Becoming Like the Master by Humbly Taking Out the Planks, 23rd Friday (I), September 13, 2019

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Friday of the 23rd Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Memorial of St. John Chrysostom, Bishop and Doctor
September 13, 2019
1 Tim 1:1-2.12-14, Ps 16, 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: 

• Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Plain are all about Christian morality. Today he focuses first on the humble contrition and need for his mercy that is at the beginning of it before turning to one of the necessary preconditions for true charity to others and to the apostolate of guiding them toward Jesus.
• Jesus addresses today our tendency to criticize others as a deflection of not looking in the spiritual mirror of conscience. We see others’ faults much more clearly, sometimes, than we see our own. He wants us to take out the forest of redwoods from our own eyes so that we can see clearly and afterward help our neighbor to address their own problems. In all of this, he is trying to help us see things as he does, to see things as they really are. That’s why there’s a sentence that seems out of place. After talking about the blind leading the blind and before speaking about planks and specks, he says, “No disciple is superior to the teacher; but when fully trained, every disciple will be like his teacher.” Jesus wants us to be fully trained so that we might become like him. To do that, we need to see everything as he does. We need to view everything with the eyes of faith. And for that, we need to remove all of the obstacles that impair our vision.
• This is something St. Paul does very candidly in today’s first reading. Writing to his spiritual son, St. Timothy, he expressed his gratitude to the Lord for strengthening him and considering him trustworthy for the ministry despite, he says, “once being a blasphemer and a persecutor and an arrogant man.” Blasphemer? He was a devout Pharisee who would never have cursed God. What does he mean? He wasn’t glorifying God because, like his fellow Pharisees, he was focused too much on his own deeds, his works of the law, rather than living by faith in the Lord who loved him and gave his life for him. He acted out of ignorance in his “unbelief,” he says. He was blinded by his lack of faith initially in Jesus, and that led him to be a persecutor and an arrogant man, refusing to accept what God was proclaiming through the members of the early Church who had been saved by Christ. God helped him on the road to Damascus. He had him see how blind he was and after three days of not being able to see anything, scales fell from his eyes when he was baptized. That’s why he was able to glorify God by saying, “the grace of our Lord has been abundant, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.” Paul wants us to have the same experience of seeing everything by God’s light. And when we do, then we become capable of leading others to Christ. We’re no longer blind guides leading other blind people into pits, including eternal ones; rather, we’re capable of guiding them by the light of faith in faith to the celestial Jerusalem.
• Someone who understood and lived these lessons was St. John Chrysostom. St. John Chrysostom is most famous for his preaching, but he also very much was a person moved by an experience of conversion, removing planks from his eyes and then trying to help others remove their specks and walk with him in the light. When he was baptized between the age of 18-22 (scholars disagree), he began to live a truly different life. Like Paul was the greatest student of Gamaliel, John was the greatest student of the rhetorician Libanius, who wanted him to succeed him, but instead John left the world to 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, so that he might see clearly — by heart. He was so zealous in his fasting 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 remove their planks and specks. His words 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. Whereas he could have lived a sumptuous life, he lived as if he were poor; rather than be a social animal, he wept; rather than feast he fasted; rather than bask in his reputation over his oratory, he used it to call everyone, including the emperor and empress to conversion. For this he quickly became a sign of contradiction 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. We see just how much he saw all things by the light of faith by the passage from the Office of Readings this morning, given right before he was about to be exiled again. “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.” He saw persecution, exile, poverty, and death within the light of faith. And he has helped us all see more clearly since. We prayed in the Collect of the Mass that God might give us a share in his “invincible patience,” the unconquerable capacity to suffer anything and everything because he was seeing things as “Christ our Hope” sees things.
• As we celebrate the Mass today, we recall, as the Psalm tells us, that the Lord is our inheritance, and it’s here that he makes us his heirs. It’s hear that the Master seeks to make us, his disciples, more like him, teaching us his words, calling us to conversion, and feeding us with himself.

The readings for today’s Mass were: