The Word that cleanses us, the humility that opens prayer, and the holiness God asks of every life
By Fr Antony Parankimalil VC
In the parable of the sower, seeds fall on many kinds of ground. Some are taken away, some spring up quickly and wither, some are choked by thorns, and some fall on rich soil and bear fruit thirtyfold, sixtyfold and a hundredfold. The seed is the Word of God, and the question is not only whether we have heard it but whether we have allowed it to enter deeply enough to change us. Jesus says, ‘You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you’ (John 15:3). We cannot purify our own hearts by willpower alone. The living Word exposes what is hidden, corrects what has become distorted, and cleanses us as we receive it with faith and obedience.
Scripture makes God’s intention for us unmistakably clear: ‘As he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct’ (1 Peter 1:15). Holiness is not a special achievement reserved for priests, religious or a few extraordinary Christians. It is the calling of everyone who belongs to Christ. During my early years of priesthood, I often heard retreats begin with Joshua’s command to the people: ‘Sanctify yourselves; for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you’ (Joshua 3:5). We naturally become excited about the wonders. We want healing, deliverance, reconciliation, financial help and a visible intervention of God. Yet the word placed before the wonder is sanctify.
This does not mean that we earn miracles by becoming good enough, as though grace were a payment God owed us. Sanctification itself is the work of grace. The Lord invites us to repent, surrender, confess, forgive and cooperate with the Holy Spirit so that our hearts become ready for what He desires to do. For a long time, however, I did not fully understand who the first person was whom God wanted to sanctify. I was preaching the Word to others, but the Word was also addressed to me.
God Speaks to the Person Who Is Present
I once preached a retreat in Nairobi, and afterwards a woman came near the sacristy and praised the sermon very warmly. I thanked her and gave the glory to God, but she soon revealed the intention behind the compliment. ‘Father, everything you preached today was for my husband. Unfortunately he is not here. I will bring him, and you must preach the same thing again.’ With a little humour, I told her that God does not normally preach first to the person who is absent. He preaches to the person who is present.
This is one of the most difficult truths to accept when we listen to a homily. We immediately know who else needs it. A wife thinks of her husband, a husband thinks of his wife, parents think of their children, and children may think of their parents. We are ready to carry the Word home as a message for another person, but God says, ‘My child, I am speaking to you.’ Before I ask Him to correct someone else, I must allow Him to correct me. Before I pray for another person’s conversion, I must place my own heart under the light of the Word.
Sirach teaches that the prayer of the humble pierces the clouds and does not rest until it reaches its goal (Sirach 35:21). Saint James likewise says that ‘the prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective’ (James 5:16). The power does not come from spiritual pride or from imagining that we have become perfect. It comes from humility, repentance and a life increasingly surrendered to God. When Saint Monica allowed herself to be purified through years of faithful prayer, her holiness became a channel of grace within her family. Her husband came to faith, and her wandering son became Saint Augustine. We cannot force another person to change, but holiness is never powerless.
The Word of God is described as a two-edged sword. It must pierce the preacher as well as the listener. I cannot stand before people and imagine that I am exempt from the message because I am wearing a clerical collar. If the Word has not first confronted me, my preaching can easily become an exercise in correcting everyone else. God asks the priest, the parent, the spouse and the leader the same question: will you allow Me to sanctify you?
Let Every Experience Sanctify You
The Lord has often used uncomfortable experiences to show me areas of my own life that needed repentance. On one occasion I was travelling from Rome to London for a retreat. A driver was meant to collect me late at night and take me to a prayer centre where I was expected to assist at a vigil. I waited at the airport for nearly an hour without a working local telephone number. When the driver finally arrived, he apologised, led me to a car parked far away, and then began driving in a way that alarmed me. He was exhausted, he drove quickly, he braked suddenly, and at moments he seemed to be falling asleep. I prayed the Hail Mary, but he was so tired that he was not even in a condition to answer ‘Holy Mary.’
Eventually he asked whether he could stop at a service area and rest. My first thoughts were not generous. I wondered why someone else had not been sent and how I would reach the vigil on time. I was a stranger in the middle of the night and felt trapped in a situation I had not chosen. Yet while he rested, the Lord turned the whole incident towards me. I remembered the times I had driven too fast, braked abruptly and frightened passengers without considering what they were experiencing. People had even joked that anyone travelling with Fr Antony should pray very seriously. Once, while travelling to a retreat, the vehicle’s brakes failed and those with me had looked death in the face. I had thanked God for protecting us, but I had not truly repented for the fear my own driving had caused on other occasions.
