​            The teaching of Jesus from the Gospel we have just heard is familiar to us, isn’t it? The parable of the father and his two sons speaks volumes to us. The forgiving father, who becomes prodigal in his merciful love, we treasure as an image of our Heavenly Father. It gives us hope that even if we mess up our lives as badly as the younger son did we can still hope for forgiveness and love. This Sunday I want to us to return to the Gospel and to focus on the elder son instead. Usually we don’t give him much attention. Even Rembrandt in his famous painting of the today’s Gospel hid the elder son in the shadow. We too choose to focus on the father and the younger son. I wander why. Is it because we want to be the receiver, someone who receives God’s mercy, love and blessing?
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! At the beginning of the Gospel we find out that the father divided his property between his two sons. He did this at the request of the younger boy who took what he received and left. He chose an easy life. Why? Because his older brother was left on his own with the responsibility to taking care of the father. The inheritance the elder brother got wasn’t entirely at his disposal. He had to keep a portion of that to look after his aging father. The younger man had everything for himself. It is important to keep this in mind before we take sides. When the young boy returned home after wasting all the money where did all the things his father gave him upon his return come from? They came from what belonged to the elder son. That’s why in spite of loving this parable I find it difficult to apply to my life.
            This is a parable not only about receiving but predominantly about giving away what I am entitled to. As Christians we can’t be a younger son or daughter all the time. We need to grow up and embrace the role, or better to say the ministry, of an elder daughter or son. It is the role, the ministry, of the person who is prepared to let God show his mercy, his love and blessing using the resources which belong to me. It’s not an easy call, is it?
However as Christians we have Jesus Christ, our elder brother, who is more than a model for us to follow. Jesus Christ speaks to us the words of eternal life which reach the depth of our soul not just our brain. Jesus Christ gives us his Body and Blood which build in us a spiritual man or woman, someone who resembles Jesus Christ when it comes to giving ourselves away, especially to those who have used us, abused our trust or taken advantage of our good heart.
            Our Heavenly Father, of whom the father from the parable is a symbol, is the one who deserves the nickname prodigal as ‘He causes his sun to rise on bad men as well as good, and his rain to fall on honest and dishonest men alike.’ Jesus Christ who told the parable deserves to have a nickname prodigal too as imitating his Heavenly Father he stretched out his arm on the cross to embrace the good people and the bad people. The elder brother from today’s parable struggled to be prodigal. We know from our own experience that it is not easy to be prodigal like our Heavenly Father is prodigal. However when we choose to believe Jesus that it is worthwhile to be the person who is prepared to let God show his mercy, his love and blessing using the resources which belong to us there will be a younger brother or sister of ours receiving God’s mercy and beginning growing up to become an elder brother or sister for someone else.
            Today the Lord Jesus speaks about God giving through us. Whom among the people you know do you recognize as recipient? What is it that God wants to give to other out of your own richness? Do you desire to have a nickname prodigal?

​            The words of Jesus’ from today’s Gospel sound harsh, don’t they? ‘If any man comes to me without hating his father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, yes his own life too, he cannot be my disciple?’
            Does Jesus encourage us all to develop some hatred towards our closest relations like we can sometimes see when members of one family are fighting over the inheritance from their deceased father or mother?  They don’t need to be encouraged to hate each other. It is more obvious then the sun in the sky. Not an easy topic to reflect on, isn’t it? Maybe we should focus on something more pleasing? No. I believe that we do need to grapple with it, but to do it well let us pray first: ‘Lord Jesus, give us your Holy Spirit, who could lead us to the wisdom indicated in our First Reading today.’ Let us listen to some sentences from that reading again: ‘What man can know the intentions of God? Who can divine the will of the Lord?’ Valid questions, aren’t they? The answer comes from the end of the reading: ‘As for your intentions, who could have learnt it, had you not granted Wisdom and sent your holy spirit from above? Thus have the paths of those on earth been straightened and people been taught what pleases you, and saved, by Wisdom.’
            I would like to recall two people, two saints, whose lives filled with wisdom from above, can help us to accept the words of our Lord Jesus Christ from today’s Gospel as the message much needed in our own time and in our own Australian society.
