. Our prayer must ideally, “this is what I want, but thy will be done,” because the child trusts that their father will give them what is good for them. And this prayer should not be difficult because, as the Gospel acclamation echoes:

You have received a Spirit of adoption,
through which we cry, Abba, Father.

May God bless you all, and may all His holy angels and saints intercede for you. 

(A version of this homily will be preached to the faithful in Concanim on 27 July 2025 at the Sé Catedral, Old Goa.)

(Image reference: Adoration of the Trinity, Albrecht Dürer, 1511, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.)

Drinking of the Chalice: Homily for the Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

in my flesh I am filling up
what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ
on behalf of his body, which is the church

These words from St. Paul’s letter to the Colossians are part of the lectionary for this sixteenth Sunday in ordinary time and it gives me great joy to reflect on these words that over the past year have carved a special place in my heart.

The fear of, and the flight from, pain is one of those basic emotions that unites all humanity. No one wishes to suffer pain. And much philosophical questioning has engaged with the question of pain. If there is a God, and this God is love, then why is there so much pain and suffering in the world? Even if, pain is a result of sin, why is it that the innocent suffer? Should not a caring and loving God spare and protect the innocent from pain?

Catholicism offers what I would like to call, an economy of pain, to help us understand the simultaneous existence of pain in the world and the presence of a merciful, loving God who actively intervenes in history.

In this understanding, all pain and suffering is the result of sin, caused by the sin of our first parents, and then subsequently all the generations that followed them. Even as we descended deeper and deeper into sin, God waited for the right moment until He could send His son, who through his passion, death and resurrection, did battle with the effects of sin. He resisted temptation, that is, he did not succumb to sin, and triumphed as a human being, making it possible for us to break the power of sin and reconcile ourselves with divinity. Henceforth, pain is not merely the domain of sin and the devil. On the contrary, pain can now be redemptive. Like Our Lord and Master who died on the cross for love of humanity, we too can offer up our suffering, uniting ourselves with His sacrifice on the cross, offering our pain as reparation for sin.

Some imagery that might help us contemplate this mystery. One of the challenges I face when contemplating the sorrowful mysteries is at the third: the crowing with thorns. How does one understand this mystery? A few days ago, when I encountered an image of Our Lady of Fatima, some part of this mystery fell into place.

Describing her vision of Our Lady in Fatima on June 13, 1917, Lucia, the visionary of Fatima, indicated that “In front of the palm of Our Lady’s right hand was a heart encircled by thorns, which pierced it.” With this information we can now make more sense of the Crown of Thorns.

Remember that the wounds that Our Lord suffered in the course of His passion persisted in His glorified and resurrected body. This allows us to see the Crown of Thorns, therefore, as more than some passing torture, but integral to His Passion and Resurrection. In this light, and that of the vision of Our Lady, we can see that the crown of thorns is the crown that Our Lord shares with those of us who, like His mother, willingly offer our sufferings to join those of His. In other words, Our Lord offers to us a crown of thorns, which, if we accept it, becomes for us the crown of martyrdom which we receive at the time of our judgment.

We are now potentially better able to understand the words of St. Paul. In the face of every trial and suffering we face, we have a choice. We can accept the pain, for love of Our Lord, assuming it as a part of His Passion which we would like to share in. We accept this crown of thorns, this cross, not merely for our own sakes, but for the sake of the entire Church which is the mystical body of Our Lord.

In Her apparition in Fatima on August 19 Our Lady instructed the little visionaries: “Pray, pray very much, and make sacrifices for sinners; for many souls go to hell, because there are none to sacrifice themselves and pray for them.” If we make the words of St. Paul to the Colossians our own, we could well be one of those who prevent souls slipping into hell. May Our Lord grant us the grace to be so.

(This homily was prepared for a virtual audience in the hope that you will offer a prayer for the soul of my aunt Winifred Maria Menezes, who passed away on July 15, 2025.)

(Image reference: Saint Catherine Of Siena Receives The Crown Of Thorns, Alessandro Casolani via Fine Art America.)

