Month: August 2026

The Vagabond of God

(Jer.20:7-9; Rom.12:1-2; Mt.16:21-27)

John Bradburne was an unusual Englishman. Born into an Anglican family in 1921, he served in the British Army in Burma in WWII.

After the fall of Singapore, he fled into the Malayan jungle where he caught malaria. But there he also had a powerful vision of Jesus Christ, and when he returned home, he became a Catholic.

For years he roamed Europe and the Holy Land, looking for purpose. He stayed in monasteries and worked odd jobs, and as his love for God grew, he joined the Franciscan Third Order and started wearing the Franciscan habit. He also called himself the ‘Vagabond of God.’

In 1962, he went to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) to work on the missions. One day, he revealed to a priest that he had three wishes: to serve lepers, to die a martyr, and to be buried in the habit of St Francis.

In 1969 he arrived at a leper colony in Mutemwa (which means ‘You are cut off’). It was a squalid, miserable place, but within weeks it became an oasis of peace, faith, and joy.

John lived with these people, treated them as equals, sang and played his flute for them, and taught them Gregorian chant. He bathed the patients, dressed their wounds, fed them, cut their hair, repaired their huts, composed hymns and poems, and spent hours praying before the Blessed Sacrament.

Many people thought he was wasting his life, for he had no salary, no security, no career, and no real possessions. Yet he said, ‘I have never been happier.’

How could this have been true? The answer is in today’s Gospel, where Jesus tells his disciples, ‘If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.’

Many people misunderstand these words. They think Jesus is telling us to look for suffering, but Christianity has never glorified pain for its own sake. We don’t carry our cross because suffering is good; we carry it because it represents the fullest expression of love, and we know that genuine love is costly.

Anyone with children, anyone who has been married, and anyone who has ever loved someone else knows how real love always involves sacrifice. This includes surrendering our selfishness, our personal time and our pride.

John Bradburne discovered that it was only when he came to live among these outcasts that he found the joy he’d been looking for. He did not love disease; he loved those who suffered from it.

Indeed, he saw in every resident of Mutemwa the face of Christ. Like Mother Teresa, he described these people as ‘Christ in distressing disguise.’ His attitude transformed the place, because those who had been rejected were instead treated as sons and daughters of God. He believed they all deserved dignity, beauty, music, prayer, friendship, and love.

That’s why John Bradburne could say, ‘I have never been happier.’

His happiness came not from possessing more, but from giving himself away. This is what St Paul is urging us to do in today’s second reading, where he says: ‘Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice. Don’t be conformed to this world, but be transformed.’

Our world tells us to get rich and comfortable, to put ourselves first. But today Jesus is saying something very different: he says that life is discovered not by clinging to it but by giving it away.

One day, John Bradburne was expelled from that village. He had strongly objected to the residents being forced to wear I.D. tags around their necks and bags over their heads to hide their disfigurement. They weren’t animals; they were his beloved brothers and sisters.

He didn’t go far away, though. Every night he returned to help his people, and he was eventually reinstated. But in 1979, he was abducted by armed guerrillas and murdered. Like a good shepherd, he had refused to abandon his flock.

By every worldly measure, John Bradburne was a failure. He died poor, unknown, and far from home. Yet the people of Mutemwa remember him very differently. They remember a man who revealed the love of Christ by treating the forgotten as precious, by singing, praying and laughing with them, and helping them to discover their own dignity. Today he is being considered for canonisation as Zimbabwe’s first saint. [i] [ii]

Jesus says, ‘Whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.’ John Bradburne discovered the truth of these words.

The more you give yourself away, the more fully alive you will become.

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[i] www.johnbradburne.com

[ii] Today, John Bradburne is recognised by the Guinness Book of Records as the most prolific poet in the English language, with over 5,000 poems.

It Takes Courage

(Isa.22:19-23; Rom.11:33-36; Mt.16:13-19)

Late one night in 1948, in Esztergom Hungary, Cardinal József Mindszenty heard heavy footsteps outside his home. The Soviet secret police had come to arrest him.

Hungary’s communist regime hated him because he led the local Catholic Church with vigour. They were determined to shut him down.

Cardinal Mindszenty knew how dangerous they could be. They wouldn’t just imprison him; they would torture and drug him to extract a false confession. They wanted to destroy the Church.

So, before opening his door, he wrote a note for his priests: ‘If you hear that I’ve confessed or resigned, don’t believe it. It will be the result of human frailty.’ And into his pocket he slipped a picture of Jesus wearing a crown of thorns, with the words Devictus Vincit (Defeated, he is victorious). Then he walked out to face years of solitary confinement.

