24 May 2025 – 6th Sunday of Easter (Sunset Mass)

by Fr Fabian Dicom

We all long for a place of belonging. Not just a house, not even a church building but a deep inner space where we are safe, where we feel loved and truly seen. A place we call home.

And that is what Jesus speaks of today:
If anyone loves me, they will keep my word and my Father will love them and we will come to them and make our home with them.

What an amazing tender promise. God the creator of galaxies, the Sustainer of the universe wants to make a home in you and in me. Not just a passing visit, not a check-in for an hour on Saturday or Sunday but a real living, breathing home.

Now this invitation is the heart of today’s Readings. Now how often do we live unaware of this divine presence already within us and around us?

Imagine God out there and forget the mystery of unfolding right here. And that is why today’s Readings are so timely. They are an invitation, not to build another temple but to become one.

And that brings us to the Second Reading. John’s vision in their book of Apocalypse shows a dazzling, new Jerusalem., radiant with beauty and light. But notice what is missing. There is no temple, no building, no artificial lights.

Why?

Because God is light. God IS the light. God IS the home. 

And this is a significant shift from how many of us approach faith. We often think of holiness as something we go to or visit., a church, a shrine, a pilgrim center, a ritual. Of course these are important reminders but they are not God. The message of today’s Readings is clear:-

God no longer dwells in temples made by human hands. God dwells in the human heart.

This is central to the Christian mystical tradition echoed by voices like Fr Richard Rohr who reminds us that the spiritual journey is not about adding more layers and layers of religion but removing the illusions that block us from experiencing God who is already there.

The First Reading gives us a glimpse into the early church’s growing pains. It kind of challenge us in the way we want to experience God. Who belongs? Who is in? Who is out? Some argued as we heard in the reading: Unless you are circumcised, you cannot be saved.

Now it is the age-old tension in the church – rules versus relationships, law versus love, rituals versus true worship. Sounds familiar?

We still wrestle with it today. We see people reduced to labels:
~ Worthy or unworthy;
~ Practicing or non-practicing;
~ Clean or unclean.
The church can become a place of control and not communion.

But look at the wisdom that emerges from that early community. It says, After prayer and discernment, two major key words, prayer and discernment, the apostles say something beautiful:
It has been decided by the Holy Spirit and by ourselves not to saddle you with any burden beyond these essentials.

Nothing extra. Make life easy. But the key thing is prayer and discernment. How much of prayer and discernment happens here with us?

That was the way of the early church. They chose to trust the Spirit which is already at work. They choose freedom over fear, relationship over regulation. The Spirit of God was not interested in gate-keeping. The Spirit of God was interested in home-coming.

God’s message is this. Allow me to paraphrase it:-

Come, come as you are. I have already made my home in you. Come as you are.

Jesus’ promise is extraordinary. We will come to you and make our home with you. It is not a future home. It is a present reality. But so often we live unaware of this divine presence already within us and around us. We imagine God as distant.

Now how do we begin to recognise this in-dwelling presence? How do we do that?

Let me share these following. Someone once asked Michelangelo how he sculptured such a magnificent statue of an angel from a block of marble. He replied, “I saw the angel in the marble and I carved until I set him free.“

It is a poetic image. The metaphorical divine was already there, hidden in stone. It was not about adding something new. It was about seeing rightly, removing the excess, allowing what was sacred to emerge. That is how it is with God in our lives.

The sacred is not far away. It is waiting to be recognised in you, beneath the noise, beneath the routines, beneath our struggles, beneath our limitations.

There is another story about a small monastery that had fallen into decline. Only five monks were left – elderly, discouraged and uncertain. 

So one day, one of them sought the advice of a rabbi who lived nearby. The rabbi listened and then simply said, “The Messiah is among you.“

The monk returned and shared this message. At first the brothers were puzzled. Who? But then they began treating each other with this new reverence because any of them could be the Messiah.

Something changed. What if I said the Messiah is among you and we start treating everybody with reverence?

The monastery became joyful. Visitors noticed. Young men came. The place came alive again. Not because of a miracle in the sky but because they began to see each other differently.

The divine was not absent. It had been there all along, hidden in plain sight.

And still today, we miss the divine hiding in plain sight:-
~ In the quiet resilience of a father who works long hours and still comes home to carry his child to bed;
~ In the gentle touch of a nurse who wipes the forehead of a dying patient as if Christ himself lay there;
~ In the laughter shared over a simple meal when no one is performing, just being;
~ In the wrinkled hands of a grandmother folded in prayer, hands that have carried generations;
~ In the tears of someone who dares to hope again and again after loss;
~ In the silence of the early morning when the world is still and something deeper stirs.

These are not just memories. These are holy ground.

God is not only in the Eucharist on the altar. He is also in the way we become Eucharist for each other – blessed, broken, given and shared, and multiplied, quietly nourishing the world.

To experience God, my dear brothers and sisters, is not to escape the world. It is to see it rightly, to see it as infused with grace, dripping with divinity. To see the homeless man on the street not as a burden but as a sacrament. To see your own tired self not as a disappointment but as a beloved dwelling place of God.

Can we do that? 

To let God make a home in us, we do not need to search hard. We need to seek deeper. This way of seeing, once again I refer to my favourite Fr Richard Rohr who reminds us that spiritual life is not climbing a ladder to reach God. It is learning to see that God has already come down and is everywhere – in the soil, in the bread, in your breath, especially in the broken and overlooked.

So today, as we continue to celebrate Easter, hear again Jesus’ promise – Peace I leave you. My peace I give you, not as the world gives.

The peace is not the absence of trouble. It is the presence of love, a love that is already here. A love that knocks at the door of your heart and says:
Let me make my home in you.

Amen.

Click below to listen to homily and watch video

Click to live-stream Mass on 24 May 2025