Thursday of the 12th Week of Ordinary Time (Year 2), St Mary’s Cathedral Sydney, 25 June 2026
In several places in the Gospels, Jesus says being law-abiding is not enough: our heart must be in it, our intentions pure.[i] Avoiding murder is right, but we need more: we must soften our angry hearts and avoid grudges that feed violence. Shunning adultery is all well and good, but we must also repair the lustful heart that reduces others to mere sex objects. It’s good not to steal, but even more important to reform our greedy hearts so we naturally share. Avoiding perjury is best, but the pure-hearted will always speak the truth, not just when under oath, so their Yes means Yes and their No No.
In tonight’s Gospel (Mt 7:21-29) Jesus speaks to the flipside of that coin. It is not enough to feel the right things, believe the right things, say the right things… the right things must also be done.[ii] Practical reasoning is not about endlessly agonising about what to do but being paralysed to act: it’s about doing our best to work it out and then choosing. Pope St John Paul II once asked a religious sister where her veil was. She said she wore it on her heart. He responded that he couldn’t see her heart. His point was: good will and good intentions are not enough; they must be expressed publicly, in words and deeds.
Which is not to say our beliefs don’t matter. What we hold to be true of God, the world, our neighbours and ourselves, matters greatly. Get those things wrong and we’ll inevitably act badly. But as St James asks, if someone’s desperately poor and all you do is say “Have a nice day”, what good does it do? Unless faith is fruitful in deeds, it’s dead: it is zombie faith (Jas 2:14-26). Or as St John put it, saying we are Christians while living in sin and selfishness is lying; seeing someone in need and doing nothing is ungodly (1Jn 1:6; 2:9; 3:10,17; 4:20). “Dear children,” he says, “let us love not just with words and in speech, but with actions and in truth.” (1Jn 3:18) The Good Samaritan doesn’t just feel compassion: his compassion impels his action (Lk 10:25-37; cf. 1Cor 13). Christian life is what we do about God, neighbours and self because of what we believe about them.
So, there are two sides to the faith-and-action coin. Both thought and deed matter. And they are most perfectly reconciled not in a system but in a person: Jesus Christ. He is truth, beauty and goodness made deed: the divine intention living and breathing, choosing and doing. The Word of God is creative: God thinks ‘light’ and there is light; God says ‘humanity’ and we spring into existence. But His most precious Word is ‘Jesus’, the fullness of grace and truth (Jn 1:14). In turn, when Jesus spoke, He meant it; no half-heartedness, hypocrisy or deception. His thoughts, words and deeds were one. So, too, for His disciples: saying “Lord, Lord” isn’t enough (Mt 7:21-23). As the Rite of Ordination so beautifully charges our clergy: “Receive the Gospel of Christ whose herald you now are. Believe what you read, teach what you believe, and practice what you teach.”
In our first reading today, the faithful face calamity (2Kgs 24:8-17). The teenaged king, Jehoiakim, last in the line of Solomon to rule over Judah, reigns only three months. The Neo-Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar II, besieges Jerusalem, Jehoiakim surrenders, and ten thousand of Israel’s leaders, soldiers and craftsmen are carried into exile in Babylon, along with the national treasures, while Jerusalem burns. For decades to come the challenge will be to keep faith in a strange land, surrounded by a people who knew nothing of the God of Israel.
To live as strangers in a strange land, surrounded by people who think and behave differently, is not just about geography. Christians can sometimes feel like fish out of water, aliens in a hostile secular culture. Our beliefs about God, the world, each other, ourselves, about the Church, the Word, the Sacraments, our destiny, about the meaning of this life and the promise of the next, are foreign to many. And, with so little support from the culture, it can be hard to live with that integrity of thought, word and deed to which the Gospel calls us. Yet the example of the Babylonian captivity is instructive. Some of faithful Israel, at least, found a way to maintain integrity of faith and action.
This evening we welcome relics of a saint who kept faith in an age and culture that was not always supportive. St Carlo Acutis is known as “the first millennial saint”, “patron of the internet”, “God’s influencer” and “the saint in sneakers”. As an e-generation teenager, at ease with computers and code, he might so easily have slipped into the conformity with the culture. “All people are born as originals,” he once said, “but many die as photocopies.”[iii] Carlo chose to remain an original, so that what was in his heart and what we saw in his actions were completely allied, as Jesus had exhorted. He brought others to the faith, taught people about the saints and a saintly life, and encouraged volunteering in service of the poor.
What powered that integrity of life and character was the Holy Eucharist, Carlo’s “highway to Heaven.”[iv] He structured his short life around daily Mass, time before the Blessed Sacrament, and then cataloguing more than a hundred Eucharistic miracles recognized down the ages. His website Miracoli Eucaristici has since been translated into many languages and exhibited around the world: it will come back to Sydney for Eucharist28! When Pope Leo XIV canonised him last September, he set Carlo’s own words before the Church: “Conversion is nothing more than shifting your gaze from below to above; a simple movement of the eyes is enough.” And, more simply still: “In front of the sun, you get a tan. In front of the Eucharist, you become a saint.”[v]
The wise man, Jesus says this evening, the wise boy, hears God’s words and acts upon them; he builds his house upon rock so that when the storms of life ravage, he stands firm. 15-year-old Carlo sustained the storm of leukemia at such an early age with an unshakable faith that was to inspire generations to come. If our thoughts and deeds conform, like his, to the mind and will of Christ, we will join them both in eternity.
[i] e.g. Mt5:8,20–37; 6:1-18; 7:21-23; 12:34; 13:15; 15:7-9,18-19; 16:10-15; 23:27–28; Mk 7:6,21-22; Lk 6:45-46; 12:2; 20:46-47; 21:34.
[ii] Cf. Mt 21:28-32.
[iii] Pope Francis, Christus Vivit: Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation to Young People and to the Entire People of God (2019) 106.
[iv] Paul Senz, ‘The Eucharist is my Highway to Heaven,’ Catholic World Report 12 October 2023.
[v] Pope Leo XIV, Homily at the Holy Mass with the Canonization of Blesseds Pier Giorgio Frassati and Carlo Acutis (Saint Peter’s Square, 7 September 2025).
INTRODUCTION TO MASS FOR THE RECEPTION OF THE RELIC OF ST CARLO ACUTIS
Welcome, friends, to St Mary’s Cathedral for this evening’s Mass, as we celebrate the reception of the major relics of St Carlo Acutis: a lock of his hair; fragments of his favourite T-shirt and the bedding in which he died; and, most precious of all, portion of his pericardium, the membrane that surrounds and protects the human heart. For these examples of St Carlo’s closeness to us, we give thanks to Almighty God!
Carlo is especially renowned for his devotion to the Holy Eucharist, which he called his “highway to Heaven”. Here in Sydney, as we prepare to host the International Eucharistic Congress in 2028, we honour him as one of our principal patrons. So it is with particular joy that we welcome these relics, especially the one of the heart with which young Carlo loved Christ so well in His Eucharistic Body and Blood.
Concelebrating with me this evening is Mons. Anthony Figuerido, who has accompanied the relic all the way from Assisi.
I welcome Kate Hobbes, President of the Friends of Carlo Acutis Australia, and representatives of the International Eucharistic Congress office, of several of our Sydney Catholic schools, Sydney Catholic Youth, the University Chaplaincies, and our other youth ministries. To everyone here on this joyful occasion, a very warm welcome to you all.