Weeks later, after severe beatings, torture and sleep deprivation, he signed a confession admitting to treason, espionage, and foreign currency abuses. But to his signature he added the letters ‘C.F.’ for the Latin Coactus Feci: ‘I did this under duress.’ In other words, You forced my hand, but you cannot force my conscience. He was sentenced to life in prison.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus is in Caesarea Philippi with his disciples. He looks them in the eye and asks, ‘Who do you say that I am?’ Simon steps forward and answers, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ 

This is a pivotal moment in the New Testament.

Jesus tells Simon that his answer did not come from human insight but from the Father himself. Then he gives him a new name and a unique mission: ‘You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church… I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven.’

Now, notice what Jesus does not promise. He does not promise Peter an easy life. He does not promise popularity, comfort, or success. He promises only that the gates of hell will not prevail against his Church. And history shows how costly that promise can be.

Cardinal Mindszenty knew exactly what it meant to stand on that rock. He actively opposed the Nazi regime during WWII. And when the Communists took over, they thought that prison, torture, and public humiliation would silence him.

But nothing could sway his conscience.

Cardinal Mindszenty was released after the Hungarian uprising in 1956, but the Soviet army soon returned and then he sought refuge in the American Embassy in Budapest. There he lived in enforced isolation for the next fifteen years.

It would have been understandable if he’d compromised for the sake of peace or comfort. Even the Vatican expected him to make concessions, but he refused. Nothing could shake his fidelity to Jesus Christ and the Church. [i]

Why? Because he understood Peter’s answer to Jesus’ question, ‘Who do you say that I am?’

If Jesus was simply a wise teacher, or one religious figure among many, it would have been reasonable to compromise. But if Jesus truly is ‘the Christ, the Son of the living God,’ then nothing else is more important. That was true for Peter, it was true for Mindszenty, and it’s true for us.

In today’s first reading from Isaiah, God gives the key of the House of David to Eliakim, the palace manager. This is a symbol of stewardship, for the key belongs to the master, but it’s entrusted to the servant. Jesus consciously alludes to this when he gives Peter the keys to the Kingdom.

Ever since the days of Peter, the Church has been the steward of the Gospel. Her task is not to reshape the truth to suit every age but to guard it faithfully, to proclaim it courageously, and to hand it on intact to the next generation.

This is why the witness of people like József Mindszenty is so important, and why he’s being considered for sainthood. He reminds us that fidelity to Jesus may be costly, but the cost of surrendering the truth is even greater.

Most of us will never face prison or torture for our faith, and we’re unlikely to have to sign any false confessions. However, our secular world does subtly expect us to compromise. It’s constantly pressuring us to place our comfort, social status, and political choices above our loyalty to Jesus.

When we’re silent in the face of poverty and injustice, we deny Jesus. When we base our morals on the culture of the day, we abandon Jesus. And when we do nothing while the Church struggles, we are effectively answering Jesus’ question, ‘Who do you say that I am?’

József Mindszenty teaches us that it takes real courage to be a true Christian.

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[i] Cardinal József Mindszenty, Memoirs, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 2023.

Growing Hearts

(Isa.56:1, 6-7; Rom.11:13-15, 29-32; Mt.15:21-28)

When Jesus is healing and teaching crowds of people, we often forget that he’s also quietly forming his disciples’ hearts.

And one lesson he teaches them is that God’s Kingdom is always larger than they think.

In today’s Gospel Jesus meets the Canaanite woman whose faith is so strong that he agrees to heal her daughter. But at the same time there’s another miracle quietly taking place, and that’s the expansion of his disciples’ hearts.

For nearly two years, Jesus’ disciples have been following him, listening to him, and witnessing his miracles. Yet when this desperate woman arrives, their first instinct is to push her away. Why? Because she’s a foreigner. She comes from outside Israel, and they think she doesn’t belong.

At first Jesus is silent, and his words ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,’ seem to mirror the disciples’ thinking. But this story doesn’t end there. The Canaanite woman refuses to give up, and with deep humility she kneels before Jesus, pleading, ‘Lord, help me!’

Jesus is amazed by her faith, and grants her wish: he heals her daughter. But the disciples are amazed, too, because they see Jesus crossing a boundary they had always thought was fixed. They discover that God’s mercy is deeper and more generous than they had ever imagined, and their hearts grow.

Christian life is like that. Most of us tend to start by thinking small, naturally dividing the world into those who belong and those who don’t; those who deserve our attention and those we can ignore. And all the while Jesus keeps trying to stretch our boundaries and enlarge our hearts so that they might reflect God’s boundless mercy.

We can see this in C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia. As the children journey into Aslan’s country, they find that it’s somehow bigger on the inside than it seemed from the outside. Every time they think they have reached its limits, they hear the invitation: ‘Come further up, come further in,’ and they discover that it gets larger, more beautiful, and more meaningful the deeper they go. [i]

This is the invitation Jesus gives his disciples today.

