​When a nephew of mine was still very little I was on my holidays in my home parish. After a Mass I saw my sister and my mum talking to the little boy who looked agitated. My mum said to me: ‘You need to talk to your nephew. He is upset with you.’ When I asked why, he said: ‘You didn’t give me the lamb.’ First I got confused and asked him: “What are you talking about?’ He answered: “You showed the lamb to everybody saying: ‘Behold the Lamb of God’ and then you gave it to everyone but me.”
Sisters and Brothers! I must confess that after hearing that I felt like I had met my John the Baptist. This little boy who was too little to have his Holy Communion got it right whom I was holding in my hands at Mass: Jesus Christ the Lamb of God.
We say so often that we receive Holy Communion, the Body of Christ or the Eucharist but I would like to ask you: When was the last time when you said to yourself or to someone else: I am going to receive the Lamb of God, who takes my sins away, who takes away the sins of the world.
It is because of the salvation which Jesus won for us by his death and resurrection that we are not slaves of the evil one. St Paul wrote: ‘You have been bought and paid for’ with the body and blood, humanity and divinity of the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, who sacrificed himself for our sake.
A great English writer C. S. Lewis, after he was inspired by his dear Catholic friend J. R. R. Tolkien to embrace the Christianity again, wrote some books in which he showed the beauty and power of the Gospel. He did so because he was aware that lots of people stayed away from the Church. He wanted to reach out to them. That’s why the Chronicles of Narnia were written. In the first Book of the Series: ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’ there is the story of the Great Lion called Aslan who is the figure of Christ. When one of the four children who got to Narnia, Edmund, betrayed his siblings to the Witch, who is the symbol of the evil, Edmund was to be handed over to the Witch for good. Then Aslan offered himself to replace Edmund. There is this most moving scene when Aslan, the Great Lion hands himself over to the Witch and her army. They torture him, humiliate him, they shave him and eventually kill him. When I saw it in the movie I couldn’t help thinking: This is not a lion this is a lamb. The scene in the movie was moving but what happens at every Mass is saving. We may return to sin many times but Jesus will match it by sacrificing himself. That’s why the words of St John the Baptist are repeated at every Mass so that we could take heart that despite slipping into sin so often the Lamb of God will not get disappointed with us nor discouraged at bringing his salvation into every day and every moment of our life.
My Fellow believers! We are so close to the great mysteries of God. We are even closer than the young prophet Samuel was as we could hear in our first reading. Samuel lived day and night in the Temple of God. However despite being in the Temple all the time it didn’t occur to him that God could speak to him. When he heard God’s voice he thought it was his teacher calling him. We too hear God speaking to us when Scriptures are proclaimed and when a homily is given. We even receive God under the species of bread and wine, our Lamb of God who takes away our sins. I ask you appreciate him. Love him. Pray to him every day so that you may recognise him on Sunday. ‘Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Blessed are those who are called to the Supper of the Lamb.’ You are the ones he wants to share his supper with.

​Last Wednesday I discovered that 670 grand appeared in our parish account. I got pretty excited as you can imagine. Later that day I got a phone call from our bank. It was a bank mistake. 670 grand disappeared from our bank account.
Sisters and Brothers! Though I can’t report that we became miraculously richer in earthly currency but as the Christmastide is being brought to its completion, on this Sunday of the Baptism of the Lord, with full confidence I can proclaim to you that we do have wealth which has been given to us purposely and which will not be taken away from us. St John the Apostle in our Second Reading wrote that ‘our faith – is the victory over the world.’ What we believe in is ‘that Jesus is the Son of God.’
This Sunday gives us the account of the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry. Jesus is not a baby any more. He is 30 years of age. However there is something which still belongs to the Christmas message. As we witness Jesus’ baptism we discover that he is the Son of God, ‘You are my Son’ says the voice from heaven. Jesus enters his public ministry not simply as a great preacher or a prophet but as the Only Begotten Son of God the Father. As we witness Jesus’ baptism we also discover his eternal ‘Holy Family.’ We cannot see Mary and Joseph at his Baptism but we see ‘the Holy Spirit, like a dove, descending on him.’ We also hear the voice of his Father coming from heaven: ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; my favour rests on you.’
