Catholic Exeter

Sunday Homily

Carried on Eagle’s Wings”
My dear brothers and sisters, there is a touching story about a little boy who became lost in a crowded city market. He wandered from street to street, frightened and crying. Many people tried to help him, but he could not explain where he lived. Finally, a police officer picked him up and carried him through the streets.
As they passed a church, the boy suddenly pointed to the steeple and shouted, “Take me there! I know that place. If you take me there, I can find my way home.”
The church was not actually his home. But it was the landmark that led him home.
In many ways, that is the situation of humanity. People today are often lost—not geographically, but spiritually. Many are wounded, confused, lonely, anxious, burdened by guilt, or searching for meaning. They may not know exactly what they are looking for, but deep in their hearts they are searching for God.
This is exactly what Jesus sees in today's Gospel. St Matthew tells us that when Jesus looked at the crowds, he was moved with compassion because they were "harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd." Notice that Jesus does not look at the crowd with irritation, judgment, or disappointment. He looks with compassion.
The word compassion literally means "to suffer with." Jesus enters into the pain of His people. He sees their wounds. He feels their struggles. He loves them before they have changed.
This same compassion is already foreshadowed in the first reading. God reminds Israel: "I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself."
What a beautiful image. An eagle carries its young when they are too weak to fly. God does not merely give directions from a distance. He carries His people. He carries us.
Many of us can look back on difficult moments in life—times of failure, sickness, grief, disappointment, or uncertainty. We thought we were walking alone. Yet today we can see that God was carrying us on eagle's wings.
And then St Paul takes this love even deeper. He tells us that Christ died for us "while we were still sinners." Not after we became holy. Not after we got our lives together. Not after we deserved it. Christ loved us at our worst. The Cross is God's declaration that no human being is beyond His mercy.
And because we have received such love, Jesus now sends us out as He sent the Twelve Apostles.
Notice something important: before the disciples are sent, they first experience the compassion of Jesus. Mission always begins with encountering His love.
People do not become witnesses because they have all the answers. They become witnesses because they have been touched by mercy.
Our world does not need more arguments as much as it needs more Christians whose lives reveal the compassion of Christ: a listening ear, a forgiving heart, a visit to someone lonely, encouragement to someone discouraged, kindness to someone forgotten. Perhaps the "lost sheep" Jesus speaks about are not far away. They may be in our own family, workplace, neighborhood, or even sitting beside us today.
The Lord's words remain true: "The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few." The question is not whether God is calling workers into His harvest. The question is whether we are willing to answer. Today, let us ask for the grace to remember three things: God carries us on eagle's wings.
Christ loves us even in our weakness. And having received that love, we are sent to share it with others.
May every person who meets us encounter something of the compassion of Jesus and, through us, find their way home. Amen.

Looking for a fun day out for your child next month?

Youth Events is hosting a fun-packed day at St Rita's Centre, Honiton, for children and young people aged 6–17. Book your child's place using the link below, and contact us by email if you have any questions.

To book: https://forms.office.com/e/XXbYKaDKfd
For queries: [email protected]

Today on the Feast of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ we processed with the Blessed Sacrament at the end of the 10.45am Mass at Blessed Sacrament and finished with the Litany of the Holy Name of Jesus and Benediction in the garden. Thankfully the rain stayed off and lots of people stayed for the celebration. Happy Feast.

Blessed Sacrament News⎥7 June 2026⎥The Most Holy Body & Blood of Christ

This afternoon at Blessed Sacrament Arabella received the Sacrament of Baptism and was welcomed into the Life of Grace and the family of the Church. Please keep her and her parents, family and Godparents in your prayers. Congratulations Arabella!

5 June St BONIFACE, Bishop & Martyr and Patron of the Diocese of Plymouth.

For the first forty years of his life Boniface was known as Wynfrith. He was born in Devon, near Crediton and educated at the monastery at Exeter, later joining the Benedictine abbey at Nursling, near Southampton. He was a teacher and preacher, but he desired to preach the gospel in a foreign land. In 718, Pope Gregory II commissioned him to do so, at the same time changing his name from Wynfrith to Boniface.

Boniface left England, never to return, and took the gospel to the heathen tribes of Germany, where he had great success. He himself was created Bishop of Mainz, and he founded or restored dioceses in Bavaria, Thuringia, and Franconia. In his later years he worked with King Pepin the Short to reform the Frankish church, and then, over seventy years old, set out to evangelize Friesland (part of modern Holland) where he was set upon and murdered, on 5 June 754.

He is buried at Fulda, near Frankfurt, in the monastery he founded himself, and is honoured as the apostle of Germany.

Collect for today's Mass:

O God, who raised up the holy Bishop
and martyr Saint Boniface
from the English nation
to enlighten many peoples with the Gospel of Christ,
grant, we pray,
that we may firmly hold and confidently profess in action
the faith he taught with his lips and sealed with his blood.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.

St Boniface, pray for us and for our diocese.

St Charles Lwanga and Companions, Martyrs of Uganda.

Many Christians, Catholic and Protestant, were killed by the Ugandan king Mwanga. Some of them were servants in the king’s palace or even his personal attendants. Charles Lwanga and his twenty-one companions (the youngest, Kizito, was only 13) were executed for being Christians, for rebuking the king for his debauchery and his murder of an Anglican missionary, for “praying from a book,” and for refusing to allow themselves to surrender to the king’s sexual desires. They died between 1885 and 1887. Most of them were burned alive in a group after being tortured.
Within a year of their deaths, the number of catechumens in the country quadrupled. St Charles Lwanga is the patron of Catholic Action and of black African youth, and the Ugandan martyrs’ feast day is a public holiday in Uganda.

St Charles and your companions, pray for us.