Do you think God’s mercy extends only this far? Come further in. Do you think these people are beyond God’s love? Come further in. And do you think you know the limits of my Kingdom? Then come further in.

Every encounter with Jesus Christ expands our vision. This is why the Church’s history is filled with men and women who found their hearts being enlarged.

St Frances Xavier Cabrini, for example, originally planned to be a missionary in China. But Pope Leo XIII asked her to go west instead, to serve Italian immigrants in the United States. What began as a mission to one community became a life devoted to orphans, prisoners, the sick and the poor, somewhere else. Her mission kept enlarging because her heart kept growing.

When St Damien of Molokai first volunteered to serve people with leprosy in Hawaii, he was terrified of catching the disease. But in time he came to see them not as outcasts, but as his brothers and sisters. He built a community where people found their dignity and knew they were loved. And years later, after catching the disease himself, he always began preaching with the words, ‘We lepers.’

Jesus had so enlarged his heart that there was no longer any ‘us’ and ‘them’. Damien had truly joined the people he came to serve.

There’s a story told of Pope Francis during one of his prison visits. After washing the prisoners’ feet one Holy Thursday, a journalist asked him why he spent so much time with people on the margins. Francis replied that every time he met someone who society had forgotten, he found that it was not only they who needed Christ; he needed them as well. They revealed something about the face of Jesus that he might otherwise have missed.

This is one way our faith can be surprising. We think we’re bringing Jesus Christ to others, only to find that Jesus is already waiting for us in them.

The Canaanite woman did not simply receive a miracle from Jesus. Through her courageous faith, she helped the disciples to better understand God’s mercy.

So, today, who is God using to grow your heart? It may be someone who is very different to you; someone you find very challenging.

If you are willing to see them with the eyes of Christ, you may find that they are not a negative presence at all, but an important instrument of your own conversion.

God’s kingdom is always larger than we think, and Jesus is always inviting us to come further in.

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[i] CS Lewis, The Last Battle, The Chronicles of Narnia, HarperCollins, NY, 2008:200-210.

Surviving the Storm

(1Kgs.19:9a,11-13a; Rom.9:1-5; Mt.14:22-33)

Most people hate storms, especially when there’s no warning. Everything might be calm, then suddenly there’s a crisis like a family emergency, a financial disaster, or a bad diagnosis.

If you’ve ever struggled with such storms, today’s readings are for you.

In our first reading, the prophet Elijah is terrified because Queen Jezebel aims to kill him. He’s hiding in a cave on the sacred mountain of Horeb, hoping that God will tell him what to do next. He thinks, as so many people do, that signs from God only come with great drama. So, he’s alert to the strong wind, the earthquake, and the fire that follow. But God is not in any of these things.

Then in the silence Elijah hears a whisper, and he realises it’s God telling him to go to Syria. From this, he learns that the essence of God is love, because love speaks in whispers.

In Matthew’s Gospel today, it’s night-time and the disciples are in a boat, battling another kind of storm. Despite being experienced fishermen, the huge waves scare them. Then Jesus arrives, walking across the water. They don’t recognise him at first; they think he’s a ghost.

Fear can do this; it can distort our vision. Fear makes it harder to see clearly, much harder to trust, and even harder to recognise God when he’s near.

Most of us will never have to battle storms at sea; we’re more likely to face the common storms of life, like illness, grief, and anxiety, or perhaps loneliness and conflict. And when these things do arrive, many people think it means that God must be absent, because with God surely there would be no storms at all.

Today’s Gospel tells us that this thinking is wrong. Storms do not prove Christ’s absence. In fact, storms may be exactly where Jesus comes closest to us. Jesus doesn’t wait for the sea to calm down before approaching his disciples. He arrives while the storm is still raging and their fear is real. And the first thing he says is: ‘Take courage. It’s me; don’t be afraid.’

God often works like that in our lives. He doesn’t always calm the storm quickly, and he doesn’t always respond in the way we’d like. But he does come to us in the middle of it. He comes in prayer. He comes in Scripture. He comes in the Holy Eucharist, and he comes in the quiet support of others.

God also gives us the strength to endure one more day, and the graces we need to take the next step.

When Peter steps out of that boat onto the water, he shows remarkable trust in Jesus. But as soon as he takes his eyes off Jesus, he starts to sink. ‘Lord, save me!’ he cries out. (This is surely one of the shortest and best prayers of all.) In that moment, Jesus stretches out his hand and catches him.

This act is the heart of this story. Despite his fears, doubts, and imperfect faith, Peter reaches out to Jesus, and Jesus immediately responds by saving him.

Through the ages, countless saints have learnt this lesson. St. John Chrysostom, one of the Early Church Fathers, endured great opposition, suffering, and exile because of his faith. And yet, despite all this he taught that when a soul is deeply rooted in God – when we genuinely trust God – even slander, injury, and hardship need not destroy our peace.