            The first person I want to talk about is Sir Thomas More as he was known in his own time, one of the most successful politicians of the sixteenth century England and a devoted husband and father. As for us Catholics he is a saint: Saint Thomas More. When King Henry VIII decided to separated England from the Catholic Church Sir Thomas More opposed it. He was put in prison and eventually executed. We still have his letters to his family written from his prison cell in the Tower of London. He suffered enormously at the thought that his wife was to be a widow and children orphans. He could go back home if he abandoned his Catholic Faith. Although distressed at the approaching separation from his wife and children he chose Jesus. He knew that it was his faith in Jesus Christ that made him love his family so much. It was Jesus who made him who he was, his faith was his identity.
            The Second person I would like to mention was a Jewish woman Edith Stain,a brilliant German scholar and philosopher of the beginning of the twentieth Century. She was the first woman at the University of Gottingen in Germany to get a doctorate. As an adult she discovered Jesus Christ and converted to the Catholic Faith. After a few years she joined a Carmelite convent in Cologne. Her Jewish mother whom she loved dearly didn’t want to have anything to do with her after that decision. As an enclosed nun Edith Stein, who took name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, was given permission to write a letter to her mother every week. That’s what she did. For number of years there was a weekly letter posted from the convent to her mother. Never came a reply. Edith suffered a lot. But she knew that her faith in Jesus Christ made her love her mother so much. It was Jesus Christ who made her who she was, her faith was her identity.
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! At the moment we face a big debate on religious freedom here in Australia. There are big discussions at the high level of our society. However I believe that we need to play our part too. When we talk to our friends, colleagues, relatives let us explain that our faith is not our hobby. Our faith in Jesus Christ has made us into who we are. Our faith is our identity. St Thomas More once said: ‘I am a citizen of London.’ He was proud to be one. However his citizenship was built on his faith and commitment to Jesus Christ, like his love for his family was built on Jesus.
            As Catholics in Australia we want others to see where we come from in regards to our love for this beautiful country and its people. It comes from our faith and commitment to Jesus Christ. He takes the first place in our life. Because of that we want to continue to be of service to our fellow Australians as we have been for a long time already. We want to be citizens of Australia who give priority to Jesus Christ as he said in those challenging words about ‘hating.’

​            In recent decades we have observed a great progress of technology. There is a reason to celebrate it. However there is also a dark side of that progress. While we have been benefiting from many things some unwanted situations have developed like nomophobia. It is the name for having a fear of not being with your phone. Some psychologists have begun classifying it as an addiction.
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! St Paul reminded the Christians in Galatia, and us as well that: ‘you were called to liberty.’ Some of us may think of that statue in New York. It is interesting that Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi designing the statue used the ancient Roman goddess of freedom – Libertas to express the concept of freedom which could appeal to the modern people. The statue’s full name is Liberty Enlightening the World.
            For us Christians however the crucifix is the statue of liberty.
            Firstly the crucifix evokes real events. It is true that it was a brutal execution however there is more to it. In the Gospel of John we hear Jesus speaking of it: ‘No one takes my life from me. I lay it down of my own accord.’ The crucifix is therefore a piece of human and divine history. It preserves the memory of the Son of God who in his freedom offered his life for our salvation. It wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t bad luck. It wasn’t fate. It was a free act of love.
            Secondly the crucifix proclaims to us that: ‘When Christ freed us, he meant us to remain free.’ I mentioned at the beginning of this homily nomophobia as a new addiction. There are many other names for addiction but they all come to one – sin. Jesus said: ‘Everyone who sins is a slave to sin.’ St Paul while elaborating on it wrote: ‘You are slaves of the one you obey – whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness.’
Our Blessed Mother declared herself a slave of the Lord. What came out of that was her joyous and life-giving freedom because God doesn’t want to have addicts. God wants to have worshipers who can worship him ‘in spirit and truth’ as free people. God desires our love and only free people can love.
St Paul in the First Letter to the Corinthians wrote: ‘I have the right to do anything’ you say – but not everything is beneficial. ‘I have the right to do anything’ – but I will not be mastered by anything.
I don’t know if St Paul had some psychological training but he was an astute observer of the world and a reflective follower of Christ. If I start saying that I have right to do anything rather soon I will find myself in a situation that I have to do many things which means that I am losing my freedom. Freedom as offered by Jesus is the ability to choose good and to reject evil.
            Let me finish with some words of St John Paul II: ‘True freedom is not advanced in the permissive society, which confuses freedom with license to do anything whatever and which in the name of freedom proclaims a kind of general amorality. It is a caricature of freedom to claim that people are free to organize their lives with no reference to moral values, and to say that society does not have to ensure the protection and advancement of ethical values. Such an attitude is destructive of freedom and peace.’