The open heaven in today’s Gospel is like a window through which we can get a glimpse of the eternal Holy Family which as Christians we call the Blessed Trinity. What we can see through this window is how loving and united this eternal Holy Family is. The love which is given and received within the Blessed Trinity can make us shy; we may feel that we should look away because we are intruding this intimate relationship of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. However my dear fellow believers don’t be shy. Don’t look away. On the contrary fix your eyes on this Epiphany happening at Jesus’ Baptism. Shepherds had their Epiphany when the angles send them to the manger. God revealed himself to them. The Wise Men had their Epiphany when the star led them to Bethlehem. God revealed himself to them. John the Baptist had his Epiphany when he baptised Jesus. God revealed himself to him as the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
On Christmas Day with the shepherds we went to the manger. There we discovered that God was also a human being. On the Epiphany Sunday with the Wise Men we went again to the manger. There we discovered that this God-Man in the manger is the precious and life-giving treasure not only for the Jewish people but for all of us who touched by his grace believe in him. On this Day of the Baptism of the Lord we stand by John the Baptist at the Jordan River and discover that the boy whom we adored in the manger is our way to the eternal Holy Family, the Blessed Trinity. The public ministry he begins in today’s Gospel will be continued in the Church until the end of time. This ministry is about evoking faith in women and men which leads to their baptism. When we were baptised we became sisters and brothers of the One who was baptised by John the Baptist. He didn’t need a baptism but he did it so our baptism could unite us with him. This is our wealth which is more life changing than any fortune which can end up in our bank account.
Let me end this homily by showing you an image of the Holy Trinity.
This is your Family. Do you believe that? So say it loudly: This is my Family.
This is where you belong to. Do you believe that? So say it loudly: I belong to this Family.
To what you have just said I tell you: AMEN.

​Recently I’ve come across some definitions of epiphany. They don’t come from a religious background. They are rather secular. The first one says that epiphany is: ‘a moment when you suddenly feel that you understand, or suddenly become conscious of, something that is very important to you.’ The other is this one: ‘an epiphany occurs where the words and music ‘speak to you,’ becoming something more than the sum of their parts’. These definitions are ‘secular’ and as such they attempt to handle something in human life which science cannot explain.
My Dear Sisters and Brothers! Today as Christians we also remember Epiphany but this one is with the capital E.
We should still remember what brought the shepherds to the manger. It was what the angels proclaimed to them. What brought the wise men to the manger? They didn’t see any angels but still they saw something. It was the star. Many people have tried to explain this phenomenon. The great conjunction of Saturn and Jupitar which occurred just before Christmas last year, when the two planets got so close to each other that in the sky they looked like one shining celestial body, was suggested to be the star which the Wise Men observed when Jesus was born. However the story of the Wise Men is not just about the star but it is about something mysterious which happened in their souls when they saw the star in the sky. Before they set their eyes on the Baby Jesus they had their Epiphany back home somewhere in the East, which brought together what they studied in the ancient traditions, what they discussed among themselves and what they eventually saw in the sky. Their Epiphany moment was like that about music I mentioned before: ‘an epiphany occurs where the words and music ‘speak to you,’ becoming something more than the sum of their parts’.
While they were still home, far away from Bethlehem, Jesus Christ by his divine grace enlightened them to recognise the unfolding of God’s mighty works. Before the Apostles and other missionaries were to go out to proclaim the Good News, and by God’s grace to bring people to faith in Jesus, the bright star did it for the Wise Men. The angels reached out to the shepherds who were Jews. The grace was given to the shepherds to search for Jesus. It was the shepherds’ Epiphany. The bright stars reached out to the Wise Men, the pagans, like us who aren’t from the People of Israel. The grace was given to the Wise Men to search for Jesus. It was the Wise Men’s Epiphany. In the Church we treasure this Epiphany so close to our hearts because it began bringing non-Jews to the family of believers. Thank God for that. Where would we be today if God had kept the Good News of Jesus only to the Jewish People?
