Barnabas’ Surpassing Righteousness, Memorial of St. Barnabas, June 11, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Memorial of St. Barnabas
June 11, 2020
Acts 11:21-26. 13:1-3, Ps 98, Mt 5:20-26

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

The following points were attempted in the homily:

• Today in the Gospel, Jesus tells us something that should startle us, especially early in the morning: “Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter into the Kingdom of heaven.” That’s a very tall order.  The Scribes were the experts of Sacred Scripture in its every detail. They consecrated their whole life to knowing the Word of God. The Pharisees were the ones who sought to live the Word of God expounded by the Scribes to the letter. Many of the Scribes were Pharisees and vice versa. They prayed three times a day. The fasted not just the one time prescribed per year but twice a week. They tithed not only the various items that God had instructed but the tithed their whole income. By worldly, even by classically religious standards, their righteousness seemed to be almost unsurpassable. But they were missing something huge. Their righteousness was fundamentally based on their own efforts, their own study, their own will-power, their own sacrifices. It also featured an extrinsic understanding of being right with God: as long as they did the right things, everything was fine with God. As the converted Pharisee St. Paul would once say back to them, they thought that they were saved by their own works of the law, by their own external adhesion to the Mosaic law, and not by God, not by a faith-filled living relationship with God.
• When Jesus calls us to surpass the righteousness of the Pharisees, he was not fundamentally calling us to surpass them in memorizing the New Testament along with the Old, in praying four times a day instead of three, in fasting three times a week instead of two, in giving twenty percent of all we have back to God instead of ten. He’s calling us, rather, to three things: first, to have his own relationship to the law in fulfilling the law; second, to grasp that it is all about loving God with everything we have and loving our neighbor as Christ has loved us (which is why we have today’s Alleluia verse, to help us remember this); and to interiorize the law so that our heart is changed, not just our outward behavior. He’s calling us to allow the Word of God, Love incarnate, to become enfleshed within. He’s summoning us to permit God to give us a new heart, to place his law within us as he pours Himself, the Holy Spirit, into our hearts. God had told us through the Prophet Jeremiah that one day he would write his law in our hearts, and that’s precisely what Jesus came to do. That’s what the Holy Spirit seeks to accomplish.
• Today Jesus begins a series of powerful applications of what this looks like, because these are things on which everyone needs to surpass the Scribes and the Pharisees. The first is with regard to the fifth commandment. The Lord says, “You have heard that it was said to your ancestors, You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment. But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment, and whoever says to his brother, ‘Raqa,’ will be answerable to the Sanhedrin, and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ will be liable to fiery Gehenna.” Jesus wants to transform the way we relate to others so that we will love them as he has loved us. It’s not enough merely not to kill others. He doesn’t want us to insult them. He doesn’t want us to hate them. Jesus wants to teach us to love those whom others would be tempted even to murder, to love those who make us angry, to love those who are fools. The failure to love neighbor is something that he found often in the Scribes and Pharisees and was calling us to surpass. True love of neighbor, even and especially when it’s hard, is the type of offering God wants us to give him when we come to worship him, which we see in the second part of today’s Gospel. Jesus says, “Therefore” — linking both parts and this is key for us to grasp as we come here today to pray the Mass — “if you bring your gift to the altar, and there recall that your brother has anything against you, leave your gift there at the altar, go first and be reconciled with your brother, and then come and offer your gift.” The type of offering God wants from us is the offering of love, of forgiveness and reconciliation, of kindness, toward his beloved sons and daughters who are our blood or spiritual brothers and sisters. He recognizes that murder begins in the heart, with resentment, with fear, with vengeance, with lack of harmony. If love for others is lacking, he says, our offering to God is in vain. We can’t come to receive the gift God wants to give us if we’ve closed our hearts to the way he wants us to live. Ultimately the offering God calls us to make when we come before him is our “logike latreia” (Rom 12:2), the only worship that makes sense, our bodies, our entire lives, as a holy and acceptable oblation. It’s to put ourselves at God’s total service. And if we refuse to reconcile, then we are not at God’s service. If we’re not loving our neighbor, we’re really not loving God. If we can just focus on God without reconciling with our neighbor Jesus is telling us today the absolute opposite, and giving us a choice between the “kingdom of heaven” and a “prison” from which we will not be released until we have paid the last penny. This type of reconciliation with others, this type of fraternal, faithful love, was what many Scribes and Pharisees refused to do. They condescendingly disdained their neighbor who didn’t live as outwardly righteous lives as they did. They disparaged the Gentiles as if their entire bodies were meant just to be fuel for the fires of Gehenna. That’s why for many of them their worship was in vain because they refused to allow God to transform them into his loving, merciful image and likeness.
• Today the Church celebrates the Memorial of St. Barnabas, whose righteousness did surpass that of the scribes and Pharisees and who taught the early Church how to reconcile with St. Paul, how to love the one who formerly had been their enemy, who encouraged them to offer themselves and their goods fully to God.  St. Barnabas is one of the most important figures in the history of the early Church and, I think, among the least appreciated. Early in the Acts of the Apostles, St. Luke tells us that his real name was Joseph, but the apostles nicknamed him Barnabas, which means “son of encouragement.” Why did they give him that moniker? It could have been because he had sold a field he owned and laid the proceeds at the apostles’ feet, an obvious sign of his total commitment to Christ and total trust in the apostles Christ had chosen to lead the early Church. Such a gesture, common among the first disciples, would have certainly inspired the other members of the burgeoning Church courageously to do the same. But the nickname was an excellent summary of his entire personality, for he was someone who gave others courage, who believed in them, who filled them to respond to God with enthusiasm. In today’s first reading, St. Luke tells us that when he arrived in Antioch, “he rejoiced and encouraged them all to remain faithful to the Lord in firmness of heart.”
• But we see his encouragement especially in his interaction with St. Paul. Today in the Gospel, the Holy Spirit speaks to the first members of the Church in Antioch and says, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” It was the Holy Spirit’s plans for them to go on the first great missionary journey in the Church, but there was a huge pre-history to that commissioning, one in which Barnabas, inspired by the Gift of Courage, was able to encourage Paul and the entire Church to recognize Paul’s gifts. Without Barnabas’ intervention, Paul likely would have remained, lived and died a tent-maker in Tarsus. Instead, because of Barnabas’ courageous and encouraging interventions, Paul was able to become the greatest missionary in the history of the Church. It was Barnabas who was the catalyst for bringing Paul out of obscurity, making him his collaborator, vouching for him with the leaders and members of the Church who didn’t trust him because of his murderous past, and launching him on the trajectory that led to his founding so many Churches across the ancient world.
• As we know from the Acts of the Apostles, after his conversion, Paul immediately began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues, announcing that he was the Messiah and Son of God. As he began to annihilate the Damascene Jews in debates, several of the vanquished conspired to have him assassinated, watching out for him at the city gates to murder him. Paul and the other disciples heard about the plot, however, and lowered him outside the city walls in a basket to escape. So Paul went to Jerusalem where he tried to join the disciples, live the Christian life and help wherever he could. St. Luke tells us, however, that sadly “they were all afraid of him, not believing that he was a disciple.” The disciples didn’t want to have anything to do with him. They were all terrified of him because of the way he used to terrorize their community, presiding over the stoning of St. Stephen, ripping the believers out of their homes and bringing them before the religious courts, and even getting an order to go to Damascus and bring back the Christians in chains. They likely thought that his celebrated conversion was a ruse just so that Paul could infiltrate the Christians, get to know them and where they live, and finish the job of wiping them out that he had previously worked so hard to achieve The members of the Church in Jerusalem, apostles and disciples, didn’t believe yet in the power of God’s amazing grace that could save a sinner like Paul. They didn’t believe that God could convert a murderer of Christians into a maker of Christians. They didn’t believe that God could change someone who used to rip Christians from their homes to one who would help form Christian homes. They couldn’t see how someone who had presided over the stoning of St. Stephen would eventually become someone who himself would be stoned because of his building his life on the stone rejected by the builders who had become the cornerstone of his life.
• That’s the first time Barnabas, the son of encouragement, intervened. It’s not hard to imagine how abandoned Paul must have felt after the Jerusalem Church’s rejection: the vast majority of his own people likely looked on him as a traitor, some of his former teammates in the extirpation of Christians were now coming after him, and the Christians, whom he had hoped to fill with joy at the news of his conversion, wanted no part of him. Seeing the situation of Paul the Pariah, Barnabas acted, for Paul and for the Church. He wasn’t going to let what the Lord had done on the road to Damascus go to waste. So he went to find Paul and then, St. Luke tells us, “took him by the hand and brought him to the apostles, declaring to them how on the road he had seen the Lord, who spoke to him, and how at Damascus he had preached boldly in the name of Jesus.” Barnabas told Paul’s conversion story to the other members of the Church of Jerusalem — which shows that obviously he had heard it step-by-step from Paul before. He also passed on how Paul after his conversion was doing more to spread the faith than many of those who were timidly hovering in Jerusalem. Because of Barnabas’ action, encouragement, and personal recommendation, the Church of Jerusalem welcomed him. From that moment, Paul started to do in Jerusalem the same things he had done in Damascus, and “speak out boldly in the name of the Lord.” He debated both Jews and Greeks. Once again, however, the Jewish leaders plotted to kill him for persuading people to Christianity — just as the Sanhedrin had done to Jesus and Saul himself had tried done to Stephen and other members of the early Church. So the disciples took him down to Caesarea by the Sea and sent him home to Tarsus. Fearing for Paul’s life, the Church in Jerusalem decided to rush him down to Caesarea and send him home to Tarsus. It’s possible that Paul was rashly looking for a quick martyrdom in expiation for all the lives he had taken previously, but the Church, especially Barnabas, didn’t want the one chosen by the Lord to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles to have his mission as a Christian evangelist cut short prematurely. It’s probable that Barnabas accompanied Paul down to the sea to send Paul home and he likely encouraged him to get ready for what would come later.