            Let us look at the crucifix in our church, at this statue of liberty enlightening the world with the divine light which shone so powerfully on Good Friday that the Sun lost its brightness. At the foot of this ours statue of liberty let us beg the true Liberator of the humankind, Jesus Christ, to set us free, to send his Spirit to our hearts so that enlightened by his holy Word and sustained by his holy Body and Blood we may keep our freedom to choose good and reject evil.

​There was an oratory performance during which a man mesmerized the audience with his poem recitation skills. He was called back to the stage a number of times to recite another poem. One of the requests came from an elderly priest who asked the performer to deliver the Psalm 23 which starts with the line: ‘the Lord is my Shepherd there is nothing I shall want.’ When the man on the stage finished the audience again was fascinated. Then he asked the priest to recite the Psalm 23 too. When the priest finished there was silence in the theater. Finally the acclaimed performer said: ‘Did you notice the difference? I know the words of the Psalm. The priest knows the Shepherd.’
            Dear Sisters and Brothers! 29th of June is dedicated to some two men who also knew the Shepherd: St Peter and St Paul.
            The Gospel of Matthew takes us to that charming place called Caesarea Philippi. However the reason is not the beauty of the place but the confession which was made there by Peter: ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ The confession revealed not only who Jesus was but it also indicated that Peter’s life was to be orientated around the Lord Jesus. The confession didn’t turn Peter into some super saint. The man who was known previously as Simon was given a new name – Peter. However the new Peter still carried the strengths and weaknesses of the former Simon. What had changed was his life orientation. He viewed his strengths in light of Jesus’ humility and he viewed his weaknesses in light of Jesus’ mercy.
We know that the very next verses of the Gospel show Peter brought humble after his attempt to dictate Jesus what to do. Peter didn’t get offended. He didn’t left Jesus. He knew the Shepherd he was following. The Shepherd wanted the Divine life for Peter. Some time later Peter fell even worse. He denied Jesus three times. However at his lowest Peter discovered how true the words of his fellow Apostle Paul were: ‘Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.’
            Both of them, Peter and Paul, found the beauty and power of the parable of the lost sheep. At some stage they were the lost sheep, but they were not an abandoned sheep. The Lord came after them. Paul wrote about that to his collaborator Timothy: ‘The Lord stood by me and gave me power, so that through me the whole message might be proclaimed for all the pagans to hear.’
            Both Saint Apostles whom we venerate today didn’t have a crystal clear CV but their stained CV became the stage from which they were able to proclaim the great things the Lord did for them. Thus from their stained personal history they were able to say: ‘To him be glory for ever and ever. Amen.’

​            I never thought I would watch the Oprah Winfrey Show. However some weeks ago I came across a YouTube clip with an interview Oprah made with some nuns. After watching it I thought: Well done Sisters. You’ve given a great Christian message about having Jesus at the center of your lives. You’ve shown how deeply joyous faith is when a hundred percent of one’s life is given to it. During the show there were a few nuns sitting with Oprah while the mother superior was sitting in the audience. At some stage Oprah asked the mother superior a question and as soon as the nun began talking the sisters on the stage repositioned themselves in such a way that they all turned to their superior. Looking at them I could see so much love, respect and trust for their leader.
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! On this Solemnity of Corpus Christi we, the followers of Christ, reposition ourselves in such a way that our full attention is given to Jesus Christ. After all the Eucharist is Jesus. Our repositioning is not unusual though. We do it every Sunday and every day at Mass. When the Word of God is proclaimed to us we say: Thanks be to God and Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ. We believe that the words we hear come from our God who created us, who sustains us in being, and who awaits us at the end our life. Both the second reading and the Gospel today nurture in us this belief.
St Paul tells us about the institution of the Eucharist. This passage from the first letter to the Corinthians is the oldest testimony about the Eucharist. It was written even before the Gospels were. St Paul didn’t hear these words from Jesus but he did hear them when after his conversion he attended the Eucharist. The words were treasured, uttered and passed on together with the priesthood.  ‘This is my body, which is for you, do this as a memorial of me… This is the new covenant in my blood. Whenever you drink it, do this as a memorial of me.’
