Armored with God for Battle, 30th Thursday (II), October 27, 2022

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Thursday of the 30th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Votive Mass for Persecuted Christians
October 27, 2022
Eph 6:10-20, Ps 144, Lk 13:31-35

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The text that guided today’s homily is below: 

• Today in the Gospel, Jesus is confronted by the fact that Herod was trying to kill him. Jesus was unafraid, however. He sent him a message, calling him a “fox,” an indication that he was sly and ferocious, and then gave this paranoid man who thought Jesus might be the risen John the Baptist whom he beheaded a mysterious thing for him to dwell on, which summarizes his whole mission: “Behold, I cast out demons and I perform healings today and tomorrow, and on the third day I accomplish my purpose. Yet I must continue on my way today, tomorrow, and the following day, for it is impossible that a prophet should die outside of Jerusalem.” First, he synthesizes his work as exorcizing and healing — something that would come to its fulfillment in the two days of the Last Supper/Good Friday and his rest in the tomb — and then on the “third day,” accomplishing his purpose, a clear sign of the Resurrection. He also gave a clear indication that he knew he would die in Jerusalem, something that would have taken away any intimidation factor Herod might have thought he had, but also open Herod up to the fact that this was part of Jesus’ plan.
• The sad thing, however, that got Jesus to weep over Jerusalem was that despite his work of healing and exorcizing, some would not receive it. Jesus says, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how many times I yearned to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings,but you were unwilling!” They were unwilling. They didn’t want to allow God to gather them, to heal them, to free them from the power of Satan. They didn’t respond to the appeals of God’s loving mercy through the prophets but instead killed them, much like many of them were preparing to call for the Crucifixion of God’s own Son and image. It’s a reality that we need to face in every age, that sometimes we’re unwilling to let Jesus do his work and transform us the way he wants to do. But nevertheless, forward he goes, accomplishing his work, healing, casting out the devil, and gathering us from the evil one who wounds and possesses. Jesus’ courage is compelling as is he love.
• Jesus wants to give us a similar courage so that, having gathered us, we might be his instruments to gather with him, to heal with him, to cast out with him. In the Responsorial Psalm today, we bless God because he is our “rock who trains my hands for battle, my fingers for war,” because he is our “fortress,” “stronghold,” “deliverer,” and “shield.” He strengthens us. We see how in today’s first reading, which is the end of our study of the Letter to the Ephesians, dedicated to how Jesus has come into the world to reconcile and sum up all things and help us, united to him, to become holy and immaculate in his sight, to become his Bride purified by water and the word. Jesus in uniting us to himself wants us to become strong with him, as he is our fortress, stronghold, deliverer and shield. St. Paul urges us to “put on the armor of God,” which means to “put on God.” He reminds us that our struggle isn’t fundamentally “with flesh and blood” — meaning other people, for whom we’re called to give our lives to help Jesus save — but “with the principalities, with the powers, with the world rulers of this present darkness, with the evil spirits in the heavens.” We see in the Gospel how Jesus himself battled against these evil spirits. Herod’s opposition didn’t derive fundamentally from “flesh and blood,” but from his being under the sway of the “principalities, powers and evil spirits” St. Paul describes. And those powers likewise had taken over the Holy City of Jerusalem. Jesus would lament that in the city of the Temple of God, the city whose names (yarah and shalom) means “foundation of peace,” had become a city that warred against God. Rather than a place that lived by the motto, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!,” it was a place that would routinely evict and murder those who came in the Lord’s name and would eventually cry out for the crucifixion of the One who enfleshed God’s name. This diabolically-inspired rejection didn’t happen in the pagan cities of the Decapolis. It didn’t happen in the Samaritan cities of Shechem or Mt. Gerizim after centuries of animosity against the Jews and Judaism. It happened in and around the precincts of God’s sanctuary. Such facts ought to cure us of any false irenicism and help us all to become aware that there is a battle going on, a battle being waged by principalities, powers, and evil forces against the Lord Jesus, against his prophets, against holiness, against us, and against the people the Lord has entrusted to us.  To defend ourselves, we must do what St. Paul tells us, “to put on God’s full armor,” to let God act as our defense.
