I will Heal Them

Homily for the Mass at the Sto. Tomas de Villanueva Parish Church

Maria Cristina, Balo-i (now Pro-cathedral of the Prelature of Marawi)

Friday of the 14th Week in Ordinary Time | 10 July 2026

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, maayong hapon sa inyong tanan. I feel so blessed to celebrate this Mass with you today, in the company of our Papal Nuncio, Archbishop Charles J. Brown, and the Prelate of Marawi, Bishop Edwin de la Peña and his brother priests in Marawi. Also because today happens to be the 20th anniversary of my episcopal ordination.

The readings today seem almost providential for our being together.

The prophet Hosea speaks in God’s name: “I will heal their defection. I will love them freely… I will be like the dew for Israel.” God does not first promise to rebuild walls or restore cities. He promises first to heal. Healing always comes before rebuilding.

The Church of Marawi knows this better than most. There are wounds that concrete cannot repair, and memories that no reconstruction project can erase. Yet the Lord tells us today that his first work is not reconstruction but healing. Like the morning dew that quietly refreshes the earth after a long night, God restores life gently, patiently, almost imperceptibly.

Then, in the Gospel, Jesus tells his disciples: “I am sending you like sheep in the midst of wolves. Be shrewd as serpents and simple as doves.”

These words have often been misunderstood as a call to fear. They are not. They are a call to courageous vulnerability. Jesus never promised his disciples security. He promised them his presence.

In many ways, this has been the vocation of the Church in Marawi. From the time of Bishop Bienvenido Tudtud, this prelature was never defined by numbers or influence. It chose another path: to remain a humble presence among the Maranao people, to build friendships, to engage in dialogue, to witness not by power but by charity.

The tragedy of 2017 could have been interpreted as the end of that mission. Instead, Bishop Edwin and the faithful have shown that the Church is not identified with a building. The cathedral may have been destroyed, the chancery displaced, and the bishop’s residence lost, but the Church herself was not defeated. She simply became, in a very real sense, a pilgrim Church—perhaps even what Bishop Edwin has beautifully called a “Bakwit Church.”

There is something profoundly evangelical about that. Our Lord himself had nowhere to lay his head. The first Christians often celebrated the Eucharist without temples, without security, without worldly guarantees. What sustained them was the certainty that Christ walks with his people.

Perhaps that is the deepest consolation these readings offer today. Hosea tells us that God heals. Matthew tells us that God accompanies. Healing and accompaniment: these are also the two words that best describe the mission of this prelature.

As we celebrate this Eucharist, let us thank God for the quiet heroism of this local Church—for its priests, religious, and lay faithful; for its friendship with its Muslim brothers and sisters; and especially for Bishop Edwin, who has carried the burden of shepherding a Church in exile without allowing it to lose hope or its identity.

And let us pray that the day will come when the Church can once again celebrate fully in her cathedral in Marawi—not simply because a building has been restored, but because hearts continue to be reconciled.

For ultimately, that is the cathedral God desires to rebuild first: the human heart.

Dear Bishop Edwin, today we have not come merely to visit you. We have come to thank you and express our oneness with you. Through your fidelity, the Church in Marawi has become a sign to the whole Church in the Philippines that mission is not measured by success, but by steadfast presence. Thank you for teaching us what it means to remain with a people, even in exile.