Becoming Disciplined Disciples and Fully-Trained Trainers, 23rd Friday (II), September 13, 2024

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Friday of the 23rd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of St. John Chrysostom
September 13, 2024
1 Cor 9:16-19.22-27, Ps 84, Lk 6:39-42

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

The following points were attempted in the homily:

• In today’s Gospel, Jesus gives us an indication of what he hopes we will become: “When fully trained,” he said, “every disciple will be like his teacher.” Every rabbinical student desired to imitate his rabbi and Jesus wants us to become like him, to love as he has loved, to live as he has lived. The essence of human life and of Christian existence is to become “fully trained.” God provides this training, through his Word, through his Church, even through the suffering he permits. In the Gospel, in the powerful parable of the splinter and the wooden beam, Jesus indicates to us that he wants us paying attention to the ways that we need to grow, to those aspects of our own conduct that still need to be trained, rather than to obsess about others’ faults and flaws, so that we might see clearly, virtuously, charitably and be better trained to help our neighbor.
• St. Paul in the first reading today likewise talks about the training necessary to become saints, to become like Jesus. He makes an analogy to the training of championship athletes. “Do you not know that the runners in the stadium all run in the race, but only one wins the prize? Run so as to win. Every athlete exercises discipline in every way. They do it to win a perishable crown, but we an imperishable one.” We need to learn how to exercise discipline in every way, because discipline literally makes disciples. As disciples of Jesus, we seek not to call our own shots but to live by Jesus’ discipline. In doing so, St. Paul leads the Corinthians and us by example. He says, “Thus I do not run aimlessly; I do not fight as if I were shadowboxing. No, I drive my body and train it, for fear that, after having preached to others, I myself should be disqualified.” He was taking out his own logs from his life and that’s why he was able to see so clearly to assist others. He was striving to unite himself to Christ crucified so that he could then help others learn how to live in the same way. He wanted everyone to become fully trained disciples through exercising discipline in every way. He made himself “a slave to all so as to win over as many as possible.” He became “all things to all, to save at least some.” His love for others and his recognition of God’s love for them because the driving force of his zeal. He wasn’t doing it for money or for earthly compensation, but because of an interior obligation to share the joy of what he himself had received. “Woe to me,” he says today, “if I do not preach the Gospel!” He recognized he had been given a treasure of which he had been made a steward and sought to pass on free of charge what he himself had received. A Christian spiritual athlete fully formed will have that same holy woe.
• Today we celebrate one such great spiritual athlete who was filled with the same interior woe to share the faith. St. John Chrysostom is the patron saint of preachers because, having been trained to be like Jesus and disciplined to be a faithful disciple, he used his “golden mouth” (literally, Chryso-stom) as a means to train many others. After he was baptized between the age of 18-22 (scholars disagree), he began to live a truly different life ordered to Christ. He was the greatest student of the rhetorician Libanius, who wanted John to succeed him, but instead John left the world for a time to become a better student of Jesus and fill his mind with the things of God. He spent two years as a hermit continually standing, scarcely sleeping, and learning the Bible — God’s thoughts given to us — by heart. He was so zealous in fasting and other forms of ascetical training that he damaged his stomach and kidneys and needed to return for reasons of health. There the Patriarch of Antioch ordained him a deacon and then a priest and allowed him to begin to preach publicly, and his sermons quickly became famous and his eloquence — speaking about the things of God, calling people to enroll in Christ’s school and become like the Master — reverberated throughout the empire. In 397, he was elected Patriarch of Constantinople, another Patriarchal see at the center of the empire, and there he went. He quickly became a sign of contradiction through his intense conformity to Christ and suffered, being exiled many times. But that didn’t shake him, because he knew it would happen for anyone who modeled his life and preaching after Christ. His example inspired so many of his day to sanctity and to seek the things of God by the way of the beatitudes. The sermon taken from this morning’s Office of Readings was preached when he was about to be exiled again. It shows how full trained he was. “The waters have risen and severe storms are upon us, but we do not fear drowning, for we stand firmly upon a rock. Let the sea rage, it cannot break the rock. Let the waves rise, they cannot sink the boat of Jesus. What are we to fear? Death? Life to me means Christ, and death is gain. Exile? The earth and its fullness belong to the Lord. The confiscation of goods? We brought nothing into this world, and we shall surely take nothing from it. I have only contempt for the world’s threats, I find its blessings laughable. I have no fear of poverty, no desire for wealth. I am not afraid of death nor do I long to live, except for your good. … If Christ is with me, whom shall I fear? Though the waves and the sea and the anger of princes are roused against me, they are less to me than a spider’s web. … For I always say Lord, your will be done; not what this fellow or that would have me do, but what you want me to do. That is my strong tower, my immovable rock, my staff that never gives way. If God wants something, let it be done! If he wants me to stay here, I am grateful. But wherever he wants me to be, I am no less grateful.” We prayed in the Collect of the Mass to be able to imitate him in his imitation of Christ: “O God, strength of those who hope in you, who willed that the Bishop John Chrysostom should be illustrious by his wonderful eloquence and his experience of suffering, grant us, we pray, that instructed by his teachings, we may be strengthened through his example.”
• The greatest spiritual training of all takes place through the Mass, in which we enter into Jesus’ own passion, death and resurrection. He gives us the chance here not only to become “like” him but to enter into communion with him, so that the Master can continue to teach and train us, his disciples, from the inside. This is the means by which we learn from him how to give our lives, our own body, blood and soul, for the salvation of others, to save as many as possible. Hearing the Word of God zealously proclaimed, we’re moved to receive God’s blessing at the end of Mass and to “go and proclaim the Gospel of the Lord.” Examining our consciences before Mass, we confess to God and to others that we’re sinners with logs in our eyes but that we’re turning together with them to the Lord so that we may likewise see and experience his mercy to such a degree that with our eyes healed we may help others to see by faith. This is where we receive a foretaste of the imperishable wreath with which God one day seeks to crown us, as he did St. Paul and St. John Chrysostom. The Lord’s dwelling place is indeed lovely, as we prayed in the Psalm, and he seeks to make his dwelling place in us and in all those to whom he wishes to send us, as he sent Paul and John Chrysostom before us. May we receive Jesus’ help to become as fully trained as they!

The readings for today’s Mass were:

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