O Beauty Ever Ancient, Ever New

Homily of H.E. Most Rev. Charles John Brown D.D., Apostolic Nuncio to the Philippines

July 5, 2025 | Opening Mass for the 130th Plenary Assembly of the CBCP

St. Michael the Archangel Parish, Jagna, Bohol

“People do not put new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the skins burst, the wine spills out, and the skins are ruined. Rather, they pour new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved” (Matthew 9:17).

Your Eminence, Pablo Virgilio Cardinal David, President of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines; Your Eminence, Jose F. Cardinal Advincula, Jr., Archbishop of Manila; Your Excellency, Mylo Hubert C. Vergara, Vice President of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines; our gracious and generous host, Your Excellency, the Most Rev. Patrick Daniel Y. Parcon, D.D., Bishop of Talibon, my brother bishops, gathered here in plenary assembly; officials of the General Secretariat of the CBCP, Catholic people here in Jagna:

For me as your Apostolic Nuncio, it gives me and all the bishops who are here, tremendous joy to be with you this evening for this celebration of Holy Mass, this Votive Mass in Honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary. 

The theme of the liturgy, we can say, is captured in those words of Jesus in the Gospel, “new wine in new wineskins”—the idea of the newness of the Gospel, the freshness of the Gospel, the novelty of the Gospel. Jesus in the last book of the Holy Scriptures, in the book of the Apocalypse, says, “Behold, I make all things new” (Rev. 21:5).

Jesus makes all things new with His divine life, with His divine power that is poured into us through the Sacraments. The sacrament of baptism, which gives us that new life—unlike our old biological life, this new life of grace that flows into us through the waters of baptism. Then it is increased and strengthened by the Bread of new life, the Holy Eucharist.

“Behold, I make all things new.” New life—that is what it means to be a Catholic, to be a Christian. We experience this newness of life in Christ, continuously, in the life of the Church.

Last week, on June 24 we celebrated the birth, the Nativity of John the Baptist; and for those of us who are committed to praying the Divine Office, the Breviary, we had this beautiful reading from Saint Augustine. When he makes this amazing contrast between John the Baptist, who is the last of the old time, and Jesus, who is the beginning of what is new, what is fresh.

Saint Augustine says, “John appears as the boundary, the confine, the frontier between the two testaments, the old and the new. He's this boundary figure.” John the Baptist, Saint Augustine tells us, was born in a miraculous fashion of a woman who was too old to have children—Saint Elizabeth. She represents the old. What is coming to an end. She's miraculously made pregnant because of the influence of the Holy Spirit, and she gives birth to John the Baptist, the end of the old. So, we have Elizabeth, an elderly woman made pregnant in a miraculous way; and then we have Our Lady, the Blessed Virgin Mary, a young, a youthful virgin, new, fresh. Mary also made pregnant in a miraculous way; but unlike Elizabeth, who was the end of the old, Mary, our Mother Mary, Mama Mary is the beginning of the new. She's young. She's beginning. She's a virgin. She gives birth to Jesus, who is our new Life.

We experience that newness of life all the time in the Catholic Church. Saint Augustine also has those beautiful words about God when He says, “Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new.” God is ever ancient and ever new. This newness of life.

Brothers and sisters, we have just recently experienced that newness of life in the Catholic Church, less than two months ago, with the election of Pope Leo XIV, a new pope for a new period. A new pope for a new era. We mourn the loss of our beloved Holy Father, Pope Francis, who is so much loved by you, the Filipino people. All of us remember his visit here in 2015. His pontificate comes to an end in that beautiful moment of Easter Monday, that moment of new life, that new life. The new life of Jesus resurrected in, we could say, Pope Francis in those last hours of his life. Then a new pope for a new era, the youngest pope we've had in the last 35 years, Pope Leo XIV. So, we have this continuous newness of the Church. She is always renewing herself.

This newness is also experienced by us in this Jubilee Year of Hope, this Jubilee 2025. We heard that beautiful Bull of Indiction, the letter creating the Holy Year of the Jubilee of 2025, written by our Holy Father, Pope Francis. “Spes non confundit,” which means our “hope does not disappoint” us.

Hope is always pointed to the future. Hope is always about something new. We don't hope about the past. We hope about the future—what is new. Hope is confidence in newness. Hope is confidence in what is coming, what is new. As we pray in Holy Mass “we await the blessed hope, and the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.”

Christians are people of hope.

Christians are people of joy.

Christians are people who look forward to the future.

That doesn't mean that we ignore the past or forget the past. The past is important for us; but the past only confirms us in our trust in the Lord for the future. When we look at the blessings, the manifold blessings bestowed on us in the past, that gives us hope and courage for the future. It gives us that ability to look forward to what is new, what is going to happen. We can be confident about the future when we look to the past. This is what it means to be a Christian—to balance the old and the new. As Saint Augustine say, (we say in parentheses that our new pope is a son of Augustine Augustine, an Augustinian) “Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient,” that is the past, and “ever new,” into the future.

We can be confident always in the promises of God to us. Because God is faithful. Faithful in the past, faithful in the future.

You know, in Theology, in Latin Theology, when they talk about the last things, our final destination, the four last things: death, judgment, heaven, and hell. In Latin, they call those the novissima. We talk about “de novissimis”. What does “novissima” or “novissimis” mean? It means “the newest things,” the future, what happens next, the life of the world to come. Those are the novissima, the newest things, the freshest things, what awaits us.

So, we experience this idea of new wine and new wineskins. All is new in Christ. Christ is leading us forward always. God never abandons us. When we look to the past, we're filled with confidence for the future. We see that in the pontificates of Pope Francis and Pope Leo.

Finally, Pope Francis, when he was meditating on this Jubilee Year of hope, he even talked about these last things, the novissima, the newest things. He said in that Letter of indiction that “Christian hope consists [in the end] precisely in this: that in facing death, which appears to be the end of everything, we have the certainty that, thanks to the grace of Christ imparted to us in Baptism, ‘life is changed, not ended’, forever. Buried [as we are in] Christ in Baptism, we receive in His resurrection, the gift of [newness], a new life that breaks down the walls of death, making death a passage to eternity” (Spes Non Confundit #20) into the life of the world to come.

That is where Pope Francis has gone. That is where Pope Francis has preceded us. So, we on this earth, filled with this new life, filled with the joy and the hope of the gospel, we continue to pray for our Holy Father Pope Francis, even after his repose, even after his departure from this earth. We pray for him, because the passage from this life into the novissima, into the new life of heaven is a passage and can be helped by our prayers.

We rejoice in this new pope, Pope Leo XIV. As I said, the youngest pope we've had in 35 years. The church is young, brothers and sisters. She's imaged by Our Lady, the youthful and beautiful virgin who gives birth to Jesus, our Lord and our God.

May God bless you.

Let us continue to pray for Pope Francis. Let us rejoice and continue to pray also for Pope Leo XIV.

Transcribed by Joel V. Ocampo

cover photo from DZRV 846 Facebook page