Becoming Perfect as God is Perfect, First Saturday of Lent, March 12, 2022

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Leonine Forum Lenten Day of Recollection
Church of the Holy Family, Manhattan
First Saturday of Lent
400th Anniversary of the Canonization of
Saints Isidore the Farmer, Ignatius Loyola, Francis Xavier, Teresa of Avila and Philip Neri
March 12, 2022
Dt 26:16-19, Ps 119, Mt 5:43-48

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

The following text guided the homily: 

• The whole purpose of Lent is to bring us back to who we are, made in the image and likeness of God who is holy, holy, holy. We are reminded on Ash Wednesday of our beginning and our end, not just that we are dust and unto dust we shall return, but also that God breathed into us the breath of life, gave us an immortal soul, and wants us to use our freedom, will and relational nature to choose to live in a communion of love with him and others forever.
• Today’s readings drive the point home. Jesus calls us in the Gospel to “be perfect as our heavenly father is perfect,” which means ultimately to be holy as the Lord our God is holy. To be holy is to live as the Book of Deuteronomy summons us in the first reading. It means to observe the Lord’s commandments with all our heart and soul, to walk in God’s ways, to hearken to his voice, to be a people peculiarly his own. It means, as we prayed in the Psalm, to walk in the law of the Lord, to observe his decrees, to seek him with all their heart, to follow a blameless way.
• To be holy, Jesus intimates in the Gospel, is simply to live up to our identity as chips off the old divine block, to be like our heavenly Father. Before Jesus calls us to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect, he gives us specific exhortations so that we “may be children of [our] Father in heaven, who makes his sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.” Jesus implies that we will not really become children of God until we start behaving like God, that he can be our Father without our being his children unless we experience the inner revolution to which Jesus is calling us and unless we seek to act as his children, to behave like Jesus who shows us how to live as a Son of God. Just as God the Father loves everyone and does good to everyone, including those who curse him, including those who make themselves his enemy through sin and an evil life, including those who try to use him whenever they need him, Jesus calls us to do the same, to love our enemies, to pray for those who persecute us, to walk the second mile, to give our cloak as well as our tunic, to give generously to all those who need to borrow. We’re called to be good — to let our sun or life-giving rain fall — not just on those who are good to us but even on those who are not good to us, just like the Father does. This is the path to true holiness, this is the means by which we become, in action, sons and daughters of our heavenly Father, by behaving as he behaves.
• Today during this day of recollection we’re going to be focused on holiness through the lives of five men and women who sought to be perfect as the heavenly Father is perfect, to love as Jesus has loved us, to be merciful as the Father is merciful, to be holy as the Lord our God is holy. They are five who were canonized 400 years ago today by Pope Gregory XV: Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits; Saint Francis Xavier, his former roommate, fellow Jesuit and, after St. Paul, the greatest missionary in Church history; Saint Teresa of Avila, the first female doctor of the Church and great reformer of the Carmelites; St. Philip Neri, the 16^thcentury founder of the Oratorians and reevangelizer of Rome; and St. Isidore the Farmer, patron saint of Madrid, who during the canonization was the one who got most of the attention.
• Each of them shows us particular characteristics of the path to holiness. One of the characteristics is a desire for holiness, for God, for heaven. We see this very beautifully in the life of St. Teresa. When she was seven, she took great pleasure in the lives of the saints, making a little hermitage in her back yard where she could read and pray. One day her younger brother Rodrigo was in the back yard with her and they began to think about the happiness of the saints in heaven and got caught up in the thought of living “forever and ever and ever and ever and ever.” Rodrigo asked how they could get to heaven fastest, and Teresa replied that that would be through martyrdom, because the sufferings of the martyrs were nothing compared with the glory they received immediately upon death. Rodrigo asked how they could become martyrs and she said that they would need to go where the Muslims were in order to be killed by them for the faith. Rodrigo asked where the Muslims were and she told him in Morocco. And so off they went walking toward Morocco, forgetting — we can excuse 7 and 5 year olds! — the small geographical complication that there was the Mediterranean Sea between Spain and northern Africa! They got outside the city walls and as far as the ancient Roman Adaja Bridge when they were met by their Uncle Francisco coming back on his horse from hunting who asked them where they were headed. When informed they were heading to Africa to be martyred by the Moors, he told them he would give them a ride on his horse. After they hopped on, he took them back to their home! The episode shows the faith and courage of Teresa from an early age:  she was willing to suffer even earthly tortures — like the stories of the martyrs she read with her brother — for God. Last year, that when I visited in Alba de Tormes the cell in which she died, I saw painted above her bed a mural of what happened when she was seven, because that was when she entered into forever and ever and ever.
