Sing a New Song: Homily for the Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time

Thus says the LORD:
I know their works and their thoughts,
and I come to gather nations of every language;
they shall come and see my glory.
I will set a sign among them;

This excerpt from the Prophet Isaiah, contained the first reading which we hear today, should bring to our mind the episode of the tower of Babel from the book of Genesis (11). In the story of Babel, we see that all of humanity was united in a single language and understood one another. This unity allowed them to commence great projects together. As Genesis teaches us, they said to each other:

“Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” (Gen 11: 4).

In other words, rather than trust in the providence of God, they relied on their own strengths, and their own capacities. Not just this, they sought to rival God, Himself. And so, God sowed confusion among them, and caused different languages to be born, such that they could not understand each other, nor work with each other.

It is possible to read the episode of Genesis as if God were jealous of, or threatened by, the people of Babel. But listen to the words from the second reading, St. Paul’s letter to the Hebrews:

"My son, do not disdain the discipline of the Lord
or lose heart when reproved by him;
for whom the Lord loves, he disciplines;
he scourges every son he acknowledges."
Endure your trials as "discipline";

If it was for the sake of discipline that God sowed confusion among the people of Babel, and it was, then we must be sure that he would have also offered a remedy, for as we read in the book of Job (5:18):

For he wounds, but he binds up;
    he strikes, but his hands heal.

The healing, my dear brothers and sisters, that God offered to remedy the confusion that he created at Babel, was the gift of tongues on the day of Pentecost, when all of the apostles:

were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. (Acts 2:4)

With this knowledge in mind, we can now revisit the words from the first reading:

I come to gather nations of every language;
they shall come and see my glory.

My dear brothers and sisters, the uniformity that the Lord destroyed, He restored as unity by bringing nations of every language together to bear witness, not to their glory, which would have been detrimental to their interests, but to His glory. The Gospel is proclaimed to all nations, and in all languages, so that we may all be gathered as one, just as in the days of the tower of Babel, but now in trust, and obedience, to Him who is our father. He ensured this to make true the words of Our Saviour which we hear in the Gospel today:

And people will come from the east and the west
and from the north and the south
and will recline at table in the kingdom of God.

But the words of scripture are not fulfilled merely in this polyglottal preaching for, as the words of the Prophet Isaiah assure us;

I will set a sign among them; (italicised emphasis added)

The sign, my dear brothers and sisters, is the Latin language. For over a thousand years, Latin was the language in which the Catholic Church offered praise and worship to God. So important is this language, that at the Second Vatican Council, the Fathers of the Council instructed that even as vernacular languages may be permitted during worship:

steps should be taken so that the faithful may also be able to say or to sing together in Latin those parts of the Ordinary of the Mass which pertain to them (Sacrosanctum Concilium §54).

In other words, Latin is an essential part of Catholic worship. It is the sign of unity restored subsequent to Pentecost, where even as the Gospel is proclaimed in multiple languages, we worship in a single language, so that no matter where in the world one goes, one can participate fully, especially in those parts of the Mass that pertain to the people – which would be the parts that the people participate vocally in, the Kyrie, the Gloria, the Creed, the Our Father, the Agnus Dei.

The human heart, however, my dear brothers and sisters, is fickle, and we long to travel by the broad path of our convenience, rather than the narrow gate of the disciple of the Lord. And so it is that today, most of us do not know the parts of the Mass in Latin, or the profound Latin hymns that were sung by generations of Catholics before us.

My dear brothers and sisters, I urge you to recover the use of Latin in our worship. And this does not mean abandoning the vernacular languages that have now become a part of our worship. On the contrary, these languages offer us the potential to recover the spirit of Pentecost.

The true spirit of Pentecost is when despite knowing our own language, we also understand the language of the other. Thus, at least in Goa, we must know basic prayers, and be able to sing hymns, in all four languages of Catholics here: Latin, Konkani, Portuguese and English. Additionally, regardless of the language in which the Mass is conducted in, we should sing in all, or any, of these four languages. When we do this, and pray in this manner, we will be able to make the words of the psalm we sing today our own:

Praise the LORD, all you nations;
glorify him, all you peoples!

(A version of this homily was first preached to the faithful on anticipated Sunday mass on Saturday, 23 Aug 2025 at the Sé Catedral, Old Goa.)

(Image reference: Adoration of the Magi (detail), Domenico Ghirlandaio, 1488, Spedale degli Innocenti, Florence.)