There in the parked car, instead of continuing to judge the tired driver, I began to apologise before God. I surrendered the people whom I had frightened and asked the Lord to carry my sorrow to them. After a few minutes the driver sat up and said that he felt refreshed. He then explained that he had worked night duty for two consecutive nights. When the priest asked him to collect me, he had warned that he was tired, but no one else was available. He was also unfamiliar with the airport and had repeatedly missed the correct exit and parking entrance. What I had interpreted as carelessness was, in part, an act of charity by a man who had come because there was nobody else.
The incident did not make dangerous driving acceptable, and tiredness should never be ignored where safety is concerned. It did, however, reveal how quickly I could condemn another person while forgetting the harm I had caused. The Lord was not asking me to deny the driver’s responsibility. He was asking me to repent of my own. Every unpleasant experience can become either fuel for judgement or an invitation to conversion.
Another lesson came through one of my nephews. I was living in Italy and telephoned my mother in India. I could hear the boy speaking nearby, so I asked her to give him the telephone. To my surprise, he refused and said that he did not want to speak to that uncle. I felt wounded. I had tried to be a kind uncle, bringing sweets, taking the children out and showing them affection. I could not understand what I had done to deserve such a rejection.
When I went to the chapel, the Lord again directed the Word towards me. I remembered the people who had travelled long distances to see me at a retreat centre in Nairobi, sometimes spending the little money they had on transport. Some had appointments and some did not. When I was tired or busy, there were occasions when I answered impatiently, told them to come later or failed even to greet them with gentleness. I was deeply sensitive because a child had refused to speak to me, yet I had not been equally sensitive to the pain of people who approached a priest seeking prayer, counsel or simply a few respectful words.
I repented and made a practical decision that people who came seeking spiritual help should at least be received kindly, even when a longer meeting was impossible. When I telephoned home again a week or two later, my nephew answered, apologised and asked me to pray for his examination. I later discovered that he had been angry with his father after being told to wash the clothes of his younger siblings, and he had poured that anger onto me. The situation had not really been about me, yet God had used it to correct something real within me. This is why, when another person’s behaviour hurts us, the first useful question is not always, ‘Lord, what is wrong with them?’ It may be, ‘Lord, what do You want to sanctify in me through this?’
A smaller but equally clear correction came while I was in Italy. I waited at a pedestrian crossing where the signal was red. No vehicle was coming, so I looked left and right, considered myself clever, and crossed before the signal changed. During my examination of conscience that evening, I sensed the Lord showing me that I had not been clever; I had knowingly broken a rule because I believed no human eye was watching. Sirach says that the eyes of the Lord are ten thousand times brighter than the sun and see every aspect of human conduct, even the hidden corners (Sirach 23:19). Holiness is formed in these apparently minor decisions, where we choose obedience not because someone is observing us but because we belong to God.
Take the Last Place
While I was ministering in Rwanda, a woman approached me very respectfully and said that she had many appreciations but also one small correction. I told her that I needed correction because I did not want to place myself beyond repentance. She observed that whenever I went to an office or needed assistance, I often introduced myself by saying, ‘I am a priest.’ In her view, the phrase could sound less like simple identification and more like a demand: I am not an ordinary person; I deserve special attention.
Her words stayed with me. A priest may sometimes need to identify himself, but the heart can secretly use a title to claim status. The same temptation can enter every vocation. A husband may say that he is the head of the family as though this removes his duty to listen or permits him to be harsh. A parent may insist on authority while refusing to admit a mistake. A leader may demand loyalty without becoming a servant. Through that woman’s correction, the Lord reminded me that Jesus did not cling to rank. Saint Paul says that He emptied Himself, took the form of a slave, humbled Himself and became obedient even to death on a cross (Philippians 2:7-8).
Much of our woundedness comes from the conviction that we deserve a certain measure of recognition. We say, ‘My husband does not respect me. My wife does not appreciate me. My children do not honour me. My colleagues do not recognise what I do.’ Some of these complaints may describe genuine injustice that needs to be addressed. Yet Christ also asks whether our peace depends entirely on receiving the respect we believe is owed to us. He, who truly deserved all honour, chose the lowest place and described Himself as meek and humble of heart.
