Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Agnes Church, Manhattan
Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, Extraordinary Form
July 28, 2019
Rom 6:19-23, Mt 7:15-21
To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
The following text guided today’s homily:
- “Beware of False Prophets,” Jesus tells us in today’s Gospel. These are those who, rather than leading others in the ways of God, lead them astray. Throughout the Old Testament, the Lord’s chosen prophets were always opposed by imposters, those who claimed the title prophet but didn’t speak the Lord’s word but a false message that their listeners often found more pleasant. False prophecy remained a major problem at the time of Jesus and the early Church. St. John wrote in his first letter, “Many false prophets have gone out into the world” (1 Jn 4:1). St. Peter wrote, “There were also false prophets among the people, even as there will be lying teachers among you (2 Pet 2:1). The Didache, authored in the late first century as a type of catechesis for the first Christians, said, “Let every apostle that comes to you be received as the Lord,” but cautioned them to pay attention, stressing, “if the teacher, … teaches another doctrine opposed to [increasing righteousness and the knowledge of the Lord], do not listen to him.” The Didache also highlights the self-interest that often motivates false teachers. The prophet, it says, “shall not remain more than one day; if there be a need, also a second; but if he remains three days, he is a false prophet. And when the apostle leaves, let him take nothing but bread until he lodges; if he asks for money, he is a false prophet.” The false prophet is concerned, it implies, not with zealously announcing the word of God far and wide but rather with finding a cushy situation. The Didache summarizes, “Not every one who speaks in the Spirit is a prophet, but only the one who holds the ways of the Lord. So from their ways shall the false prophet and the prophet be known.”
- This issue, this serious responsibility, of knowing how to distinguish between true and false prophets didn’t end with the apostolic age. We see it in the many heresies throughout Church history. We see it today. There’s a type of false prophet who preaches a laxist, easy way, as if the road to life is broad and the way to perdition is narrow. The false prophet doesn’t live by and repeat Jesus’ challenge to lose our life to save it, to pick up our Cross each day and follow him, to sacrifice ourselves to wash others’ feet, to love God not just a little but with all our mind, heart, soul and strength, and to love our neighbor not just by not hating our neighbor, not just by having warm thoughts about our neighbor, but according to the truth in the self-sacrificial way with which Jesus has loved us. This type of false prophet manipulates God’s unconditional love to pretend as if the God never gave us the Ten Commandments to train us to love. He tries to pretend that sin isn’t sin, that there’s no need for conversion, that God doesn’t really want us to heed his words to repent and believe but simply to go on doing exactly what we’re doing. Perhaps the most common of these laxist prophets today are those who trumpet a sexual morality different from what Jesus has given us through the Gospels and the Church. There’s another type of false prophet who separates faith from life, union with God in the sanctuary from union with God on the streets, in the workplace, in the classroom, in the home. This type of prophet is for ritualism but never speaks about righteousness; as long as you’re coming to Church and being generous with the things of the Church, what you do outside is never really a subject of his or God’s attention. A third type of false prophet is like many of the Pharisees of old, who use the moral prohibitions of Sacred Scripture as weapons to accuse and condemn others, without preaching the power of God’s mercy, without praying for others, without taking the planks out of their own eyes. This type of false prophet creates a proud, small clique of seemingly morally elite believers apart from others, rather than moves people to join Jesus in seeking and saving what is lost. These types of prophets and their followers often rightly avoid and denounce the chic sins of the age, but they miss the weightier aspects of the law of Christ-like love. And a fourth type of false prophet comes basically from ignorance, passing on false teaching because of a lack of study and humility. How many people I have met many people who were told by fellow Catholics, for example, that they were not able to receive Holy Communion simply because they were divorced, even though they had not remarried or even dated. How many others had IVF treatments because they were told by Catholic family members that they had never heard the Church speak about it and therefore it must be fine.
- While some false prophets are easy to spot, many are not. One really has to look carefully. One has to pay very close attention to the person’s words and behavior. Jesus talks about this in today’s Gospel. From the time of Elijah, prophets wore sheepskin mantles, by which they could be distinguished from other prophets. False and true prophets both came in sheep’s clothing, and so one couldn’t just stop at superficial vesture. Jesus said that we needed to examine up close the fruit they produce. He uses two images: thorn bushes that produce tiny toxic fruit that at first glance looks like grapes; and thistles that from a distance produce something resembling a fig. He calls us to get beyond superficial appearances, beyond initial words, beyond their crying out “Lord, Lord,” in prayer, to determine whether the fruit they produce is good, healthy and holy, or toxic and spiritually lethal. “By their fruits you will know them,” Jesus says twice, reminding us, “Every good tree bears good fruit, and a rotten tree bears bad fruit.” We cannot live by the fruit of the buckthorn and thistle. So the questions are always: Are the prophets producing good fruit or bad? Are they making us genuinely more Christ-like or less? Are they challenging us toward holiness or toward worldliness? Are they summoning us, to use the words of the epistle from St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, to “present [our bodies] as slaves to righteousness for sanctification” or to present them “as slaves to impurity, … lawnessness [and] sin”? To use the criteria of the Didache, are they getting rich off of the Gospel or are they seeking to become rich in what matters to God and moving us to place our hearts in the same treasure?