This point is critical, because Christian courage doesn’t come from facing storms alone, but from being anchored in God who is always greater than any storm.

Sometimes our faith is strong and steady. But sometimes, like St Peter, it’s trembling and weak, and all we can manage is a simple prayer: ‘Lord, help me. Lord, save me. Lord, stay with me.’

The message for today is that even such small prayers are heard. Fear and doubt do not separate us from God’s mercy. They are exactly where his hand reaches out to us.

And remember Elijah’s lesson: that God is not only present in the overwhelming moments of life. God is also there in the gentle whisper and the quiet nearness that we too often miss when we only expect him to arrive in spectacle.

So, keep your eyes open for Jesus, both in the storm and in the silence, for he’s closer than you think. Pray to him; reach out to him.

Jesus is always present in every crisis and every prayer.

He is present whether we’re full of confidence or doubt, and the message is always the same: ‘Do not be afraid, I am with you’ (Is.41:10).

A Mathematical Miracle

(Isa.55:1-3; Rom.8:35, 37-39; Mt.14:13-21)

In the world of numbers, things should add up. They’re supposed to make sense.

How, then, can five loaves and two fish possibly feed 5,000 people? Especially when that count doesn’t include women and children. The arithmetic looks impossible.

Some people suggest that some families must have quietly smuggled food in. But that doesn’t explain how so many were fed or the twelve baskets of leftovers. It’s such a remarkable event that it features in all four Gospels.

Let’s look again at the story. Jesus goes somewhere quiet to grieve the murder of his cousin John, but a huge crowd follows him. He doesn’t turn them away, though; he heals and cares for them, and then, in the evening, he asks his disciples to feed them. They think it can’t be done with just five loaves and two fish, but Jesus blesses the food anyway and tells them to distribute it.

Now, note how Jesus doesn’t set out to solve the food problem by himself. He first asks his followers to contribute whatever they can, and then he makes up the difference. The result is extraordinary abundance.

For us, the raw mathematics don’t make sense. But God is not bound by our earthly limitations; he has a formula all of his own.

God’s formula works like this: Our best contribution plus God’s grace equals more than enough.

But notice how this formula begins with us. Those five barley loaves and two fish aren’t much; but Jesus takes them anyway; he blesses the contribution and multiplies it.

In other words, we don’t need to have everything to start something for God. It’s enough to have ready hands and a willing heart, and God will make up any shortfall.

But it does begin with us.

Many years ago, when St. John Chrysostom was the Archbishop of Constantinople, he was annoyed to see grand homes with full pantries, while people starved in the streets. Through his fiery preaching he confronted the wealthy and told them that blessings are meant to be shared, not hoarded.  

He argued that the rich do not own their wealth; they are merely stewards of God’s funds, and hoarding excess wealth is simply theft.

He organised the Church to get food to the hungry, and if any rich households were reluctant to help, he had sacks taken to their doors, to make it easier for them to share.

St John Chrysostom strongly believed that it’s only when we live generously, sharing what we have, that God’s graces begin to flow.

St. Elizabeth of Hungary understood this. She was a wealthy princess who devoted her life and fortune to the poor, despite the objections of the royal court. Every day she went out into the streets in ordinary clothes and hiding bread in her apron. And just as Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes, Elizabeth fed thousands of people and always found a way to care for the poor, even after she had spent all she had and was banished from the castle.

Mother Teresa did something similar in the slums of Calcutta, although she began with nothing more than a pair of loving hands, a willing heart and a few coins.

One day she found a thin, feverish woman lying abandoned in the street. She scooped her up, carried her back to her small hospice, cleaned her, fed her, and sat with her until she fell asleep. She did that a thousand times.

Mother Teresa and her sisters often had only a few rupees and a modest pot of food. But they didn’t wait until they had everything. They simply began with whatever they had, and over the years their steady, ordinary acts of mercy drew a steady stream of volunteers, donations, and buildings.

Their simple meals and constant presence changed whole neighbourhoods by showing people that they were seen and loved.

Like Mother Teresa, we don’t need a big budget to feed the hungry or help the poor. Just ready hands and a willing heart. God will bless whatever we give.

St John Chrysostom, St Elizabeth of Hungary and Mother Teresa teach us that grace is not just an inward consolation. It’s divine assistance that flows when we open our hearts and hands.

These saints prove that even when things seem impossible, God’s formula works: Your best contribution plus God’s grace equals more than enough.

But it begins with you.

Grace multiplies when we cooperate. Your ‘five loaves and two fish’ – your time, your small donation, a loaf from your pantry, an hour of listening to someone lonely – may seem insignificant.

But offered in faith, these gifts can add up to a mathematical miracle.