Homily for Saturday 15 November 2025. Repairing the Church is the mission of co-redemption, requiring Christian cooperation and the will of a martyr.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, we thank God today for our meeting, for our formation. And today, special for the saint we celebrate: St. Albert the Great, Dominican priest, and the preceptor of a great saint, another great saint: St. Thomas Aquinas. He was the spiritual father and spiritual teacher of this other great theologian, himself a great scientist, theologian, and philosopher: St. Albert the Great. He had an interest in biology, in physics, in philosophy, in theology, and from his school came such a great saint and theologian, St. Thomas Aquinas. So we are very blessed to celebrate his liturgical feast day today and to reflect together on the very central mission that is entrusted to the Franciscan order, to each one of us, as with also the Dominican order: to repair the church. I wish to reflect with you on this important task, which is very Franciscan.

The mission of repairing the church at this very difficult time in the church. Reparation is the word that St. Francis heard. You remember when he heard from the crucifix speaking at San Damiano, 1205, when officially we could say St. Francis’ mission began? As he was praying before the crucifix in San Damiano, he heard a voice and the crucifix speaking. He saw the crucifix moving the mouth, as the biographers say, and the crucifix, Our Lord, told Francis: “Go, Francis, and repair my Church, which is falling apart.” I think this was a very encouraging [message] because the church had to be repaired also at St. Francis’ time, not only at his time. Sometimes we get depressed with all the confusion going on in the church, the fights, and the nonsense, but this is not something only present today.

It is always an issue with the church because we poor sinners are not always understanding what to do, and Our Lord entrusted His great mystery, the faith and the church to save mankind, to poor men: fishermen at the beginning, and other poor men throughout the ages. So we have to be patient and to be confident that the church has to be repaired. The church can be repaired not because there are brilliant men throughout the ages, but because there is Christ who humbly, so to speak, asks St. Francis, as any other saint, any other man or woman of good will: “Go and repair My Church.” To repair the church is again not a human endeavor, something that we can do because we are clever or because we are can-do men. No, we can do it because Our Lord has entrusted this mission to us. And we can do it if we are faithful to that mission, the mission, in our specific case, that St. Francis received from the Crucified Saviour.

It is very astonishing to see Jesus asking us through Francis: “Go and repair my Church.” Jesus, You are God. You are the one who is in charge. You made the Church. You should fix it. You can, of course. Only You can fix it. And You rely on us, poor men and women, to do the job for You. Why do You rely on us? Do You need something from us? Can we do something for You that You can’t do Yourself? Why do You rely on us? Because this is the logic of Christianity. Co-redemption is the logic. There is no salvation without cooperation with grace. Jesus does everything, but He cannot do something that we have to do by cooperating with Him. We need to do it. We are not like people watching while Jesus does [the work]. No, He cannot change our freedom. We have to freely respond. We have to freely obey. We have to freely participate. Otherwise, no salvation, no way forward to fix the problems.

So you see, cooperation is important, and is essential, is vital. Co-redemption is that great teaching that we get here. If people want to get rid of Co-redemption, basically they tell us that we are only spectators of our salvation. God does everything. That is a Protestant stand that we cannot accept unless we deny our identity. We deny what Our Lord says in the Gospel, in today’s Gospel: “You are the salt of the earth; you are the light of the world.” What does it mean? That we stay there and wait? No. The salt has a particular function in your food, isn’t it? If it lacks, the food is not good. So the salt has to be employed for something, isn’t it? You need to do something in order to make the world have its taste. Otherwise, it is tasteless. It is to be thrown away. This is the mission of a Christian: to cooperate with Christ to make the world change and come back to God. Of course, He can do it. He’s the only one who can do it.

But He can’t do it, so to speak, without our own cooperation. This is the logic. This is freedom. If we believe in freedom—and I think any man, any woman believes in freedom—but if we do believe, if we really believe in freedom, we should be ready to accept this logic. So Co-redemption is the very element distinguishing us from any wordly mindset ready to embrace freedom, but to use it for one’s convenience. No, we want freedom for being with God, for being saved by God. Co-redemption is that direction to go. Co-redemption is lived out as reparation. Same thing. Co-redemption, co-redeemer, and reparation can be synonymous. Co-redemption is lived out in our own spiritual life, Christian life, as a ministry of reparation. Is the word St. Francis heard: “Go Francis and be glad and wait that I will do everything?” No. “Go, Francis, and repair my Church.”