- Discerning between true and false prophets is not easy, fast or fun. Many of us would prefer to remain naïve, as if every Catholic cleric who mounts the pulpit is giving you the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth as God intends, as if every theologian at a Catholic University teaches according to the magisterium, as if every catechist in schools and CCD programs reliably passes on the fullness of the faith. To remember that there are false prophets doesn’t mean that all of a sudden Jesus wants us to become paranoid, not trusting any teacher of the faith until we do an exhaustive background check on every word and action. Rather he wants us to be alert that sometimes there are false prophets who manipulate the faith of believers for their own benefit, either to be admired and popular, or to grow rich, or even sometimes to build big parishes that gratify their vanity more than they please the Lord.
- It’s tempting, however, to focus mainly on discerning, outing and denouncing the false prophets today who lead people astray rather than in the Lord’s footsteps, but there are two larger — and I think more important — responses we should give to today’s Gospel.
- The first is that when we’ve recognized that someone is a true prophet, whose words and conduct align with the Lord’s and who bears evident fruit of holiness, do we heed that prophet’s word, convert as they summon us to do, and sacrifice as God through them challenges us to do? While there are indeed false prophets, God never ceases to call and send out true ones. How well do we respond to them? Jesus, looking over the Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives just before he would enter on Palm Sunday, lamented, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling” (Mt 23:37). Jerusalem as a whole didn’t convert even when Jesus came. Do we convert with the true prophets? Do we follow what they say so that Jesus, through them, can gather us together under his wings? And often the prophets Jesus sends us are not dressed in sheepskin mantles, or religious vestments. Often they look literally like those with whom we live and work and go to school. When Jesus returned to Nazareth, he declared that a “a prophet is not without honor except in his own town, among his relatives and in his own home.” Do we accept, heed and honor prophets in our home? Do we listen to the saintly members of our extended family who urge us to a greater commitment to our faith? When a relative corrects us for a bad habit, or calls us to forgive, or asks us to pray, or summons us to greater charity, do we recognize that they might be the mouthpiece of God, or do we respond defensively or by pointing out that person’s failings and defects to deflect from our own? How we respond to true prophets is the first application.
- The second and main application I’d like to ponder is the fact that by our Baptism and our Confirmation each of us now shares in Christ’s prophetic work. He has sent us out to proclaim the Gospel to every creature, teaching them to carry out everything he has commanded us, promising that he will be with us always until the end of time. Jesus has chosen us to spread his Word, to pass on the faith. He has called, constituted and commissioned us to be his prophets. Our example is already a form of prophecy in body language. Are we, by our words and deeds, true prophets or false ones? Are our words and deeds a faithful echo of Jesus’? What fruit do we bear: spiritual grapes and figs or wild grapes and toxic berries? What fruit do others bear as a result of their interaction with us?
- Regardless of how we’ve done until now — and perhaps some of us have never really focused on it as much as we should have — how do we become the types of true prophets the Lord desires? How do we bear good fruit? Jesus tells us in today’s Gospel that it’s by becoming a good tree, because a good tree produces good fruit naturally. And how do we become a good tree? By staying attached to Christ. Jesus tells us in the Gospel of St. John (Jn 15:1-8) that he is the vine and we are the branches. As long as we stay attached to him, he promises us that we will bear much fruit. But he also tells us that apart from him, we can do nothing. To bear fruit as a prophet we need to remain in him and him in us, to be in the state of grace, to abide in his word and let it abide in us, to remain in a Holy Communion of will and life. That’s the first step.
- The second step is how we remain attached to him as fruitful branches to the vine. That’s the principal work of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit incorporates us into Christ and helps us to bear fruit that will last. St. Paul describes the work and fruit of the Holy Spirit in his letter to the Galatians. Those who are “true prophets” — those who are sheep and shepherds in sheep’s clothing, who live with integrity, who preach the Gospel by their good fruit and not just by their words, who do not just call upon God and prayer but glorify him in doing his will, who “present them as slaves to righteousness for sanctification” — bear the following fruit of the Spirit: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” These are strong, not soft, words. Each of them is an attribute of Jesus. Love means we are willing to lay down our lives for friends rather than live for pleasure; joy means that we have Christ’s happiness in us, especially at the conversion of sinners (Lk 15); peace means that we have the tranquility that Jesus gives and the world can’t give or take away, which also occasionally involves the sword of rejection even by family members who don’t order their lives to Christ; patience means we bear with others’ faults and our own, never giving up on the Lord’s will to forgive and unite us; kindness means unconquerable benevolence even toward those who make themselves our enemies and persecutors; generosity means sacrificing to the point of heroism, not just what we have left over but even what we need; faithfulness means fidelity to Christ and to others, even and especially when it’s hard and everyone else is capitulating; meekness means the strength not to have to retaliate with the world’s fallen means; self-control means the self-mastery so that we do what we ought and by God’s grace follow the Lord’s will in season and out of season. This is the good fruit that true prophets bear and help produce in those who receive their prophetic words and deeds on good soil. This is a challenging list, but we should never lose sight of the fact that the apostles, the first prophets of the New Testament prophets, were not spiritual superheroes, but people much like us, with faults and failings. But they corresponded to the power of the Holy Spirit who came down on them on Pentecost and over time bore fruit that has lasted not only down to our day but will last into eternity. Today is an occasion for us to recognize that God wants us to cooperate with the Holy Spirit just as efficaciously as they did, so that through us the Holy Spirit we, like them, can bear effective witness to the saving presence of God in the world.