Jesus tells us to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect (Matthew 5:48). The perfection of the Father is revealed in mercy. He is ‘kind to the ungrateful and the wicked’ (Luke 6:35). We are often willing to be kind to those who thank us, cooperate with us and return our affection. Holiness is tested when a person is ungrateful, difficult or unjust. The call is not to pretend that evil is good, but to refuse to let another person’s sin turn us into people of hatred, revenge or contempt. To become holy is to receive from the Father a mercy that our natural strength cannot produce.
Holiness in Every Vocation
People frequently ask me to pray and tell them God’s will for their lives. They want to know whether they should marry, remain single, enter religious life or choose a particular profession. These questions matter, and vocation requires discernment. Beneath all the different paths, however, Scripture gives one will of God that applies to everyone: ‘This is the will of God, your sanctification’ (1 Thessalonians 4:3).
Marriage, consecrated life, priesthood, widowhood and faithful single life are different forms of earthly vocation, but none of them replaces the fundamental call to holiness. The same is true of our occupations. Whether we are taxi drivers, cleaners, architects, engineers, social workers, teachers, nurses, doctors, parents, students, priests or religious, the essential question is not whether our role appears important in the eyes of society. It is whether we are becoming holy within the life entrusted to us.
I remember a woman at Consolata Shrine in Nairobi who told me that she had never married, had no children and had never entered a relationship. She had waited prayerfully for a suitable spouse, but no marriage had come. Her family placed her under increasing pressure. Some suggested that she should live with someone or at least have a child so that her life would not be wasted. She knew that she was called to remain faithful, but she felt sad and unproductive and asked whether God had anything to say to her.
I shared with her the difficult but consoling language of Wisdom: ‘Blessed is the barren woman who is undefiled, who has not entered into a sinful union; she will have fruit when God examines souls’ (Wisdom 3:13). The biblical word barren can sound painful, especially to someone who has longed for marriage or children, but the passage directly rejects the idea that human worth is measured by fertility, marriage or social approval. A life offered faithfully to God bears fruit that may not be visible in the ordinary ways people count success. Saint Teresa of Calcutta and Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska had no biological children, yet their spiritual motherhood has touched millions. Anna served God in prayer after the death of her husband and was present when the infant Jesus was brought to the Temple. No faithful life is empty before God.
I met another man, around sixty years old, who belonged to the Emmanuel Community. He had never married and later felt called to offer his life more completely to God in that lay Catholic community. People repeatedly told him that he was wasting his life because he had no wife or children. Their comments made him wonder whether he should accept one of the marriage proposals that occasionally came, even though he did not recognise such a call. In prayer, Isaiah 56 spoke directly to his fear. The Lord tells the eunuch not to say, ‘I am just a dry tree,’ and promises those who keep His covenant ‘a monument and a name better than sons and daughters,’ an everlasting name that shall not be cut off (Isaiah 56:3-5).
I reminded him of Saint John Bosco, who never married yet received a spiritual family and a name known throughout the Church. During the sermon I also referred to the three young women associated with the approved Marian apparitions at Kibeho in Rwanda. Their lives did not all follow the same earthly pattern: one entered religious life, one married, and one remained single in service near Kibeho. The important point was not that one path was holier merely because of its external form. God can be glorified through different vocations when a person remains faithful to the grace given.
We must therefore resist the pressure to treat marriage and parenthood as the only proof that a life has value. Marriage is a beautiful sacrament, and children are a gift, but God also calls some people to serve Him without marriage, while others live faithfully through widowhood, separation they did not choose, or circumstances that never fulfilled their hopes. Society may call such a person unproductive or incomplete. The Lord looks at fidelity. His will for every one of us, whatever our state of life, is sanctification.
The Pure See Differently
Saint Paul writes, ‘To the pure all things are pure’ (Titus 1:15). For years I wondered how all things could appear pure when the world contains so much sin. The verse does not mean that a holy person becomes unable to recognise evil. It means that a purified heart is no longer eager to reduce another human being to his or her worst failure. Purity changes the eyes with which we look.