A couple of weeks ago I read an interview with an actor who was asked why he left the Church. His answer was: ‘I think because I have never had the grace of believing.’ I respect and admire his frank confession. I am also convinced that it can explain something about our loved ones who don’t worship with us anymore. We may be very pious, religious and holy but still it doesn’t give us control over God’s grace. We need to humbly pray for it, for ourselves and for others. Grace of faith is not a gift we deserve or own but it is the gift we recognise as the one we need. When we do so it is also our Epiphany, our sacred moment when God reveals himself to us and gives us his grace to set out on the journey of faith. The Wise Men were on such a journey but as we could hear in the Gospel King Herod and his Royal Court were not impressed. The excitement and commitment of the Wise Men didn’t inspire them. Does it mean that the Wise Men were wrong because Herod and his people didn’t accept it? Herod and his people missed on the joy, peace and hope which faith gives.
I don’t expect you to remember those two definitions I told you at the beginning but I do hope and pray that as believers you may hold fast to the grace of faith you have because carrying in your soul the memory of your Epiphany, and living your life accordingly, can be the moment of Epiphany for other people like that actor. It means that his frank confession: ‘I have never had the grace of believing’ can eventually turn into a joyful confession: ‘I believe in One God…

​In 1964 St Pope Paul VI visited Nazareth, the town where the Annunciation happened. It was also the home town of the Holy Family where Jesus lived his childhood and young adulthood. In his homily the saintly Pope said: ‘The home of Nazareth is the school where we begin to understand the life of Jesus – the school of the Gospel… How gladly would I become a child again, and go to school once more in this humble and sublime school of Nazareth.’
Sisters and Brothers! On this Sunday of the Holy Family we are taken to this school which was also the home of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. However this Sunday we find them not in their own home in Nazareth but in a much bigger building: the Jerusalem Temple. Still it was their home because the Jerusalem Temple was the dwelling place on earth for the Almighty God, the Father of the Child Jesus whom they presented there. However they were not dropping off the child for a weekend or so. The Jerusalem Temple was their home too as they were the descendants of Abraham and thus the people of God. Mary and Joseph, like all Jews, were the fulfilment of the promise which God gave to Abram as we could hear in our First Reading from the Book of Genesis. God said to the old and childless Patriarch: ‘Look up to heaven and count the stars if you can. Such will be your descendants.’ Mary and Joseph, and Jesus too, were among those stars Abram saw that night.
The old man may have been stunned at this promise but he ‘put his faith in the Lord.’ That’s why his name was changed. We met him as Abram which means the Noble Father. He was noble indeed in believing in God’s promise despite him and his wife being in their eighties. But God made them wait a bit longer so that the birth of their child could not be explained in any other way than by God’s intervention. The last three verses of today’s reading tell us about the conception and birth of their son Isaac some years later. Abram was 99 when his son was conceived. God gave him also a new name: Abraham which means The Father of Many Nations. Similarly the name of his wife Sarai meaning My Princess was changed to Sarah meaning The Mother of Many Nations. That’s why the Jewish people believed, and still believe, that they were more than a nation, they were a family. It wasn’t a perfect family but it was a holy family because the Holy One, God, lived in their midst. In them God was recreating his great plan for all men and women, his sons and daughters.
The Bible tells us that at the beginning God created man and woman. Not just two genders but a marriage which can continue God’s creation by giving birth to their children and thus becoming a family. I believe that as Christians we need to reclaim faith in this miracle that when God created man and woman he also created marriage and family. When the descendants of Adam and Eve got corrupted and ended up in their destruction in the waters of the Great Flood God saved the future of the humankind not in a few ideal individuals but in the family of Noah.