• The same precocious desire eventually characterized all of those we celebrate today. But it didn’t come easily. There was a need for conversion. Last year, on May 20, we celebrated the 500th anniversary of the conversion of St. Ignatius of Loyola. Until he was 30, Iñigo López de Oñaz y Loyola, the future St. Ignatius of Loyola, vainly sought worldly treasure, mainly honor on the battlefield. But then, as a 30-year-old Basque soldier, he had his right leg shattered and left calf torn off by a cannonball during the Battle of Pamplona — with the projectile shot spiritually straight from Damascus. While he was convalescing, he tried without avail to get his hands on the epic tales of chivalry and romance common to the epoch. The only volumes to be found were a life of Christ and a book on the lives of the saints. In desperation he began to read them — and not only were his heart and the direction of his life changed, but also the history of the Church and the world. López was pierced by his own shallowness compared to the saints’ substance and roused by the courage of the martyrs in fighting the good fight on the battlefield that mattered most. In contrast to his vain pursuit of earthly honors, their seeking and seizing the most lasting and valuable treasure captivated him. After reading about Francis of Assisi and Dominic of Guzman, two 13^th-century mendicants who extravagantly gave up so much of what the world treasured in order to obtain a much more valuable fortune, and who formed religious families to help the whole world rediscover true riches, he asked one of the most important questions in history: “These men were of the same frame as I. Why, then, should I not do what they have done?” Why can’t I do what Francis of Assisi did? Why can’t I do what Dominic of Guzman did?” Led by their example and many graces, the one we now know as Saint Ignatius of Loyola made the commitment to serve the true King and to sacrifice everything to extend his kingdom. Above the place in the Loyola Castle where his metanoiahappened through reading the lives of the saints, it says, not “Here, he converted,” but rather, “Here he gave himself to God.” To convert means to give ourselves entirely to God. That’s where Ignatius’ prayers find their beginning. First, his Prayer for generosity: “Lord, teach me to be generous. Teach me to serve you as you deserve; to give and not to count the cost, to fight and not to heed the wounds, to toil and not to seek for rest, to labor and not to ask for reward, save that of knowing that I do your will.” And to make that self-giving possible, a prayer for God’s grace and love over self-reliance, his famous Suscipe: “Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding and my entire will, all I have and call my own. You have given all to me. To you, Lord, I return it. Everything is yours; do with it what you will. Give me only your love and your grace. That is enough for me.”
• The other saints we mark today similar, though perhaps less dramatic conversions. When St. Francis Xavier arrived at the University of Paris, he was an ambitious college student in Paris who sought benefices to live the easy life and got them, who sought after the fame of a teaching position, who bragged about his athletic accomplishments, who tried to fit in with the students of his day, and who eventually wanted not just to be a priest professor but the Bishop of Pamplona. But then he became roommates with Peter Faber and a slightly older fellow Basque, Iñigo de Loyola, and everything changed. Francis began to tutor Ignatius in Latin and Ignatius began to teach Francis something about the only ambition, the only knowledge, the only accomplishments that really mattered. At first, Francis didn’t think he needed conversion, because there was nothing seriously immoral in his life. But he needed to learn how to give himself to God. His conversion happened when St. Ignatius led him in the spiritual exercises and challenged him with the theme, “What would it profit a man to gain the whole world if he lose his soul in the process?”