The event from the Gospel about the multiplication of bread and fish was not simply spectacular but reassuring us in our following of Christ Jesus. The people who came to Jesus ended up hungry but first they were spiritually hungry. They hungered for the word of God. That’s why they followed Jesus. They didn’t expect to be given a meal at the end of the day. They wanted Jesus’ Good News. Those people are an early image of us, the Church. They challenge our following. Do we hunger for Jesus’ word? Do we hang on Jesus‘ lips?
What happens when we do?  We can witness it in the second part of the Eucharist. When the words which St Paul recorded, when the words recorded by the Evangelists about the institution of the Eucharist, are uttered ordinary bread and wine become Divine Body and Blood of Jesus. Every time I hold Jesus’ Body and Blood in my hands I pray that having pronounced the Words of Holy Scriptures over me during the Liturgy of the Word I can be transformed into likeness of Jesus too, like this bread and wine are.
The nuns from the show I mentioned at the beginning had only to move their chairs to face their mother superior. We, the followers of Christ, are called every day to be the people who listen to Jesus, who look at their lives through Jesus’ Good News and who believe that it is worth living up to the message of the Gospel.

​            When after two years in Australia I went back to my home country of Poland for my holidays many times I was asked: ‘What is Australia like?’  The reason I was asked this question was because among my relatives and friends I was the only person who had been to Australia.
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! This Sunday we observe the Solemnity of the Most Blessed Trinity. This is the essence of our faith. To be a Christian one must believe that God is the Trinity of Persons: The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Not three gods, but one God in three persons. How do we know this? Because Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, has revealed this to us. He said: ‘The Father and I are one.’ For saying this people of his time wanted to stone him because they realised that he was making himself equal with God. Jesus stood his ground. He didn’t retract his words because he was telling the truth. He was telling what he had seen and lived, he who ‘was born of the Father before all ages’ as we profess in our Creed every Sunday. Jesus didn’t make it up. The mystery of God as  the Blessed Trinity is the revelation which he has offered to the Church as ‘the only begotten Son of God, God from God, light from light, true God from true God begotten not made consubstantial with the Father.’
In today’s Gospel taken from the Last Supper Jesus reassured his Apostles, and the believers throughout the millennia to come, that ‘Everything the Father has is mine.’ He didn’t mean any properties, possessions etc. but that he and the Father are God. Not two gods but one God. Furthermore he revealed that the Spirit of truth, the Holy Spirit, ‘will glorify me since all he tells you will be taken from what is mine.’ What is Jesus’ is the Father’s too. We profess it in our Creed too when we say that the Holy Spirit: ‘proceeds from the Father and the Son’ that the Holy Spirit ’with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified.’
My Dear fellow believers! Christianity is not like a shop where we go to get some things we need like health, peace, comfort, happy relationships, safety etc and we don’t bother who the shop attendant or shop attendants are. For us Christians to come to know God is the best thing we can have. Jesus while praying to his Father at the Last Supper allowed his Apostles to hear what the secret of the eternal life is: ‘to know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.’
In our seminary chapel we have an icon of the Trinity, which is a copy of the icon made by Andrei Rublev. The Three Divine Persons are presented as three angels sitting at the table with one place still vacant. Every day as I pray there I am reminded that this place is for us. That the mystery of Trinity is difficult not because our mind may struggle to comprehend it but because we may look at our God as a shop attendant to give us what we want rather than the God whom we want to know more clearly, love more dearly and follow more nearly, day by day.
I would like to finish this homily with one insight which I believe can help all of us to worship the Blessed Trinity.
The insight is to renew the way we make the sign of the cross. A priest was once saying that what he still treasured were the lessons his mother gave him about the sign of the cross: ‘Touch your forehead not your nose, touch your heart not the buttons on your jacket, touch your shoulders not your sleeves. Say each word distinctly with love and respect.’ If you struggle to say a proper prayer in the morning and at night I would encourage you to make a beautiful sign of the cross remembering that by blessing yourself you immerse yourself in the life of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Jesus, who is God like? God is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

​            If I asked you to draw a picture showing the descending of the Holy Spirit what would do? Would you capture the scene from the Acts of the Apostles from our First Reading? Would you draw our Blessed Mother, the Apostles and some other disciples together in the Upper Room with tongues of fire above them? It is a powerful image, isn’t it?