“Do something, you know, consume yourself for my Church, for my bride, and try to do your best to respond, to be faithful to my grace, and to cooperate with me, to make the Church live again, to build up the mystical body of Christ.” It took some time for St. Francis to understand that. The Poverello was like you and me. What should I do? Okay, I should refurbish some churches. I have some money. I can invest this on refurbishing some of the falling apart churches in Assisi. But that was not the mission he had to embrace. The mission was to build up the mystical body of Christ by generating a Franciscan army of people: friars, sisters, Third Order, lay people, ready to fight for Christ, ready to embrace that mission, not to be spectators, but to be the salt of the earth, and the light of the world. This is the mission of reparation. Reparation then goes together with martyrdom. That’s why reparation is a word, together with co-redemption, that we don’t want to hear.

You have, you know, to do something, and you have to be ready even to shed your blood for Christ. Are we ready? Are you, Father Serafino, ready to shed your blood for Jesus Christ, if you really believe in Him? This is Christian life for me, for you, for any person. Are we ready? That’s why Co-redemption is hard, isn’t it? It’s difficult to accept. Better to deny it than accepting this logic: the logic of martyrdom. But I would like to quote a great cardinal. You may know him: Cardinal Manning, an English convert, Anglican, [who] became a Catholic, the second Archbishop of Westminster after the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in this Country. Great man, great theologian. Cardinal Manning said: “We do not live in the age of martyrs (but, who knows) but in the age when each must have the will of a martyr.” He knew very well the history of this country. The earth on which we stand is the earth which has been fertilised by the blood of so many martyrs who died for the faith. Which faith?

The only true faith? The Catholic faith. They died for the Mass, for this holy Traditional Mass. They died for the Pope. They died for the Catholic Church, the Catholic faith. The earth on which we stand is the earth which has been fertilised by this blood. So particularly in this country, I should say, we should be reminded of this mission. We live in an age, with Cardinal Manning, when each must have the will of a martyr. Following up on that great statement, I would like to quote another important author, a French author, Father Raoul Plus, Jesuit (old school Jesuit), who said this: “Yes, a blood too must be poured out, not perhaps on the battlefield or in the arena, but it must be shed drop by drop in our daily striving after holiness and for the restoration of humanity in Christ. It must be given drop by drop by the daily sacrifices, often so trivial and yet meritorious, of an existence spent wholly for God.”

He goes on: “The most faithful of these zealous souls give all to God, making the complete sacrifice of their self-love with all its manifold reservations, of their most cherished attachments, of their most legitimate pleasures and joys. They give all for the joy of seeing God at last known and served as He merits.” That’s a great quote from Father Raul Plus. Is this not Third Order life? Is this not the mission of any Franciscan Marian Third Order person/member? It is the mission of any Christian. However, to be more intentional Christians, you have willingly decided to embrace this lifestyle of penance, of reparation, of living out Our Lady’s Co-redemption. That’s great. But this is what Christian life is about. We need, my dear tertiaries, to make this evident in today’s context, where, of course, it is not evident anymore. This is our mission. This is your mission: “Go and repair my Church, now, right now, which is falling apart.”

And another great reason for repairing the Church is to repair that insult, I should say—without any politeness here—insult to Our Blessed Mother with this new Vatican doctrinal Note, which tries to say the minimum about Our Lady, but in the end, it does not say what should be said: that there is an active cooperation of Mary in our salvation, as there is an active cooperation of each Christian in his own salvation; otherwise, no salvation at all. So we repair also this, and we ask Our Lord to have mercy on us and to make us instruments of His love. We thank Him for trusting us, for trusting you and me, for this important mission, the Franciscan mission: “Go and repair this my Church, My beloved Spouse, the Church.”

In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Fr. Serafino M. Lanzetta