Following Christ into the Beyond, 13th Monday (II), June 27, 2016

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Monday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of St. Cyril of Alexandria, Doctor of the Church
June 27, 2016
Amos 2:6-10.13-16, Ps 50, Mt 8:18-22

To listen to an audio recording of this homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today there’s a dramatic scene in the Gospel, and once we ponder what’s really happening we see it’s a drama that also involves us. The eighth chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel is fundamentally a chapter about miracles. Jesus heals a leper, the servant of the centurion, Peter’s mother-in-law, many of those who were possessed, calms a storm, work more exorcisms and even does one in which a whole herd of swine cast itself into the sea. And in the middle of this chapter St. Matthew places something else that he evidently treats as miraculous: a scribe comes up to Jesus and promises to follow him wherever he goes. We’ll see why that’s such a big deal shortly.
• But the Gospel scene begins with Jesus’ giving orders to his closest followers to cross over to the other shore. The actual Greek expression is he told them to put out “into the beyond.” He wasn’t giving a clear destination. Just like God with Abraham told him to leave Ur of the Chaldeans at 75 and go to a place he would show him eventually, so Jesus here was telling his disciples trustingly to go “beyond” their own limited horizons in their discipleship.
• Having heard those words, then the scribe approached Jesus and said, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go?” Why was this so surprising, almost “miraculous?” Because the scribes were among the most arrogant class of Jews. They normally were condescendingly criticizing Jesus. They were the scholars of the Mosaic Law, they had studied Sacred Scripture inside out and were the definitive commentators on what God had revealed. They were among those who comprised the Sanhedrin. They generally were Jesus’ biggest and most powerful opposition because Jesus was not fitting into their rigid boxes as he sought to go beyond the law of Moses and go beyond their interpretation of the various fences they had drawn around the Mosaic law to prevent its violation. This scholar came to Jesus and said that he was willing to go with Jesus into the beyond, to follow him wherever he went. He was giving Jesus basically a blank check with his life. This is a beautiful availability, a beautiful willingness.
• But Jesus wanted to make sure he knew what the cost would be. “Foxes have dens and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head.” There’s a lot in that sentence. First, Jesus uses the expression “Son of Man,” which was a Messianic phrase, something that the scribe would readily have grasped. He was probably willing to follow Jesus wherever he went because he had surmised based on his knowledge of Sacred Scripture that Jesus was already doing all of the works of the Messiah and was about to bring about the long-awaited Messianic kingdom. But Jesus wanted him to grasp that his kingdom would not involve palaces and earthly power. It wouldn’t involve any material spoils or prestige at all. As Messiah, Jesus was saying, he wouldn’t even have a pillow to call his own, he wouldn’t even have what birds and foxes take for granted. Was the scribe willing to sign up for that? We don’t know what his answer was, whether he continued to follow Jesus into the “beyond.” Jesus was leading him, and seeks to lead us, not so much to a place but to a union with him and we don’t know whether the scribe would unite himself to Jesus’ personification of the Messianic kingdom. We hope that he did, but the lesson for us is the same. Jesus asks us to go with him into the beyond, to follow him wherever he goes even if it means giving up in this world fame, fortune, and family. But we need to be willing to center our entire existence on him.
• We see that illustrated very powerfully in the second dialogue from the Gospel scene, when one of the disciples, hearing Jesus order everyone with him to the beyond, said, “Lord, let me go first and bury my father.” Jesus’ response at first seems a little brutal: “Follow me and let the dead bury the dead.” We have to grasp what was really happening in the scene, however. Jesus had affirmed the Fourth Commandment, to honor one’s father and mother and to allow a parent to go unburied would be an incredible disgrace and dishonor. Burying the dead has always been considered a spiritual work of mercy not just for family members but even for strangers. The Book of Tobit is all about God’s rewarding Raguel for his courage in burying a dead man whose body was left in the open. So Jesus was not saying that filial piety is somehow not a