How many of you would draw the scene from our Gospel showing the Risen Lord coming to the Apostles hidden behind the bolted door on the Easter Sunday? The scene doesn’t seem to excite our imagination, does it? So what did Jesus do then? ‘He breathed on the Apostles and said: Receive the Holy Spirit, for those whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven; for those whose sins you retain they are retained.’ We associate these words with the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation and rightly so but they are not limited to the absolution we receive when we confess our sins to a priest. As baptized followers of Christ we have been graced with the Holy Spirit to continue the ministry of the Crucified Jesus. There, on the cross, Jesus, while thinking of those who had hurt him, said: ‘Father, forgive them because they do not know what they are doing.’ We as Christians are missionaries of forgiveness. We are sent to the most difficult mission land: our own heart which is inclined to anger, hatred and revenge when we are treated badly or when we think that we are treated badly by others, by our life or even by God. In this mission land we need the Holy Spirit.
There is a prayer to the Holy Spirit: ‘Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created and you shall renew the face of the earth.’ Keeping this prayer in mind let me remind you of another descending of the Holy Spirit. It happened at the very beginning of the Bible. When ‘God formed man out of the dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living being.’ However the story of creation didn’t stop there. Today’s Gospel, which resembles so much that creation action from Genesis,  shows us how the Risen Lord continued creating people into living being, into people who live the life of God, who in the name of Jesus, are ready to let anger, hatred and revenge go.
If you still struggle to forgive someone, or some people, who have hurt you, if you still struggle to forgive your own life or even if you blame God for some things which have happened to you, go back to the Acts of the Apostles, place yourself among the disciples as they receive the Holy Spirit and let it take you out of your lack of forgiveness and into the mission of mercy.
To finish this homily I would like to show you another scene of the descending of the Holy Spirit. We need to go back 52 days. It was Good Friday. Jesus said ‘It is accomplished; and bowing his head he gave up his spirit.’ St John while writing the Gospel used the expression that Jesus passed on his spirit. Who did receive the Spirit then? It was the small gathering of people who followed Jesus all the way to the cross.  They were the beginning of the Church, the mystical Body of Christ. When the body of Christ stretched on the cross was lifeless his spirit was dwelling in the Church gathered around the cross. It was a very small Church but it was also a very much alive Church. It was the Church alive with the Holy Spirit.
Father send us the Spirit.
Son breathe on us.
Come Holy Spirit today.

​            We are still at the summit of our Liturgy as we observe the Easter Octave. After forty days of not singing Alleluia this Easter week is saturated with Alleluias. We are like the thirsty who after wandering through a dry desert come upon an oasis and can’t have enough of the gushing water. We keep singing Alleluia. We can’t have it enough. Alleluia – Praise the Lord. The Easter is the reason for this though what unfolded in Colombo on Easter Sunday has left us in shock and with tear-filled eyes. How can we repeat the verse of the Psalm: ‘Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love is everlasting’? How can we say with conviction the Opening Prayer for his Mass: ‘God of everlasting mercy’? How can we still sing Alleluia? How can we still praise the Lord?
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! Followers of the most persecuted religion in the world. What happened last week in Sri Lanka is a reminder that in such advanced world of the twenty-first century Christians are a target not of some isolated, random attacks but a carefully crafted extermination. After two millennia the words of St John from the Book of Apocalypse, which we have just heard, are still valid and fresh as they were when our Christian sisters and brothers were persecuted by the pagan Roman Empire: ‘My name is John, and through our union in Jesus I am your brother and share your sufferings, your kingdom, and all you endure.’
Can you hear my fellow Christians what John is saying? He says that he shares our suffering but in the midst of that suffering we have something else in common, it is our kingdom, the kingdom which Jesus Christ has established by his death and Resurrection.
When we witness the destruction of the lives of our fellow Christians, when we witness the expulsion from their homeland, when we witness the destruction of their homes and churches we could succumb into thinking that the Christian world is crumbling. However in the midst of destruction and annihilation St John says to us: ‘your kingdom,’ the kingdom of your Lord and Savior is there. It is not in worldly power and prestige but in the resemblance to Jesus who said: ‘If the world hates you, remember that it hated me before you. If they persecuted me, they will persecute you too.’
Again we pause at the suffering of our fellow believers; despite the Easter Week we are more like the disciples of the Lord from the Gospels going to the tomb with heavy hearts and red and swollen eyes. That’s why on this Divine Mercy Sunday we need these words of the Risen Lord, who walking into the upper room where the fear overcame the disciples, said: ‘Peace be with you. Receive the Holy Spirit. For those whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven.’ The Lord who hanging on the cross forgave his executioners entrusts us with the mission of forgiveness so we can fully resemble him both in suffering and forgiveness.
