Aware of and Living in God’s Presence, 5th Monday (II), February 10, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Monday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of Saint Scholastica
February 10, 2020
1 Kings 8:1-7.9-13, Ps 132, Mk 6:53-56

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• We encounter in the first reading today one of the most important scenes in the Old Testament, which has enormous significance for us as Christians for us to grasp one of the most essential lessons in Christian life. We read about the inauguration of the Temple of Jerusalem by King Solomon. His father David had wanted to build a house for the Lord but was stopped by the Lord himself who rather wanted to build a house for David (which he fulfilled in the incarnation of David’s 28th generation grandson according to the flesh and God’s only begotten Son generated before the foundation of the world). David, however, prepared most of what was needed for his son Solomon to build the Temple after David’s death. Four years into his reign as king, Solomon began the building of the Temple. It took seven years to complete the edifice and another few years to do the decorations and get everything else ready. But, finally, after all of that preparation and hard work, they were ready to dedicate it. At the inauguration, they sacrificed “too many sheep and oxen to count.” The priests brought the Ark of the Covenant containing within the tablets of the Ten Commandments into the Holy of Holies and placed them underneath the sculpted wings of the cherubim. But then the most important thing happened: God came. He came in the form of a cloud (shekinah in Hebrew), just like he used to appear to the Israelites in the desert during the exodus. “The cloud filled the temple of the Lord,” the sacred author writes, “since the Lord’s glory had filled the temple of the Lord.” It’s often said that religion is man’s search for God, which is true to a point, but what’s distinctive about the history of salvation is that it details God’s search for man. Pope Francis talks about the mystery of primerear, that God always precedes us; we’re searching for him but when we find him, we discover that he was there waiting for us first. In the cloud signifying God’s holy presence, God came to encounter his people. He wanted to have a stable place by which he could meet them, guide them, help them and change them. The most important thing about the temple was the presence of God, God’s self-manifestation. It wasn’t how many sacrifices were made there on the part of man to God. The essential is that God was there to meet man.
• Six years ago, Pope Francis gave in the Vatican some beautiful thoughts on this first reading, linking God’s theophany in the Temple that day to what we are privileged to experience in the incarnate theophany of Jesus in the Eucharist. He first stressed that in the celebration of the Mass something happens that is far more significant that all of our other prayers, from our personal prayers, our meditation on the Rosary, our reenactments of Biblical events that take place in Christmas Pageants, Passion Plays, Stations of the Cross and the like. The main point is not what we do — just as the main point about the Temple in Jerusalem was not the innumerable body count of animals sacrificed — but the fact that God comes to meet us, and in the Mass he meets us in a way far more significant than he met the Jews in the cloud. Pope Francis said, “The Lord speaks to His people in many ways: through the prophets, the priests, the Sacred Scriptures. But with theophanies, He speaks in another way. … He speaks with his presence. This is what happens in the liturgical celebration. The Mass is not a social act. It is not a gathering of the faithful to pray together. It is something else. In the liturgy, God is present. In the Mass, in fact, the presence of the Lord is real, truly real.” He went on to say, “When we celebrate the Mass, we don’t reenact a representation of the Last Supper. … No, it is something else: it is the Last Supper itself! It is truly to live once more the Passion and the redeeming Death of the Lord. It is a theophany: the Lord is made present on the altar to be offered to the Father for the salvation of the world. … [The Mass] is a participation in this theophany, in this mystery of the presence of the Lord among us. … The Mass is a theophany. God draws near and is with us, and we participate in the mystery of the Redemption.”
• Once we grasp the theophany of God in the Mass it changes the way we interact with others. In the Gospel today, we see what happened when Jesus and the apostles disembarked in Gennesaret. Even though the people of that time didn’t realize what we realize today — that Jesus, the human nature he assumed from us in the person of the Blessed Virgin, is the definitive temple where God’s glory dwells among us — they did grasp that in Jesus God had visited his people. And so St. Mark tells us, “They scurried about the surrounding country and began to bring in the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. Whatever villages or towns or countryside he entered, they laid the sick in the marketplaces and begged him that they might touch only the tassel on his cloak; and as many as touched it were healed.” Is that our reaction to Jesus? We recognize that the same Jesus who came to Gennesaret comes here to New York every morning. In fact, he dwells here in this Tabernacle, like he does in Catholic Churches everywhere. Do we scurry about the city and the whole surrounding region seeking to bring to Jesus those who are sick physically, or emotionally, or morally, or spiritually? Do we carry them in on mats, push them in in wheel chairs, drive them in with cards, carry them in on our shoulders? The same Jesus who healed so many there who merely touched the tassel on his cloak allows people to do far more here: he allows them, if they’re ready, to receive Him within them. And he can work great miracles. But we need to care about those who surround us, about those who need prayers, about those who need God, just like the people in ancient Galilee loved their neighbors.