            When the fullness of time came and Mary, who was engaged to Joseph, conceived the Son of God their future marriage was on the brink of a breakdown as we read in the Gospel of Matthew. Joseph wanted to send her away. However God was fighting to save the marriage of Mary and Joseph. Their marriage was necessary so that Jesus could have a family and so that the family of Nazareth, which we call the Holy Family, could grow into One, Holy and Catholic Church. We are not an organisation. We are not an institution. We are a family. That’s why we are brothers and sisters calling God our Father, calling Jesus our Brother, calling Mary our Mother, calling also the Church our Mother.
            The Holy Family Sunday occurs only once a year but what Saint Paul VI said in Nazareth in 1964 is a prophetic urging for all of us. The Holy Family reminds us that as Christians we are a family. The Holy Family also reminds us that our families, built on the marriage of man and woman, are as necessary for the Church as the priesthood is. In fact the both sacraments: the Priesthood and the Holy Matrimony are called the sacraments of at the service of unity. Without them the Church will fall apart.

​‘Do not be afraid. Listen, I bring you news of great joy, a joy to be shared by the whole people. Today in the Town of David a saviour has been born to you, he is Christ the Lord. And here is a sign for you: You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.’ It is not a typical invitation to a birthday party, isn’t it?  But it is an invitation which brings us to our churches every year for Christmas celebration. It is not a typical invitation. The Good News which we hear today makes the Nativity Scene expand to include us like it included the shepherds who heard the Good News at the very first Christmas and found themselves at the manger.
            Sisters and Brothers! How would you describe grace? If you asked me I would tell you of a little girl I met in our parish school a couple of weeks ago who introduced herself saying: I am Grace. There was something special about her which still stays with me so that when I hear the word grace the beautiful face of that girl comes to my mind. Christian people have had a similar experience when it comes to salvation. Salvation for Christians is not a theory or a definition. For Christian people Salvation has a face. For Christian people Salvation has hands and feet. For Christian people Salvation has a great heart. It is the face, hands, feet and the great heart of Jesus Christ whose birth gathers us today. His very name, JESUS, means GOD SAVES. During those years of the Lord’s childhood every time Mary and their neighbours were calling him by his name they were announcing that God saves.
            These days when we experience so much uncertainty of our new Covid normal, which appears so fragile, as the recent development in NSW showed us, we may ask ourselves: What does it mean to us at 2020 Christmas that God saves us? A couple of years ago, a friend of mine, a cloistered Carmelite nun gave me a little statue of the Baby Jesus sleeping on the cross. This year when I looked at it I couldn’t help thinking that the suffering humanity is the cross on which Jesus is born for us and for our salvation today.
            In September one of our Oblate seminarians in Poland volunteered to work in a hospital where people who suffer from Covid-19 are treated. He has been there ever since. As you can understand he is not able to socialise with his Oblate community or his family. With permission of his Oblate superior he gave up on being paid for his work. When people ask him why he is still there, in this dangerous situation, and with no payment, his answer is: ‘If you want to understand me first I need you tell you about Jesus.’
            Let me tell you something about Jesus too. If we wanted to put candles on his birthday cake we would have 2020 candles. All those candles would remind us of his humanity, of his life as a son of Mary. However when we think of his Divinity, of his life as the Son of God the Father, we need to abandon the idea of putting candles on his birthday cake. As the son of God he is eternal, ‘Born before ages,’ as we profess in the Creed. We would like to be eternal, wouldn’t we? Not to need to face death and suffering is an enticing thought, isn’t it? Why then Jesus would choose to be mortal, a subject to death and suffering? The answer to this question seats on your right and left, in front of you and behind you as well. When you go home after this Mass, look into the mirror, there you will find the answer to this question too. Let it sink deep into your soul. Savour it.