• St. Paul in his exhortation to the Christians in Ephesus tells us, “Draw your strength from the Lord and from his mighty power” and “Put on the armor of God so that you may be able to stand firm against the tactics of the Devil, … so that you may be able to resist on that evil day and, having done everything, to hold your ground.” As he was writing or dictating this letter under house arrest in Rome, doubtless with plenty of time to ponder the armor of the Roman soldier who was assigned to guard him, he counseled us to be just as arrayed with God as a Roman soldier is with bronze and steel. He mentioned six parts of our battle vesture:
  • “Stand fast with your loins girded in truth.” A belt tied a tunic, held a sword, and allowed freedom of movement. Living in the truth against the father of lies is the most important aspect of all, so that we may move freely, rather than enslaved to lies or to impulses. That fact that the belt enveloped the area of one’s groin is highly significant as well because the area in which so many are most vulnerable to the lies of the devil is with regard to human sexuality. Since we’ve been made in the image and likeness of God who is love, the devil most wants to corrupt our capacity to love, since then he will most easily distort the likeness of God in us. That’s why’s attacked marriage from the beginning with Adam and Eve, seeking to pervert love into lust, and change us from self-givers in the image of the Divine Giver to takers and consumers of others, to degrade us from protectors of others to predators. That’s why we need to stand fast with our loins girded in the truth about God, about us, and about the self-sacrificial love that Jesus exemplified and called to us to imitate.
  • “Clothed with righteousness as a breastplate.” Over our heart and vital peritoneal organs St. Paul says we’re to place righteousness, holiness, being just before God and others. The devil will try to attack our heart and make it hardened. He may accuse us falsely through others of having a merciless or wicked heart because, like Jesus, we won’t bless others doing evil. But the most important defense is integrity of life, of true righteousness. St. Paul wants being right with God to be our true treasure, because where our treasure is our heart will be, and if our treasure is in divine justice, then our heart will be secure.
  • “Your feet shod in readiness for the Gospel of peace.” Sandals were the great sign of freedom in the ancient world. Slaves couldn’t wear sandals because it would make escaping easier. But for Paul this footwear wasn’t just a sign of a “freedom from,” of being able to flee the devil, but of a “freedom for,” showing that we were capable and desirous to evangelize, to go from town to town, from person to person, bringing peace to homes and people to the Prince of Peace. A genuine sign of a Christian is that we’re on pilgrimage, we’re on the move, we’re in the retinue of the One who constantly is calling us to “Come, follow me” and to “Go to the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.” If laziness or idleness is the devil’s workshop, then one of the most important defenses against the devil is to keep moving, to put our shoes on and get ready for work, for service, for journeying and growth.
  • “Hold faith as a shield, to quench all the flaming arrows of the Evil One.” St. Paul uses in Greek a word for shield here (thyreos) that doesn’t refer to the small round shield that we can normally imagine, but a large oblong one full-body shield used by a heavily armed warrior, that one could, in essence, rest behind when the archers of the enemy were bombarding you with arrows dipped in pitch, set ablaze and launched. The full-body protection we need, St. Paul says, is our faith, our complete entrustment to God and to everything God has revealed to us. From the beginning, as we see with Adam and Eve, the devil is trying to tempt us with the fiery dart of distrust of God, that we really won’t die if we disobey him, that no sin is really mortal, and that God really doesn’t want us to live forever, that he doesn’t want us to become like him, but that he fears our becoming like him. As we see in Jesus’ response to the devil in the desert, faith, true trust in God and all he has revealed, is the means to withstand this diabolical bombardment.
  • “Take the helmet of salvation.” The devil is always trying to get us to forget what Christ has done to save us. As we discussed yesterday, he’s trying to get us to think that our salvation is cheap or automatic, and that basically everyone will come to salvation no matter what road they’re on. The great defense against this, St. Paul says, is to envelope our head, so to speak, with the salvation won for us by Christ, to think about what Christ has done, to think constantly about our salvation and the salvation of others, and to move forward in the path of sanctification that will make that salvation secure. Our mind should be filled with thoughts of salvation, of working out our salvation with holy awe and trembling (Phil 2:12), and that way the devil won’t be able to get us to forsake it.
  • Take “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” A sword is both a defense as well as a weapon of attack. The Word of God, given to us by the Holy Spirit through the inspired authors, helps us in both. It was Jesus’ defense against the devil in the desert and it will be ours, when we know it enough so that the Holy Spirit can remind us of it when we’re tempted. It’s also our offense against the sins of the world, helping us to build in ourselves and in others the virtues that can strengthen us toward victory in the battle overall.
• The biggest weapon of all in our arsenal, St. Paul says afterward, is prayer, but not just any prayer but prayer that is constant (“pray at every opportunity”), pneumatological (“in the Spirit”), vigilant and enduring (“be watchful with all perseverance and supplication”), unselfish and intercessory (“for all the holy ones and also for me”) and audacious (“with boldness” and the “courage to speak”). This type of prayer is what helps us precisely to gird our loins with truth, to seek the Lord’s justice from the heart, to put on our sandals with haste, to guard our faith, to remember and seek salvation and to treasure and enflesh the Word of God.
• This notion of putting on God’s armor is a daily reality lived by priests before Mass. In the vesting prayers, we do something very much based on St. Paul’s counsel. When we put on the amice, we first cover our head and then drop it over our neck. The prayer explicitly calls to mind what St. Paul encourages in today’s first reading, “Place upon me, O Lord, the helmet of salvation, that I may overcome the assaults of the devil.” It helps us to put on the mind of Christ as we approach the altar. When we don the alb, we remember the armor of our baptism as we pray, “Make me white, O Lord, and cleanse my heart; that being made white in the Blood of the Lamb I may deserve an eternal reward.” When we wrap ourselves with the cincture, we cover our loins with truth as pray, “Gird me, O Lord, with the cincture of purity, and quench in my heart the fire of concupiscence, that the virtue of continence and chastity may abide in me.” As we put the sole over our shoulders, we pray for the Lord’s healing of everything from original and personal sin that makes us unworthy for battle: “Lord, restore to me the stole of immortality, which I lost through the collusion of our first parents, and, unworthy as I am to approach Thy sacred mysteries, may I yet gain eternal joy.” The final prayer is over the chasuble, in which we take on the full power of Christ’s cross as we pray: “O Lord, you who said, ‘My yoke is sweet and My burden light,’ grant that I may so carry this yoke that I may obtain your grace.” We seek to learn from Christ who is meek and humble of heart as he is the Stronger Man who conquers the devil and divines his spoils. One of the reasons why I like to wear the traditional Roman vestments is not just because in a Church without air conditioning they’re much better in hotter months, but because they look and feel much more like armor as I put them on and go out to battle against the principalities and powers in the person of Christ as we enter into the Last Supper, Calvary, the empty tomb and God’s glory.
• The Christian life is a battle. Today St. Paul tells us to put on the whole armor of God and that’s what we ask God for the grace to do in the Mass we’re now celebrating. As we heard on Sunday, St. Paul would say at the end of his life on earth, writing from the same Roman incarceration, that he had “fought the good fight” and “kept the faith.” Let us ask his intercession that we might fight that same good fight so as to win, by entering into Christ, into his salvation, and his eternal victory, for the one we are about to hold in our hands and receive is our rock who trains our hands for battle, and is our “fortress,” “stronghold,” “deliverer,” and “shield,” to whom be praise and glory, wisdom and thanksgiving, honor, power, and might, forever and ever. Amen. (Rev 7:12).

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Gospel lk 13:31-35

Some Pharisees came to Jesus and said,
“Go away, leave this area because Herod wants to kill you.”
He replied, “Go and tell that fox,
‘Behold, I cast out demons and I perform healings today and tomorrow,
and on the third day I accomplish my purpose.
Yet I must continue on my way today, tomorrow, and the following day,
for it is impossible that a prophet should die
outside of Jerusalem.’

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem,
you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you,
how many times I yearned to gather your children together
as a hen gathers her brood under her wings,
but you were unwilling!
Behold, your house will be abandoned.
But I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say,
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”

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