good thing or important. But there is absolutely no sign that this disciple’s father had died and was about to be buried. He wasn’t saying, “Jesus, my dad’s funeral is this afternoon. Let me go to the funeral and I’m catch up with you tonight.” His father seems to have been very much alive and he was saying to Jesus, “Jesus, my familial duties are more important than my following you. Let me fulfill those duties first and after my dad has died and I’ve buried him, then I can come and follow you to the beyond,” whether that would take months, years or even decades. That’s why Jesus responded as he did. Our task is to follow him who is the Source of Life and allow those who are drawing life from other sources to bury those who don’t have his life in them. We can’t really be his disciple unless we’re willing to follow him wherever he goes, unless we’re willing to relativize everything else — a home of our own, a bed, even our beloved family members, friends and careers — to be with Him wherever he is. To keep the Fourth Commandment, to maintain the work of mercy of burying the dead appropriately, we must first keep the First Commandment and put God in first place.
• What’s the journey Jesus is calling us on today, especially those of us who have left various things in the world including to some degree father and mother already to follow Jesus and cling to him? It’s the journey of conversion, leaving the “land” of our habits and going out with him “into the beyond,” into the depth of the ocean of his mercy.  The journey of true conversion doesn’t mean merely the exodus from our sins, but rather literally “turning with” (con-vertere) the Lord wherever he goes, thinking as he thinks, willing as he wills, loving as he loves. He speaks about this conversion in the first reading through the Prophet Amos. The people of Israel, rather than following the Lord, were doing the opposite, selling out just men for bribes of silver and taking the clothes he needs to survive, sacrificing the poor for their sandals, giving in to sexual debauchery young and old, and getting drunk in God’s temple. The Lord also speaks of it in Psalm 50. People were reciting God’s covenant on their lips, but casting his words behind them, hating discipline, ripping people off, admiring adulterers, engaging in gossip and lying, spreading rumors about blood brothers and spiritual siblings. “When you do these things,” God asks, “shall I be deaf to it. Or do you think that I am like yourself?” God says, “I will correct you by drawing [your sins] up before your eyes,” so that they will know precisely how they need to leave their sins behind and follow him along “the right way I will show you.” That’s the path of conversion on which he leads us.
• Today we celebrate the feast of a saint who followed Jesus into the beyond and sought throughout his life to be God’s instrument to lead others on the same journey. St. Cyril was Patriarch of Alexandria, Egypt, one of the great learning centers of the ancient world and one of the major sees in Christianity, at a time of great confusion over who Christ really was. In Nicea and Constantinople, Jesus’ divinity was affirmed, but in 428 Nestorius was teaching that Christ was both a human person and a divine person, rather than a divine person with a fully human nature. For that reason, he was saying that Mary was mother just of Jesus Christ in his incarnation, just of his human person, rather than Mother of God, of the divine person who took on a human nature at the annunciation. By his vigorous defense of the truth, he sought to lead his people and the whole Church into the beyond of the mystery of Christ’s divinity. He suffered a great deal for it but he approached it with courage and passion. He likewise was a strong man constantly in need of conversion himself for the bruising way he would occasionally deal with opponents of the true faith. In addition to his love for our Lady, he had an extraordinary love for Jesus in the Eucharist, where he came into daily contact with the Divine Person with a fully human nature, the one who would give him the strength to defend and promote God’s glory.
• “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go!” Today, we have followed Jesus here, where he continues to teach us with the words of eternal life and seeks to have us nest ourselves in him, resting our head on his breast. It’s here where we cease to be walking cadavers but men and women fully alive in him. It’s here where we’re strengthened to follow him beyond. Through the intercession of St. Cyril of Alexandria, we ask him to give us all the grace he knows we need to follow him in the “right way” he shows us all the way through life and through death to the place where St. Cyril and all the saints rejoice forever.

The readings for today’s Mass were: