Being Led by the Lord’s Kindly Light to Faith and Communion, 27th Friday (II), October 9, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Friday of the 27th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of St. John Henry Newman
October 9, 2020
Gal 3:7-14, Ps 111, Lk 11:15-26

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today’s Gospel was the first Gospel I ever had the privilege to proclaim and today’s readings were the first ones about which I ever preached, 22 years ago today, the day after I was ordained a deacon, at a Mass at the Chapel of Our Lady of Fatima in the Dorothean Sisters’ Casa Fatima across from the North American College in Rome. I’ve always thought that God was very good to me in giving me these readings because they’re not particularly easy to preach on, and so from the first time I ever had the chance to act on what I was instructed at my diaconal ordination, to “Believe what you read [and] teach what you believe,” I had to do so explicitly with far greater dependence on God, far greater cooperation with the Holy Spirit. Whenever I have had the chance to preach, therefore, on the readings of the 27th Friday of Ordinary Year Year II, it always reminds me of the summons God gives to turn to him for light not just for these readings but every time I preach.
• Today we have the joy to celebrate for the first time the Memorial of Saint John Henry Newman, canonized last October 13 in Rome. In light of his life, I’d like to focus on two huge lessons from today’s readings.
• The first is about faith. In today’s reading from St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians, the apostle talks to us about faith, saying that it is those who have faith who are children of Abraham. St. Paul was writing this to the Christians he had evangelized on his first and second journeys, but whose faith had then been reprogrammed by Judaized Christians coming from Jerusalem, those who thought that in order to be a good Christian, you first had to be a perfect Jew. They didn’t realize that the Mosaic Law was a gift to prepare God’s people for the advent of the Messiah and who he would bring the law to perfection. St. Paul will call it, as we’ll see, a pedagogue or tutor, someone would travel with you to class to the master or professor, and then, after class, go over all of the lessons. St. Paul was stressing throughout this letter as well as his letter to the Romans that we are saved by God through faith: it’s God work that we receive through the gift of faith. The Judaizers, like the Pharisees of which he was once one, thought we were saved by our actions of fidelity to God’s law. We’re judged by them, but not saved by them. We’re saved by God that we receive through faith. But the big takeaway is not just why the Judaizing Christians were wrong. The great takeaway is how we’re supposed to live. We’re supposed to live by faith just like Abraham. We’re constantly being asked by God to make journeys of faith like Abraham did at 75, leaving Ur of the Chaldeans, his security, his life as he knew it until then and journey to a place God would show him. God didn’t tell him the destination, but Abraham trusted in him enough to go. God promised that he would become the father of many nations and showed him the stars of the sky as a confirmation of how many descendants he’d have, but the text of Genesis is clear that he was asked to look into the heavens when the sky was blue, not dark, because dusk came afterward. Abraham knew the stars were there, but couldn’t see them, which is a good image of what faith means, a certainty without seeing with worldly eyes. He didn’t know that he would have to wait 25 years for the fulfillment of that promise, but he continued to believe. He didn’t realize that he would be asked to sacrifice the fulfillment of that promise, Isaac, 13 years after his birth, but he did so with incredible faith, knowing, as the Letter to the Hebrews tells us, that God would raise him from the dead if he should be sacrificed. The Lord is calling each of us to a faith like this, to leave our comfort zone, to follow him, to count the stars even when we can’t see them, to trust even when he asks us to sacrifice what’s dearest.
• Saint John Henry Newman had faith like this, and was called to make a great journey, a journey of great sacrifice and suffering. At the beginning of Mass we prayed, “O God, who bestowed on the Priest John Henry Newman the grace to follow your kindly light and find peace in your Church; graciously grant that, through his intercession and example, we may be led out of shadows and image into the fullness of your truth.” That expression of “kindly light” goes back to a poem he wrote in 1833 that was eventually made a hymn. It’s about the journey of faith. The context was when he was in a ferocious storm on the seas returning from Pompeii to Marseilles on the way home to England. But it’s metaphorical as well, describing his entire journey into full communion with the Church. He wrote, “Lead, Kindly Light, amidst th’encircling gloom, Lead Thou me on! The night is dark, and I am far from home, Lead Thou me on! Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see The distant scene; one step enough for me. I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou shouldst lead me on; I loved to choose and see my path; but now Lead Thou me on! I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears, Pride ruled my will. Remember not past years! So long Thy power hath blest me, sure it still Will lead me on. O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent, till The night is gone, And with the morn those angel faces smile, Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile!” He was being led by God through the light of faith in darkness and asked for greater help. He admitted he preferred to choose and see his path, because pride ruled his will, but he begged for the grace to overcome obstacles awaiting the dawn and the eternal morn of the angels.” He today would be encouraging us to say to God, “Lead thou me on!”
