HOMILY AT
SAINT MARY MAJOR'S BASILICA
Gathered in this Church of Santa Maria Maggiore, the first Church dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, I cannot help but draw a contrast between those about to stone Saint Stephen to death, and the Blessed Virgin Mary, who is the gate to eternal life.
The first are, in Stephen’s own words, a stiff-necked people, who always oppose the Holy Spirit, who murdered anyone who spoke of Jesus.
And then there is Mary, full of grace, whose fiat (let it be done to me according to God’s word) resounds through all the ages as perfect docility, humility and obedience to God’s will. She is the one on whom the Holy Spirit descends in conception of the Son of God and she is the one who brings us Jesus: God made flesh for our salvation.
In contrast to the first martyr’s murderer’s she tells us, “Do whatever he tells you,” and joined to us by Jesus as he looked down from the wood of the Cross, she is our mother, our constant intercessor and the most blessed example of what it means to be an obedient child of God.
So let us lay our prayers at her feet in this temple of her glory and make our prayers known to her. Our prayers for Cardinal Law, for whom we beg eternal rest. Our prayers for the Church in Boston and the Church in New England, and for our shepherd, Cardinal O’Malley. For our Bishops and our priests and for all seminarians.
And for all those prayers which you carry with you on this pilgrimage. May Mary, Mother of God and Mother of all Christians present them to her Son for our good and the good of all his Holy Church.
HOMILY AT THE BASILICA OF
SAINT PAUL OUTSIDE THE WALLS
How hungry we are! How way down deep inside the hunger gnaws at us!
We call it emptiness, loneliness, isolation or pain. We call it fear, depression, confusion or loss. We call it seeking, grasping, despair or need. But whatever the name, it is the same. A deep gaping pain, like a black hole of fear that threatens to eat us alive.
But the great message of this place, built upon the bones of the one who preached the hope in which we are saved, is that you never need hunger again, for Christ waits for you with the life-giving drink that quenches every thirst and the bread that takes away all hunger.
He waits for you. He waits for you who are tired of fearing pain and dreading death, who long for relief and are desperate for hope.
He waits for you! He took your pain upon his shoulders with arms nailed to a cross, a pierced heart and a crown of thorns. He longs to gather your pain to his and to transform it by his Passion, to redeem your sufferings in the Paschal sacrifice of this Altar.
He waits for you, this Jesus, this Christ, this good shepherd, this way, this truth, this life, who all along the pilgrim paths of our lives feeds us with finest wheat, the bread of angels and the remedy of all our fears.
He waits for you! The one who looks down from the Cross, looks into our hearts and promises that ‘whoever comes to him will never hunger, and whoever believes will never thirst again.’