• The theophany also has another application. When Jesus came as the new Temple, he wanted to make us, individually and collectively, his dwelling place. This is what St. Paul describes in his letters when he refers to us as the Temple of God or the Temple of the Holy Spirit. We are supposed to be like monstrances or tabernacles in which people, beholding us, see a glimpse of the Lord. People used to say about Saint John Vianney that in him they saw “God in a man.” By this they didn’t mean he was God — far from it! — but that they could see the image of God somewhat transparently in him. That’s what happens to some degree in every saint. Today the Church celebrates Saint Scholastica, who died on this day in 542. She lived her life in a spousal communion with God, conscious of her Christian dignity and the divine indwelling. But I’d like to focus on how she led her brother, Saint Benedictine — one of the greatest saints of all time, the founder of western monasticism, a patron of Europe — more deeply to recognize the theophanic significance of every moment. Her brother St. Benedict would come to visit her only once a year even though she lived close by. He was so focused on his ora et labora, his prayer and work, that loving his sister and allowing God to lead each of them more to him through their spiritual friendship took a back seat. It was never enough for St. Scholastica’s desire for communion. Once when Benedict wanted to cut it short, Scholastica turned to God for the communion to be continued. It’s one of the most beautiful stories in hagiography. I quote from Saint Gregory the Great’s account: “Scholastica, the sister of Saint Benedict, had been consecrated to God from her earliest years. She was accustomed to visiting her brother once a year. He would come down to meet her at a place on the monastery property, not far outside the gate. One day she came as usual and her saintly brother went with some of his disciples; they spent the whole day praising God and talking of sacred things. As night fell they had supper together. Their spiritual conversation went on and the hour grew late. The holy nun said to her brother: ‘Please do not leave me tonight; let us go on until morning talking about the delights of the spiritual life.’ ‘Sister,’ he replied, ‘what are you saying? I simply cannot stay outside my cell.’ When she heard her brother refuse her request, the holy woman joined her hands on the table, laid her head on them and began to pray. As she raised her head from the table, there were such brilliant flashes of lightning, such great peals of thunder and such a heavy downpour of rain that neither Benedict nor his brethren could stir across the threshold of the place where they had been seated. Sadly he began to complain: ‘May God forgive you, sister. What have you done?’ ‘Well,’ she answered, ‘I asked you and you would not listen; so I asked my God and he did listen. So now go off, if you can, leave me and return to your monastery.’ Reluctant as he was to stay of his own will, he remained against his will. So it came about that they stayed awake the whole night, engrossed in their conversation about the spiritual life. It is not surprising that she was more effective than he, since as John says, God is love, it was absolutely right that she could do more, as she loved more. Three days later, Benedict was in his cell. Looking up to the sky, he saw his sister’s soul leave her body in the form of a dove, and fly up to the secret places of heaven. Rejoicing in her great glory, he thanked almighty God with hymns and words of praise. He then sent his brethren to bring her body to the monastery and lay it in the tomb he had prepared for himself.” We see in this lesson that Benedict just presumed what God would want, but he was mistaken. As Saint Gregory the Great, one of Benedict’s spiritual sons noticed, St. Scholastica loved God more and Saint Benedict needed to learn from her how to love God better. She saw his will more clearly than her brother because she was more aware of God’s presence.
• The Mass, as Pope Francis has reminded us, is God’s continuous theophany. As we come into communion with Him who is the definitive temple, let us let him make us, like he made Saint Scholastica, into the temple of his presence in the middle of the world, to dwell within us like he dwells in the the tabernacle, to be filled with his presence. The glory of the Lord is not only about to come down upon this house of God, but upon each of us. Let us ask the Lord for the graces we need to grasp this reality, to let it transform our life, and to inspire us to scurry about seeking to bring all we know to participate in this most important reality in human life.

The readings for today’s Mass were: