In our first reading, the prophet Joel sounds the alarm:

“Proclaim a fast, call an assembly… the day of the Lord is near.”

It’s not meant to frighten but to wake.
The people had drifted — taken God for granted, allowed faith to become a background noise.
Joel cries: Wake up. Repent. Remember who you are.

That summons echoes through every age — and it echoes in ours.
We too live in a time of forgetting: a land baptised long ago but grown sleepy in its faith.
Joel’s cry — “Sound the trumpet!” — could be the motto of our diocesan saints.

More than thirteen centuries ago, St Paulinus came to these parts as a missionary.
He crossed the Trent and the Soar, preaching Christ to the Anglo-Saxon people.
He had no cathedral, no media, no comfort — only a heart on fire and a voice that would not keep silent.

He sounded the trumpet of the Gospel in a world of confusion and fear.
And the miracle happened: pagans became believers; rivers became fonts;
the soil of Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, and Leicestershire received the seed of faith.

He was one of the first heralds of the day of the Lord in our land — to say here, “Jesus Christ is Lord.”

The Gospel reminds us what that Kingdom looks like.
Jesus says:

“If it is by the finger of God that I cast out devils, then the Kingdom of God has come upon you.”

The Lord’s power drives out darkness, not by force but by presence —
the quiet, merciful, unstoppable authority of truth and love.

That’s the same power Paulinus carried.
He didn’t defeat paganism with argument but with holiness.
He didn’t destroy temples; he built hearts.
He didn’t curse the darkness; he lit a candle — and that candle still burns in our diocese today.

Jesus also warns:

“When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, it wanders and returns to find the house swept and empty.”

Conversion is not just cleaning house — it’s letting God move in.
If we do not fill the soul with prayer, worship, and love,
the old spirits — pride, anger, despair — come back worse than before.

That’s true for a person; it’s true for a parish; it’s true for a nation.
Our land once turned from idols to Christ, but if we let the Gospel slip from our lives, the empty house will not stay empty for long.

Paulinus, and the Anglo-Saxon saints who followed him, call us back to fill the house again with the presence of God — with the Mass, with prayer, with faith lived out in love.

We sometimes think of saints as far away — Rome, Assisi, Lourdes.
But holiness has walked our own soil.

• St Chad in Lichfield and Leicester — humble bishop and teacher.
• St Egwin of Evesham, St Cedd, St Eadburga — missionaries and monastics who shaped the Midlands.
• And closer to home: St Wistan of Wigston, our local martyr-saint.

He was a prince who chose mercy over ambition, peace over power.
He refused to take revenge in a dynastic feud — and was murdered for it.
The earth at Wigston, it was said, bled where he fell, and miracles followed.

His relics were honoured for centuries because he showed that holiness is not about victory but fidelity.
In a violent age, he bore witness to a different kingdom — the same kingdom Paulinus preached, the same kingdom Jesus reveals in today’s Gospel:
a kingdom where evil is driven out not by swords but by grace.

Our diocese is built on their faith.
They preached in forests and fields; we preach in schools and streets.
They baptised in rivers; we baptise in fonts.
But it is the same faith, the same mission, the same Lord.

Their voices join Joel’s: “Wake up. Return to the Lord.”
Their lives prove that holiness can bloom anywhere —
in monasteries, in royal courts, in towns like Wigston, in the heart of Leicester or Nottingham.

So what does this feast mean for us today?

First, to give thanks for our inheritance.
We stand on the shoulders of saints. The Gospel has been preached here for 1,400 years — that’s not a relic of the past but a responsibility for the present.

Second, to renew our courage.
Paulinus faced a pagan world; we face a distracted one.
His weapon was not anger but conviction; not complaint but joy.
We need that same missionary spirit in every parish, school, and family.

Third, to rediscover prayer.
The empty house Jesus describes can be filled only by God’s presence.
If prayer fades, evil returns.
If we fill our lives with the Eucharist, confession, Scripture, and charity,
the light will not go out in these lands.

In the time of Joel, God’s people were told to sound the trumpet.
In the time of Paulinus, the Gospel trumpet sounded again.
Now it is our turn.

Our diocese was born from mission; it will live only by mission.
We cannot wait for others to bring faith back — it must begin with us:
in the witness of a kind word, a public sign of the Cross,
a return to the sacraments, a parish that welcomes rather than worries.

The prophet calls: “The day of the Lord is near.”
Christ says: “The Kingdom of God has come upon you.”
Paulinus, Chad, and Wistan show us how to live it.

Let us not leave their story in the past.
Let us carry it into our time — so that the land they evangelised may be evangelised again,
and the faith they planted may bear fruit once more in our homes, our schools, and our hearts.