• Later came rather soon. After the Church in Jerusalem had heard of how many converts were entering the Church in Antioch, they sent Barnabas to encourage them “to remain faithful to the Lord in firmness of heart” and guide them into a deeper grasp of the Gospel. St. Luke tells us today that his preaching and exhortation only served to make more converts. They all regarded him as a “good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith.” Barnabas did not have the time to guide them all and needed other expert help. Rather than assuming the arduous task of training others to be teachers or going back to Jerusalem to find help, he traveled to Tarsus to find Paul and bring him back to Antioch. Barnabas knew Paul was ready. And so he encouraged him to leave his tent-making behind and come with him to make temples of the Holy Spirit. Paul agreed. And they headed to Antioch where “for a whole year they met with the Church and taught a large number of people,” forming them in the love of the Lord in such a way that it the disciples for the first time were called “little Christs,” or “Christians.” It was after that year’s worth of hard work tilling the soil of souls in Syria that the Holy Spirit spoke while the Church was worshipping the Lord and fasting and asked for Barnabas and Saul to be set apart for the work to which he was calling them. And that’s when the two of them began the first of the great missionary journeys in Church history, implanting the Gospel across Asia Minor. The rest is, in a sense, history.
• Little did Barnabas know that when he put his own reputation on the line for Paul before the Apostles in Jerusalem, when he went to Tarsus to ask for help, what the Holy Spirit would later do. All he did was encourage and invite. The Lord did the rest. There’s a great lesson for all of here. Are we men and women of similar encouragement, enthusiastically trying to inspire others to grow in faith to surpassing righteousness, to come more deeply into their friendship with Christ, inviting them and facilitating for them to use the gifts God has given them to share in the work of spreading the faith? Do we live our faith with a boldness that inspires others to live their faith with courage? Do we seek to bring those who have been alienated or judged back into the community? Do we reconcile with our brothers? The Church today needs many more Barnabases, men and women who aren’t afraid to encourage others to share their work, to stick up for others when others don’t think they’re capable or qualified, to invite them to collaborate in the joyful duty of passing on the Good News to others. In an age of so much depression and sadness, we need Barnabases who can inspire with Christian hope. In an age in which people are haunted by the mistakes and sins of the past, we need Barnabases who can point out that they’ve changed and that we should not waste out of fear the talents God has given. At a time when so many have wandered away from the Church, we need Barnabases who can encourage them to come home and to use the gifts God has given them for the building up of his kingdom. Just as in ancient Antioch, so today, there aren’t enough laborers in the Lord’s vineyard to attend to the ripe fruit on the vine. There are so many sheep in the Lord’s fold who need good shepherds to care for them, not to mention so many sheep who have wandered from the fold who need those acting in the person of the Good Shepherd to leave the 99 behind and go out in search for them. It’s something that Pope Francis can’t do all by himself. It’s something that the bishops united with him can’t do by themselves. It’s something that all the priests of the world can’t do together. It’s something that all the religious, the missionaries and consecrated people can’t do. It’s something for which even all the catechists together with clergy and religious can’t do. It’s something for which we’re all needed. Today Barnabas, that “good man filled with the Holy Spirit and with faith,” on behalf of God comes to us as he did to Saul in Tarsus to encourage us to get involved.
• Today as we come to present ourselves to the altar, we ask the Lord’s grace so that we may do so like Barnabas, placing ourselves at the foot of the altar like he placed his goods at the feet of the apostles. We pray for the grace to seek reconciliation with all those whom we have hurt and with all who have hurt us, so that together with them we may rejoice in the celebration in the House of Father, where the Father prepares for us not a fatted calf but a Lamb looking as if he has been slain. This is the food, this is the means, that will enable us to allow God to form us through our freedom toward surpassing righteousness so that we might enter the Kingdom.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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