            Let us take consolation in the words Jesus spoke to St John who was imprisoned ‘on the island of Patmos for having preached God’s word and witnessed to Jesus’: ‘Do not be afraid; it is I, the First and the Last; I am the Living One. I was dead and now I am to live for ever and ever, and I hold the keys of death and of the underworld.’
            It is the Resurrection of Jesus which assures us that ‘a light shines in the dark, a light that darkness could not overpower.’ Darkness can reject the light of Christ but darkness cannot extinguish the light of Christ. When our church was in darkness we sang at Easter Vigil: ‘Christ the light,’ let us hold onto this proclamation now. May our paschal faith enable us to see the light of Christ shining from the many graves of our fellow Christians who are like ‘a wheat grain which falls on ground and dies in order to yield a rich harvest.’
            Let us also preserve their memory in our hearts and history. In a church, I saw a fresco of the crucified Jesus by whose side stood a feminine figure, the Church. She was holding up a chalice to collect the blood flowing from the pierced heart of Jesus.
My Dear Sisters and Brothers! Like that precious blood, collect and treasure the memory of the sacrifice of those Sri Lankan Christians, and so many thousands of other Christians, martyred for their faith. In this way what an early Church writer Tertullian observed will happen again in our times: ‘The blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church.’ Their sacrifice is our strength.

​As a child I used to spend some of my summer holidays with my maternal grandmother. The little timber cottage in the middle of the meadows and fields just a short stroll from the forest was all a little boy needed to turn his time into the most exciting adventure. A few years ago while vising my relatives I went to see the house. It was still there. The meadows and fields, and the forest, were still part of the landscape. However the feeling was not the same. Something was missing. I realized that the place was empty without my grandma. Though practically blind she made my holidays special.
            My Dear Fellow believers! I think that most of us could recall a similar situation; this overwhelming feeling of emptiness when someone or something important to us is missing. It can be the emptiness left by someone we loved. It can come from betrayal, misunderstanding or envy. It can be triggered by the loss of a job, failing health, shattered plans or dreams. It can happen to us when we realize our sinfulness, lack of integrity, when we are disappointed with ourselves. This emptiness can come from the disappearance of that lively and simple faith we once enjoyed as children or absence of comfort we used to have when we turned to God, when we worshiped in our faith communities.  All these situations become for us an empty tomb. We may attempt to run there like Mary of Magdala, Peter and John did in our Gospel reading, hoping that what was familiar to us, what was treasured by us, can be in some form still found there. Yet the tomb is empty. It is empty of what was old, what was familiar to us, what was before. A German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche even said: ‘God is dead.’ However what I hear in these words is a cry of profound desolation. Similar cry I can hear in our society which claims to be secular. However I don’t think that our society is secular. It may not be church going. I may ignore God. However the void needs to be filled somehow rather.
It is filled when people start expecting of other people or things to provide them with what only God can provide. We can lay people with a burden which is heavier than the cross Jesus Christ carried. It happens when we expect from people the love, forgiveness, perfection which can only be found in God. It is a crushing burden we place on people when we expect them to replace God for us.
The void we discover in us we may also attempt to fill when we expect from the things which possess or desire to possess, to give us security, hope, joy and fulfillment which can ultimately come only from God.
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! There was a time when the Son of God was in a tomb. We call it Holy Saturday. However Holy Saturday ended when Jesus Christ was raised. The Sunday which followed ‘unlocked for us the path to eternity’ as we prayed in our opening prayer for this Mass of the Resurrection. I am moved and strengthened by this prayer because it captures that the mighty work accomplished by the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ is not forced upon us. Rather it is a path marked by growth in faith in the midst of our ups and downs.
On Easter Sunday Jesus was risen but his disciples were still followers of Friedrich Nietzsche as they believed that ‘God was dead’ because the Resurrection of Jesus was not accomplished in the spotlights or in front of the mass media. The first Easter Sunday morning was for the disciples as dark and empty as Holy Saturday. The tomb to which they rushed was not a sign of hope yet. It was just a further expression of the emptiness they had in them. However the Spirit of God begins to manifest his work. The disciple Jesus loved, the one who followed Jesus from the beginning of the Lord’s mission until his redeeming death on the cross, starts putting the pieces of Jesus’ teaching and the sight of the empty tomb together. What is the result? ‘He believed.’ He hadn’t seen Jesus risen yet but he had come to believe in the Resurrection. We haven’t seen the Lord either but from one generation to another was pass on the Good News which turns the emptiness into which we run every now and then into the joy of the presence of the Risen Lord and the new life, ‘this path to eternity.’ We repeat, treasure and celebrate that at the outset of our Christian religion is what St Peter announced to Cornelius as we could hear it in our First Reading: ‘People killed Jesus by hanging him on the tree, yet three days afterwards God raised him to life and allowed him to be seen…We are those witnesses – we have eaten and drunk with him after his resurrection from the dead.’
In the light of that message of the Resurrection I am grateful for those lovely holidays I had as a child. Although I miss my grandma like I miss my dad who died many years ago I know that they were my grandma and dad not my God. The emptiness left by them is now filled with the Risen Lord. What my loved ones gave me is a taste of more I am given every day by my God and Lord.
I pray this Easter Sunday for you my Dear Sisters and Brothers so that if you experience some form of emptiness in you these days you may believe that the Risen Jesus wants to fill it with his presence and new life like this empty chalice will be soon filled with his precious blood.
Happy Easter. Christ is risen. Alleluia.

​            In recent years we have been able to witness a powerful reaction of various communities around the world in response to manmade or natural tragedies. The silent marches, peaceful rallies, night vigils are a moving insight into our humanity revealing our empathy at our fellow human beings’ suffering.
My Dear Fellow believers! Good Friday has brought us together to adore Jesus hanging on the cross. The words of the ancient prophet Isaiah capture what Jesus looked like that first Good Friday: ‘As the crowds were appalled on seeing him – so disfigured did he look that he seemed no longer human.’ We remember that it was a grievous injustice done to him. The Roman Governor Pontius Pilate in his judgment made it clear that the accusation against Jesus had no merit: ‘I am going to bring him out to you to let you see I find no case.’ But when he realized that his stand could cost him his career he gave in to the demands of those who gathered in front of his palace.
So, are we here rallying against that injustice? Our Lord tells us something different in the words he addressed to the women of Jerusalem who mourned and lamented for him when he was carrying his cross: ‘Do not weep for me; weep rather for yourself and for your children… For if men use green wood like this, what will happen when it is dry?’ Can you hear that the scourged and burdened with cross Christ on the way to the Calvary spoke of himself as a green tree. He who was doing the will of his Heavenly Father, he who loved all human children of his Heavenly Father to the very end, wanted those women and us as well, to see what he was put through as life giving. He repeated what he said before: ‘No one takes my life from me; I lay it down of my free will.’ If he wanted to defend himself he could did it with his one divine and powerful word.  He didn’t need Peter’s sword to protect him. That’s why even if we pity Jesus for his fate the prophet Isaiah moves our empathy to adoration: ‘The crowds will be astonished at him, and kings stand speechless before him, for they shall see something never told and witness something never heard before.’
These words came to me some years ago when in an old Church in Europe I discovered a cross with a smiling figure of Christ. First I was astonished and speechless. I even thought that it was something wrong. But as I was gazing on this unusual crucifix I remembered a story of a mother and her daughter drowning in a river. When some people came to their rescue the woman pushed the child up. Seeing the child being saved there was a smile of relief on her face despite being sucked to her death by the river current. That ancient crucifix wasn’t scandalous but it was powerfully preaching to worshippers and hopefully to tourists as well the depths of God’s love for us revealed in Jesus Christ. Later when I did some research I discovered that the most ancient crucifixes didn’t focus on suffering of Jesus. They presented the crucified Lord as Priest vested for Mass. They presented the crucified Lord as King robed in his royal regalia.
Today as we gather to celebrate the Passion of the Lord I invite you to gaze upon ‘the One whom they have crucified’ not as a victim but a conscious Priest making of himself the sacrifice for our sins.
Today as we gather to celebrate the Passion of the Lord I invite you to gaze upon ‘the One whom they have crucified’ not as a victim but a conscious King who came not to be served but to serve.
My Dear Sisters and Brothers! Take from this Liturgy the smile of the Crucified Lord. It is the smile which tells volumes about God’s love for you and me, for us.