I presume you will have a Christmas lunch with your family. Please accept the Good News of the Salvation, which has the face of the New Born Jesus, as food for your life journey.  This Good News will not only sustain you through these difficult times but it will transform you like it did transform that seminarian I told you about.
‘Do not be afraid. Listen, I bring you news of great joy, a joy to be shared by the whole people. Today in the Town of David a saviour has been born to you, he is Christ the Lord. And here is a sign for you: You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.’

​            You may have watched the movie Alien. It is pretty scary. The movie was advertised with a trailer in which it was written: In space no one can hear you scream. It was a catchy phrase which referred to what scientists discovered that if there is vacuum sound waves cannot travel.
Sisters and Brothers! We are here not as scientists but as people of faith. A parishioner of ours, whom we have buried recently, in her final years when speaking about her approaching death, kept saying: I will go when God calls me to himself. Her belief captures what people of faith treasure. We don’t live in a vacuum. We live in the world which is filled with the presence of God. He speaks to us constantly even if we don’t get what he says. Does it sound strange? Have a chat to a mother who talks to a newborn baby then. Is it weird what she does? After all, the child doesn’t understand her words. But it is not weird at all. She is not lecturing the baby; she is communicating her love and care for the child. It is what God does for us. What would be a point of knowing all the secrets of the Universe without knowing that we are loved? We are loved indeed by God. That’s the greatest discovery anyone can make. It will not get you the Noble Prize but it will make you say after the Prophet Isaiah: ‘I exult for joy in the Lord, my soul rejoices in my God.’ We say that because as St Paul wrote in the Bible: nothing and no one EVER ‘will be able to come between us and the love of God, known to us in Christ Jesus our Lord.’
That was the Good News which John the Baptist announced. In the Gospel reading we heard that ‘He came as a witness, as a witness to speak for the light.’ The light John came to speak for is Jesus Christ. In him you will discover how much God loves you.
God in his goodness has given to this beautiful planet of ours, which we call Earth, which we call our home, the Sun. Once the Sun dies our Earth will die too. The light coming from the Sun sustains and nurtures all life on Earth. God in his goodness has given to us his Son Jesus Christ who died out of love for us. When he died even the Sun grew dark. Not out of sorrow for the crucified God but because the light of Divine Love emanating from the Cross made the light of the Sun bleak. The Sun will expire at some stage but God’s love made visible in Jesus Christ will never expire. God will always speak to us like a mother speaks to her baby. Not to reason or lecture but to communicate love.
Isaiah, as we could hear in our First Reading, said of himself: ‘The Spirit of the Lord has been given to me, for the Lord has anointed me. He has sent me to bring the Good News to the poor.’ Isaiah was convinced that he had a mission because God told him to do so. When centuries later the Son of God, Jesus Christ, stood up in the Synagogue of his hometown of Nazareth he read the same words and he applied them to himself. Was Jesus lacking originality by copying words of an ancient prophet? Not at all. He took upon himself that mission of which Isaiah spoke because the mission wasn’t finished yet. There were, and there are still, people who live in darkness because they don’t know that they are loved by God. The poorest of the poor is the person who lives without enjoying God’s love.
Jesus came not only to tell them about that but to love them in their darkness. St Eugene de Mazenod with who we live this Advent season, at the very beginning of his ministry as a priest, chose the words: ‘He has sent me to bring the Good News to the poor’ as his motto. When he founded a community of Missionaries he gave them this motto too. When he became a bishop the words appeared on his Coat of Arms. ‘He has sent me to bring the Good News to the poor’ doesn’t simply identify the aim of the ministry but reveals that God has spoken and that those who have heard it, like Isaiah, John the Baptist, St Eugene or you and me, want to give their voice, their whole life so that people living in darkness of unbelief could find light.
We have just buried a fellow Catholic who did it splendidly. We now pray for more people who will let others know that we live in the Space which isn’t silent but filled with God who while gazing upon us keeps saying: I love you.