When Augustine was a young man, his life was confused by unbelief, ambition and a relationship outside marriage. Many could have looked at him and seen only a sinner who had lost his way. Monica looked at him with the eyes of prayer and saw, even through tears, a person whom God had not abandoned. A pure heart can look at someone in disorder and see a saint still in the process of becoming. That vision does not excuse sin. It gives us the patience to intercede rather than condemn and the hope to cooperate with God’s work rather than declare another person finished.
This is how holiness begins to spread. When you look at your spouse, your son or daughter, your neighbour, your nephew, your niece or the relative who has disappointed you, you may see many things that need to change. If your own heart is being purified, however, you will also see the image of God and the possibility of grace. You will pray as Monica prayed. You will correct without contempt, tell the truth without hatred and refuse to make another person’s weakness the centre of your identity.
Personal holiness is never merely private. A sanctified person brings a different spirit into a marriage, a family, a workplace and a parish. Such a person does not need to announce holiness or demand honour. Patience, integrity, mercy, obedience and truth begin to influence the atmosphere around them. This is what I meant when I said that our holiness can be imparted to others: not that we mechanically transfer virtue or override another person’s freedom, but that a life surrendered to God becomes a channel through which His grace can reach people.
Do Not Refuse the One Who Is Speaking
As the heart becomes purified, it also becomes more capable of hearing God. The Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend (Exodus 33:11). Numbers says that God could make Himself known to prophets in visions and dreams, while with Moses He spoke clearly and not in riddles (Numbers 12:6-8). God remains free to guide His people through Scripture, prayer, wise counsel, conscience, circumstances, warning, inspiration, dreams or other gifts that must always be discerned within the faith of the Church.
People sometimes tell me, ‘Father, you keep saying that God speaks, but I have never heard Him.’ I answer that one reason we fail to recognise His voice is that we have already decided what we are willing to obey. God speaks to those who are prepared to listen. This does not mean that every thought, dream or emotion comes from Him. It means that a heart sincerely disposed to obedience becomes attentive, tests what it receives, and does not reject God’s correction merely because it is uncomfortable.
Hebrews warns us, ‘See that you do not refuse the one who is speaking’ (Hebrews 12:25). The difficulty is not always that God is silent. Often our attention is fixed so completely on the person we want Him to change that we cannot hear what He is saying to us. In the tired driver, the nephew who refused my telephone call, the pedestrian signal and the correction of a woman in Rwanda, I could easily have decided that the lesson belonged to somebody else. Yet again and again the Lord said, ‘My son, it is you I am speaking to.’
My dear brothers and sisters, this is the invitation I place before you and before myself: sanctify yourself, and the Lord will do wonders among you. Do not postpone your conversion until your husband changes, your wife apologises, your children return, your colleague becomes fair or your circumstances improve. Bring your own heart to the Word. Ask forgiveness from the people you have wounded. Go to confession. Correct what is dishonest. Become gentle where you have been harsh, obedient where you have been careless, humble where you have demanded recognition, and merciful where you have stored resentment.
The Holy Spirit alone can accomplish this work in us. He convicts us of sin without crushing us, reveals the truth without abandoning us, and pours into our hearts the love we cannot manufacture. More than a change of circumstances, we need the Spirit who changes the person living within those circumstances. More than a miracle outside us, we need the cleansing Word and the sanctifying presence of God within us.
We ask the Lord for many wonders, and we are right to bring Him our needs. But before the miracle, let us welcome the call: ‘Be holy, for I am holy.’ Let us stop refusing the One who is speaking and allow His Word to fall into rich soil. Then our prayer will become humbler, our vision more merciful, our relationships more truthful, and our lives more available to grace. Sanctify yourselves; for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you.
Pastoral note: The call to sanctify oneself does not mean that human effort purchases a miracle, that suffering proves a lack of holiness, or that a person is responsible for another’s wrongdoing. Sanctification is God’s gracious work received through repentance, the sacraments, prayer and cooperation with the Holy Spirit. Self-examination must never be used to excuse abuse, injustice, dangerous conduct or other harm; truth, accountability and appropriate protection remain necessary.
Adapted and edited from a homily delivered by Fr Antony Parankimalil VC at the Healing Mass at Holy Family Church, Doveton, during the July 2026 Divine Australia programme.