• The second great lesson from today’s readings are about communion in the Church. In the Gospel, we see the opposition Jesus faced by those who refused to believe in him or his works. By this point, Jesus had already worked all of the miracles foretold by Isaiah (61) that would mark the advent of the Messiah: he had proclaimed the Gospel to the poor, healed the sick, made the blind see, the deaf hear, the mute speak, the lame walk. He had liberated the captives from the snatches of the devil by countless exorcisms. He had fed multitudes. He had walked on water. He had done so much. The people who didn’t believe in him couldn’t deny the facts, but they could give another interpretation: he wasn’t working them by God’s power but by the devil’s, an attempt to justify their lack of faith in him and their opposition. Jesus, in his words to them, spoke about the work of the devil and the main thrust of his saving work. The work of the devil is to divide and the main focus of Jesus’ work is to save us and sanctify us by bringing us into communion with God and in Him with others. Christ during the Last Supper prayed for a unity among us resembling the Trinity. He did that through his incarnation, his life, his passion, death and resurrection. We prayed in the Gospel verse about what he how he had said that when he would be lifted up on the Cross, he would draw all men to himself — and out of the clutches of the evil one. We remember from St. Mark’s Gospel the two essential aspects involved in life with Jesus: he calls us to be with him and to send us out. The devil wants to divide us from Jesus and prevent our going out as effective, ardent apostles. And he normally seeks to achieve both objectives by division, dividing us from genuine love of neighbor and thereby separating us from God. This is exactly the opposite of what Christ seeks: to gather us to him and to send us out to gather others. And then he gives everyone a choice. He said that Satan wouldn’t do exorcisms because he would then be defeating himself. It’s only God who could do so. God comes in Christ as the “stronger man” to conquer the power of Satan and take his “spoils,” knowing that his “spoils” would be souls Jesus would take out of his hand. He warned his critics at the end of the Gospel to see that God had freed them through the Old Covenant from the domination of the evil one, but that a worse fate could await them if they cease to live by faith. The devil could return with seven demons and the new state would be worse than the one even before they had been given the Covenant. The whole thrust of Jesus words were to help us to respond to Jesus’ desire to gather us into his family and to send us out to gather with him.
• Someone who was gathered by the Lord and spent his life trying to gather for Christ is St. John Henry Newman. He is a model for ecumenism, insofar as he was a passionate truth seeker who would follow Jesus the Truth wherever he believed the Lord, his “kindly Light,” was leading. He hoped, through the Oxford Movement he catalyzed, to be able to help bring about Church unity. Ecumenism is far more than a polite dialogue among those of different Christian Churches, or a lowest common denominator approach to harmony as if the disputed truths of faith don’t matter, but is meant to be a response to Jesus’ Holy Thursday prayer for unity and for docility to the Spirit leading us to all the truth. He brought many to the Christian faith through his teaching, his writings, his example, and then has led many Anglicans and others to the Catholic faith. He recognized that the Christian faith must believe in what Jesus did and loved, to love the “one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church” as he did, despite all her wrinkles and problems. We celebrate his feast day today, which is the day he was ordained a Catholic priest, as a result of his having corresponded to the Lord’s desire for unity. His motto, “Cor ad cor loquitur,” as Pope Benedict said when he beatified him in 2010, is meant to make us one with Christ’s heart and Christ’s desire for unity. He said, “Cardinal Newman’s motto, Cor ad cor loquitur, or ‘Heart speaks unto heart,’ gives us an insight into his understanding of the Christian life as a call to holiness, experienced as the profound desire of the human heart to enter into intimate communion with the Heart of God. He reminds us that faithfulness to prayer gradually transforms us into the divine likeness,” that likeness of the communion of persons in love who is the Trinity.
• The great work of gathering us to Christ, of uniting us in communion, happens here at Mass where Jesus, the Stronger Man, seeks to make us one body, one spirit with Him and others. It’s here that we receive the help we need to defeat the devil’s attempted sabotage of our lives. It’s here that we remember each day with joy that we are the disciples of the one who has defeated the devil and conquered even death and sin. It’s here, with Saint John Henry, that we commit ourselves anew to holiness and to the work of gathering with Christ into a “United Kingdom” that will stand strong into eternity, that Kingdom to where the “Kindly Light” led Saint John Henry, leaving the shadows and images behind and entering into eternal Truth and light.

The readings for today’s Mass were:

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