​            When Jewish people celebrate their Passover meal, which is the climax of their year, they fill up one cup with wine and leave it unattached. This is the cup of the Prophet Elijah. They not only long for his return but they are convinced that he will return. Hence the cup is there for him. What was so special about Elijah that he is still remembered with such great fondness? Elijah was very good at connecting people with God. He was very good at announcing God’s saving work among his people. Finally Elijah was to introduce the promised Messiah to the people of God.
            Sisters and Brothers! As Christians we don’t keep a cup for Elijah because John the Baptist stepped into that mission of introducing the promised Messiah to the people of God. It was John the Baptist who cried out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make his paths straight!’ Did he mean roadworks? If it were the case one could think that those who work on the Monash Freeway took it seriously, because they keep upgrading it all the time. It never ends. If we can take something from their example it is that our preparing the way for the Lord never ends either. We will never say that we can retire from helping people to embrace Jesus, our Lord and Saviour, as their Lord and Saviour as well. If the way between them and Jesus is full of obstacles we have our duty to remove them, like John the Baptist, Elijah or Isaiah did. If the way between Jesus and them looks like an endless detour our duty is to find a shortcut like John the Baptist, Elijah or Isaiah did.
            St. Eugene de Mazenod was a person who did it wholeheartedly. Yes, he was a priest and missionary who never stopped searching for the ways to connect God with people, particularly those who were far away from God. When he was a bishop in Marseilles he was available to all. In his waiting room one could see top civil officials, the local aristocracy, prominent businessmen and women but also fish sellers from the Marseilles Port, orphans and the homeless. In the waiting room of the Bishop of Marseilles everyone was equal. Bishop Eugene however wasn’t satisfied with being available to people coming to see him. If you visited Marseilles during his time most likely you would meet him walking through the slums to give the last rites to a dying woman who had no one to look after her. You will see his Lordship at the fish market talking to everyone who wanted to talk to him. But Eugene wasn’t born with a Bible in his hand and a mitre on his head. For twenty seven years he was a layman and as a layman he realised his call of ‘preparing the way for the Lord.’ In his mid-twenties while on a business trip from Paris to his home town of Aix in the Southern France he met a young man he was travelling to join the army. The young officer was however worried that he could lose his faith in such a hostile environment. Eugene offered his friendship to him to support him. He remained faithful to that friendship until the death of that man many years later. The officer remained faithful to Christ until his death.
            I think that each one of us should have a cup full of wine at home. Not for Elijah but as a reminder that we are Advent men or Advent women, like St Eugene de Mazenod was. Such people are happily convinced that in the midst of various duties and responsibilities they can connect people with Jesus, that they can ‘prepare the way for the Lord.’

​Recently I’ve seen a series of photos capturing Queen Elizabeth with successive Presidents of US. There were 11 of them. Those men came to and then left their office while she has been reigning all this time. Looking at those photos I thought about ther King who has been reigning for two thousand years while leaders of the nations and many nations themselves passed away. This Sunday we honour this King - Jesus Christ, King of the Universe.
Sisters and Brothers! In the Bible there is a passage describing how the Jewish People asked the Prophet Samuel to give them a king so that they could be like other nations which had their own kings. It didn’t please God, but the Almighty ordered Samuel to anoint the first king whose name was Saul. He was followed by King David and King Salomon and many other kings right up to King Herod. Some of those kings were good some bad but a thousand years after people first asked for a king God fully answered that request by sending his only Son Jesus Christ. This Son, because of his humanity and divinity, was to welcome into his Kingdom all the nations of the world. Jewish people could turn to him as their King because he came from their nation, from the royal family of David. All the other nations however were not left out. They could and still can turn to him because as the Son of God who created the Universe, he is also the King of his Father’s dominion, the whole Universe.
When People of God asked for a king it was because they wanted to be like other nations. When God the Father gave his Son Jesus as King it was so we his followers, the beginning of his Kingdom, could make other nations like his Kingdom. Jesus has come so that all people and things could be restored in him. He has come so that people, you and I too, could be restored to the royal dignity of the sons and daughters of the Heavenly Father.
The Gospel we have been given this Sunday inspires us how to reclaim and live out that royal and godly dignity. However as we look closely into what Jesus told in this passage we discover that he didn’t teach us some royal etiquette. Jesus has invited us to live out our royalty as servants of others, particularly the most neglected people.
Jesus, the King of the Universe showed his immense power and authority two days after saying these words when he kneeled before his disciples and washed their feet. What an awesome king! Then he took to his throne… on the cross. What an awesome King! Next he was taken to his royal chamber, to the tomb. What an awesome King. Then on Easter Sunday morning he left that royal chamber and made his way to his disciples to include them into his great victory over sin and death. What an awesome King! When finally he took his seat in heaven at the right hand of his Father he could look over continents and oceans, in fact over galaxies of the Universe, He, the awesome King of the Universe. However his royal centre is not far away. It is high enough so everyone could see him but it is also close enough so that every single person could have access to him through faith, hope and love.
I began this homily with Queen Elizabeth I want to finish it with Queen Elizabeth too. However it is a different Queen Elizabeth. This one was a Hungarian Queen who lived in the thirteenth century. She is a saint. She exercised her royal status by serving the poor. Every morning and evening she was on the streets of her capital city to help the needy. She was so good at helping others that when she was dying she had nothing to own. She had given everything to the poor and she was only 24 when she died. Still Christian people have preserved the memory of that saintly Queen. She is usually pictured in the holy cards wearing her royal regalia and an apron because she took seriously the words of Jesus from today’s Gospel about seeing him in the hungry, thirsty, strangers, naked, sick and imprisoned. In turn the hungry, thirsty, strangers, naked, sick and imprisoned saw a saint in her, and rightly so.

​The nineteenth century is often called the century of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It was the time in which the Catholic Church was powerfully touched by the motherly presence of the Virgin Mary. In 1830 St Catherin Laboure received the vision of the Miraculous Medal. In 1854 Pope Blessed Pius IX declared the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception. In 1858 St Bernadette Soubirous witnessed the apparitions of Our Blessed Mother in Lourdes. There were also apparitions of Mary in La Salette, France (1846), in Pontmain, France (1871), Champion, US (1859), in Knock, Ireland (1879), in Gietrzwald, Poland (1877). In 1891 Pope Leo XIII dedicated the month of October to the Holy Rosary. It was also the time when the Icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help was rediscovered after a few decades of disappearance. Blessed Pope Pius IX then entrusted the Icon to the Redemptorists saying: ‘Make her known throughout the world.’ This Sunday in our local church we venerate Our Patroness, Our Lady of Perpetual Help.
Sisters and Brothers! I am not a Redemptorist but the words of the Blessed Pope have touched me too. That’s why I would like to make known to you the Divine mystery hidden in the Icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. Before we look at the Icon we need to learn the skill of looking though. The great school to learn this skill of looking is today’s Gospel. There we take a stand next to the Virgin Mary and John, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary of Magdala, to look at Jesus on the Cross. I read in a book that John’s account of crucifixion is like a series of icons. Those images had to inspire some early Christians to start writing icons, because an icon is written not painted. In an icon there is God’s word for us to hear. When we hear the John’s account of the Crucifixion of Jesus we may be surprised that the disciple, who was the firsthand witness, didn’t give us explicit details of the crucifixion. There are two reasons for that: John the Apostle didn’t want to play with our feelings but he wanted to draw us into what he witnessed when on the Golgotha the Son of God was crucified. John by his Gospel invites us to take a stand next to him and the small crowd of faithful disciples of Jesus who loved him dearly. That has been also the reason for Christians to produce icons, to allow others to enter the mystery captured in an icon. That’s why icon writers need more that a good hand. They need to be people of prayer and fasting so that what they experienced at prayer they could announce through an icon.