- The false prophets, St. Paul goes on to say, are those who bear another type of fruit, because their “tree” is corrupted, because they’re no longer attached to Christ the vine. To use today’s words from his Letter to the Romans, they’re “slaves to impurity and to lawlessness.” Returning to his Letter to the Galatians, we find what that impurity and lawlessness produces. He says the works of the flesh are “immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, rivalry, jealousy, outbursts of fury, acts of selfishness, dissensions, factions, occasions of envy, drinking bouts, orgies, and the like.” We see these works often in false prophets today. There are Catholics — including clergy and religious — who preach and live a pseudo-gospel of various types of immorality and impurity, drinking bouts, orgies and the like. They often treat sexual sins as eighth sacraments that need to be celebrated and indulged rather than things that need to be repented of and confessed. There are even some Catholic parishes in our city that are sadly infamous for coddling and celebrating such behavior, something that should lead all of us to do reparation. But there are also Catholics, including clergy and religious, who preach and live with hatreds, rivalry, outbursts of anger, envy and jealousy, selfishness, dissensions and factions, who are constantly judging not just other people’s actions but their souls, who are cesspools of complaints, criticisms, and separations. Sometimes parishes, sometimes even traditional communities, get reputations for these types of works of the flesh, and we must do reparation for them, too. Both types of bad fruit scandalize and drive many others away. Both are false prophecy. And today we need to ask, honestly, whether we’re producing the fruit of the spirit or the works of the flesh, whether by our deeds and body language, we’re preaching Christ and attracting others to him and to the life of God, or whether we are in fact dishonoring him, harming ourselves, and hurting others.
- The outcome of these two types of prophetic living, the false and the true, cannot be clearer. This is the ultimate good or rotten fruit. St. Paul in today’s epistle describes that “the end of those things [life according to the flesh] is death” and in his Letter to the Galatians, he says, “those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God” because they’re permanently choosing to live outside of it. On the other hand, for true prophets, he says today, “the benefit that you have leads to sanctification, and its end is eternal life,” reiterating, “the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” One is a path of eternal life, another is of eternal death, of everlasting self-separation from the kingdom. What path are we going to choose? Notice I didn’t ask, “What path do we want?,” because it’s clear that each of us would want the path that leads to life. But the question is which path will we will, will we choose, in concrete choices, over and over again? And what path will we help others to choose? The choice of being a true prophet is not just a path of moral integrity and cooperation with the Spirit, but one that recognizes that we need to know our faith enough to be able to pass it on with accuracy and conviction. To choose that path of being a true prophet means to take seriously our mission to preach the faith, in season and out of season, with our lips and our lives, showing as best we can the attractiveness of a life lived in accordance with God’s truth, goodness and beauty.
- Beware of false prophets. Become true prophets. Today is a day on which the Lord is calling us to ask above all whether our lives are true or false representations of him, whether we’re bearing good fruit that is giving glory to our Father in heaven. The Lord who today calls us to be good trees, seek prayerfully the will of God and then, in accordance with his grace, do it, is prepared to give us all the help he knows we need. He calls us to be “slaves of God” with willing hearts, following the path of sanctification that leads to eternal life, bearing the fruit of the Spirit so that others, when they think of us, see us resemble Christ’s and Mary’s and the saints’ love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. And if we sense that with regard to this divine summons, our spirit is willing but our flesh is weak, today, at Mass, Jesus seeks to strengthen us. He comes as the Vine to attach us anew to Him as branches, promising us that if we remain in him, and he in us, we will bear fruit that will last into eternity. This is our faith. This is the faith of the Church. How proud we are to profess it, inside Church and out, in Christ our Lord!
The readings for today’s Mass were:
A reading for the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans
I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your nature. For just as you presented the parts of your bodies as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness for lawlessness, so now present them as slaves to righteousness for sanctification. For when you were slaves of sin, you were free from righteousness. But what profit did you get then from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now that you have been freed from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit that you have leads to sanctification, and its end is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
The continuation of the Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew
Jesus said to his disciples: “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but underneath are ravenous wolves. By their fruits you will know them. Do people pick grapes from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles? Just so, every good tree bears good fruit, and a rotten tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a rotten tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. So by their fruits you will know them. “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.