To Know Him Is To Love Him: Homily for the Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

This Sunday we are treated to the beautiful parable of the Good Samaritan. Too often, this parable is presented to urge love for our neighbour. And it is true, this is one of the messages. But to limit our understanding of the parable to just our relationship with our neighbour is to miss a crucial point and forget that the entire conversation between the lawyer and Our Lord takes place in the context of two commandments, the first being to love God!

Fr Rosario Oliveira, the Parish priest here at the Sé, has often pointed out that we cannot love God, if we do not know Him first. Similarly, we cannot love our neighbour properly, if we do not first love our God.

To love God, is to look for Him actively, and this is exactly what the Fathers of the Church did. They were Christological in their reading of the scriptures, i.e. looking for Our Lord, or a foreshadowing of Him, when they read the scriptures. And this is also what they did with the parable of the Good Samaritan, finding in this parable, not just the lesson to love our neighbours, but a relationship between Our Lord and ourselves.

Allow me, dear brothers and sister, to us address the parable one line at a time to see how this allegorical reading works.

“A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho.”

The Fathers read this line as a reference to Adam, our first father, who was expelled from the heavenly Jerusalem, with Jericho being the world in which we live. He:

“stumbled upon some robbers, who, after they had both stripped him and subjected him to a beating, went away and left him half-dead.”

Like Adam, we too are on the road to Jericho, and according to St. Ambrose, these robbers are the angels of night and darkness, who strip our souls of the clothes of spiritual grace that we have received. Remember that in baptism we receive a purified soul, a white garment that we are to present unstained to Our Lord on our death. If we preserve unstained the garments that we have put on, St. Ambrose teaches us, we cannot feel the robbers’ blows. Without this protective garment, however, these spirits can inflict wounds on our soul. Persistently wounded, we are left on this road, wounded and dying – because this is how our life, without the salvation that Christ provides, will end; condemnation to eternal death.

“a priest was going down [from Jerusalem] on that road; …. Likewise, a Levite, when he came upon that place and saw him, also passed by on the other side.”

According to the Fathers, the intention was not to critique priests and ritual. On the contrary, it points out that Our Lord can offer salvation, which the Law and the prophets could not.

The portion of the parable that comes next, is sublime:

“a Samaritan who was traveling on a trip came across him, and when he saw him he felt compassion for him.”

In the figure of the Samaritan, rejected and spurned by Jewish Orthodoxy, the Fathers recognized the figure of Our Lord. And they recognized Him by compassion He feels for the victim, i.e. humankind. Compassion, is what motivated Our Lord to come down from the heavenly Jerusalem to travel to Jericho to save us from eternal death.

He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them.

The bandages, oil and wine, are the sacraments that He offers to bind our wounded soul. Confession being the bandage, oil in the sacraments of baptism and confirmation and, wine which is transformed to His Most Precious Blood which sustains us on our journey.

Then he put him on his own mount, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. On the next day, he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper and said, ‘Take care of him, and whatever you spend in addition, I, on my return journey, will repay you.’”

Origen, suggests that the mount on which the victim is placed, is in fact the body of Our Lord. And why not, since He has indeed offered His very body to carry us to heaven. The innkeeper is the Church, the provider of the sacramental care that Our Lord instituted, and the two denarii the Old and the New Testament, that guide us. And the final flourish, a reference that Our Lord will return, and repay the innkeeper for his troubles beyond what he has been paid for.

My dear brothers and sisters, the morale of this parable is that to love our neighbour is to have compassion for them, just as Our Lord had compassion for us. We can have this compassion, only if we bind ourselves to His own passion, which He shares with us through His Body and Blood. In other words, we can love our neighbour, only because we love Our Lord and imitate Him in his compassion for His neighbours, us. If we are faithful to our communion with Him, then we will be like the innkeeper, who will be repaid, on the Day of Judgement, on the return of the King.

(A version of this homily was first preached to the faithful at the anticipated Sunday mass on 12 July 2025 at the Sé Catedral, Goa.)

(Image reference: Christ as the Good Samaritan, contemporary Russian icon.)