Today I won’t explain all details of the icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. I only want to start the journey which you could continue yourselves. Our Blessed Mother appears as a helper as she holds the hands of Jesus. Some could say that she is giving a hand to Jesus. However we discover that she is looking at us. She is giving a hand not to Jesus but to us. The help she offers us is Jesus. She invites us to take Jesus to our life. Jesus is looking too. He is looking at the golden background of the icon because this golden background is a symbol of heaven. Jesus whose hands we are encouraged to take will direct our vision to heaven too.
The words of the Blessed Pope Pius IX: ‘Make her known throughout the world’ were truly prophetic. Today this icon of Mary is known throughout the world. It means that we, the disciples of Jesus, can make a place for her in our homes like St John did. We know John as the beloved disciple of Jesus, the one who never grew tired of proclaiming God’s love. However John was not an easy person first. The Gospel calls him and his brother James, the Sons of Thunder. It was John who wanted to bring fire from heaven to destroy a Samaritan town where Jesus and his disciples were not welcomed. I believe that was the reason why Jesus loved him so much. John needed Jesus’ love to change his abrupt and fierce attitude. When Jesus was dying on the cross the job was not finished yet. Therefore Jesus gave John as a son to Mary because John needed it. He still needed to be loved greatly so that his soul heeling could continue.
In the request of Blessed Pius IX, who asked the Redemptorists to make Mary known to the whole world, we can see a reflection of what Jesus did from the cross. My Dear Fellow Believers make a place for her in your home. You will be loved by her very much. Her love will transform you like it did transform the aggressive John into the Apostle of Divine Love. 

In the fourteenth century Europe went through some terrible things: the first wave of the plague called Black Death killed half of the population. Then 20 years later the second wave came which killed 20% of remaining population. Famine was spreading because there were not enough people to work on the land to produce food. During that time God raised a saint, a woman whom we know today as Julian of Norwich though it is not her name. Her name has been lost. The name we use for her is the name of the Church of St Julian where she lived in the town of Norwich. That woman, who witnessed so much misery and despair in her contemporary world, also experienced, at the age of 30, a severe illness which paralysed her for some time. However when her body was fighting the disease she was given some visions in which God revealed to her some great mysteries. She wrote them down and later she spent the rest of her life meditating on them in the solitude of a little room attached to the church of St Julian. Do you want to know some great mysteries which God revealed to her? Let me give you this one: ‘But all will be well, and all will be well, and every kind of thing will be well.’ Although Julian chose to live separated from other people her little room became like the heart of the neighbourhood. People didn’t leave her alone. People were coming to her because surrounded by the misery of their times they wanted to hear Julian who with firm conviction was telling them all the time: ‘All will be well.’
            Sisters and Brothers! If the lamp of faith which you are carrying in your soul is getting empty of the divine oil which comes from God himself, if you feel that the flame of your faith is fading I invite you to make your way to Mother Julian of Norwich. You don’t need to travel to England. In this church of ours you can turn to her, our saint, in your prayer and recalling all the situations which can make it hard for you to believe and trust God repeat what God revealed to her: ‘All will be well.’ Keep repeating it and God will give you his divine oil to make your faith burn so strongly and brightly that you will be able to look to the horizon of eternity. Like St Paul did as we could hear in our reading today from the First Letter to the Thessalonians: ‘At the trumpet of God, the voice of the archangel will call out the command and the Lord himself will come down from heaven, those who have died in Christ will be the first to rise, and then those of us who are still alive will be taken up in the clouds, together with them, to meet the Lord in the air. So we shall stay with the Lord forever. With such thoughts as these you should comfort one another.’ What did St Paul tell the Thessalonians two thousand years ago? What is he telling us today? ‘All will be well.’ Out the mess of this world, which has been caused by sin God will eventually bring good. ‘All will be well.’
            
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