• Philip Neri had a similar conversion. When he has 18, he left his native Florence to go to live with his uncle Romolo, a wealthy merchant in San Germano, close to Naples near the base of Monte Cassino, to apprentice himself in his business with the hope of inheriting his uncle’s fortune. Even though he did very well, he had a profound conversion over the vanity of his direction in life. He went to Rome where he gave himself to the study of philosophy and theology, gave most of his possessions away and become to visit the sick. He began to spent much of his time in prayer, trying to conform his heart to the Lord’s. He begged God to give him what he needed. God didn’t let him down. On the vigil of Pentecost in 1544, when he was 28, as he was in the catacombs imploring the Holy Spirit to give him the fruits of the Spirit (Gal 5:22-23), he saw the third person of the Trinity take on the appearance of a ball of fire that entered his mouth, descended to his heart and caused an explosion of heat and love that an autopsy later demonstrated had broken outward two of his ribs and almost doubled the size of his heart. St. Paul once wrote to the Romans, “The love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us,” and that was literally true for St. Philip. For the rest of his life, the fire burned both spiritually and physically, so that no matter how cold outside he needed to have the windows open. People could hear his heart beating across Churches. He became a living example of each of the fruits of the Holy Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-mastery. His docility to what God the Holy Spirit wanted to do in him and through him not only led to his becoming one of the greatest saints of all time but also to his helping vast multitudes respond to the sanctifying work of the same Holy Spirit.
• But St. Teresa of Avila likewise experienced a conversion. She entered the Carmelite monastery when she was 20, but the house was in a spiritual malaise. Some nuns had suites of rooms, with servants and pets. In some ways, it was like a Christian sorority. The rules of Carmelite conventual life, not to mention the Gospel, were regularly being watered down due to laxity and lukewarmness. Eventually she succumbed to the worldliness herself, spending vast amounts of time entertaining visitors and friends in the parlor, giving herself over to various compromises with mundane vanity. In 1554, when she was 39, God reawakened her from tolerating venial sins, from trusting in herself, from not valuing God’s grace, and restored her to a truly fervent life of the Holy Spirit. It happened when she saw a small statue of Jesus as he approached crucifixion, which touched her deeply and reminded her of just what her sins caused and how much Jesus loved her despite those sins. She gave herself over to God and allowed herself to be led to reform Carmelite life as a whole. The Holy Spirit revivified her desire for holiness, for happiness, for heaven and he guided her through all the stages necessary to give her a foretaste of heavenly union here on earth through prayer.
• So today as Jesus calls us to be “perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect,” we don’t have to be intimidated by our present, conspicuous imperfections. God can grant us the grace of true conversion. We also don’t have to think that to become a saint means to become a giant like Teresa, Ignatius, Francis Xavier or Philip. That’s why St. Isidore is such a beautiful figure. He became a saint in the 12^thcentury through the Sacrament of Marriage with his wife, Santa Maria de la Cabeza, and through his work, which he learned how to pray, as we’ll discuss later. But it is important for us to remember that God does call us not to mediocrity, not to be merely “good people,” but to be saints, and Lent is a time in which we focus on the reason why we were created. As Pope Francis reiterated in his 2018 apostolic exhortation on the call to holiness in today’s world,Gaudete et Exsultate, “A Christian cannot think of his or her [life] on earth without seeing it as a path of holiness, for ‘this is the will of God, your sanctification’ (1 Thess 4:3). Each saint is a mission, planned by the Father to reflect and embody, at a specific moment in history, a certain aspect of the Gospel,” he said. He cautioned us against the temptation “to think that holiness is only for those who can withdraw from ordinary affairs” or, as St. John Paul II once said, “as if it involved some kind of extraordinary existence, possible only for a few ‘uncommon heroes’ of holiness” (Novo Millennio Ineunte, 31). Rather, Pope Francis urged us to look toward the “holiness found in our next-door neighbors, those who, living in our midst, reflect God’s presence” and constitute, so to speak, “the middle class of holiness.” Holiness, he underlined, is found not just among the formally canonized saints and martyrs, but often in fellow parishioners, hardworking moms and dads, godparents and grandparents, and so many others who live the little things of each day with heroic faith and love.
• And the greatest means of holiness is the Mass, in which we receive Jesus Christ, who is holy, holy, holy within us and enter into holy communion with him. With him within, is there any reason why we can’t cooperate with God the way that Francis of Assisi and Dominic of Guzman did? Or Isidore, Ignatius, Teresa, Francis and Philip?

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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