Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Monday of the 25th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Memorial of St. Padre Pio of Pietrelcina
September 23, 2019
Ezra 1:1-6, Ps 126, Lk 8:16-18
To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
The following points were attempted in the homily:
- Today we get the first of three days from the Book of Ezra, the only three days in the two-year daily lectionary. It begins three weeks of post-exilic writings in which we will have two days of Haggai, three days of Zechariah, two days of Nehemiah, two days of Baruch, three days of Jonah, one day of Malachi and two days of Joel, before we enter into a four-week examination of St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans. These post-exilic writings focus essentially on two things: first, the rebuilding of the temple and, second, the way of holiness so that there is never again an exile from God. In today’s passage from the prophet Ezra, we ponder the extraordinary decision by the non-Jewish King Cyrus not only to allow the Jews to return home from Babylon, but also to help them to rebuild the Temple of Jerusalem. Cyrus encouraged everyone, Jews and non-Jews, to participate in the rebuilding of the house of God, by giving this “silver, gold, good, cattle, … [and] free-will offerings.” We know that this Temple rebuilding project is more than just about a building. It points phophetically to Jesus’ incarnation, to the destruction of the temple of his Body and its resurrection on the third day, and on the way he wishes to rebuild each of us to become, individually and together, the temple of God, where he, Risen, dwells within.
- The simple architectural plans for the rebuilding project are found in the Gospel. Jesus’ message can be summarized by his saying, “Take care how you hear.” He wishes that we build ourselves on the rock of his word, that we bear abundant fruit from the seed of his teaching sown within us, that we faithfully receive with faith what he generous gives with love.
- He tells us, “No one who lights a lamp conceals it with a vessel or sets it under a bed; rather, he places it on a lamp stand so that those who enter may see the light.” In other words, if we’re listening correctly, we’re hearing what he seeks to implant as “words to be done.” It’s not supposed to remain hidden, private or secret, but is meant to illumine the world. If we’re not listening with this apostolic dimension, we’re not going to bear abundant fruit. We’re not going to be fully rebuilt on the rock.
- He adds, “There is nothing hidden that will not become visible, and nothing secret that will not be known and come to light.” Jesus tells us that if we’re fighting to give our full wits to his words, even if we’re struggling, that effort, too, will one day be known. He’s also saying that if we fake as if we’re paying close attention, our going through the exterior motions will eventually be exposed.
- He then concludes, “To anyone who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he seems to have will be taken away.” This is a law of physical exercise, musical growth, and intellectual progress: we use it or we lose it. To the one who gives the word both ears as well as the mind and the heart, he will become more and more fruitful; but to the one who is not really hanging on every word, he’ll lose eventually even that superficial adherence. This is what we see, unfortunately when priests, religious or Christians “lose” their vocation by not living the truth God proclaims to them.
- Today the Church celebrates someone who truly became Jesus’ temple and instrument to build others on him who is the Cornerstone, someone who heard the word of God faithfully and responded. St. Pio of Pietrelcina shows us how what the Lord gives is meant to be shared. This was true of the faith, hope and love given to him, as it was of the more unique gifts, like the sacred stigmata with which he was marked for fifty years, his capacity to read souls, the gift of bilocation, the working of miracles, and the prediction of the future. When I ponder St. Pio, I always think back to what St. Paul VI said about him when he visited San Giovanni Rotondo after his death, praising Padre Pio not for those inimitable qualities but for what all of us can emulate: “He said Mass humbly, … heard confessions from dawn to dusk … and was a man of prayer and suffering.” In each of these four ways the Lord was building him up and through him building up the Church. In each of these ways he was hearing what the Lord was asking and helping others to hear the same message.
- Through the Mass, he was built up and helped others to be built up. The early Christians taught “Ecclesia de Eucaristia,” that the Church lives by the Eucharist, that the Eucharist makes the Church. We see that truth displayed in St. Pio’s discipleship and apostolate. He was united to Christ and sought to bring people to him in the Mass. His daily Mass used to last a few hours, as he united himself to the Lord’s prayer from the Upper Room and from the Cross. Despite the crowds who attended each day, the local ecclesiastical authorities for a time banned him from celebrating the Mass publicly because they thought three hours was scandalously too long. I wonder whether the same well-meaning but myopic authorities would have tried to hurry Jesus, too, during the agonizingly slow 3-6 hours he took to offer his body and blood on the Cross! But St. Pio knew he was hearing Christ preach in the Mass and welcoming him into his hands on the altar, and he wasn’t going to place anything else ahead of entering into that moment. He sought to help everyone else learn from his reverence how the Mass should fill us with awe and lead us to glorify God.
- He sought to restore people to Christ through his indefatigable work in the Confessional. From dawn until dusk, his immobile cross was the wooden box of the confessional, where he would mercifully seek to restore people’s souls to their baptismal beauty. To all who flocked to him, he held up the ideal of holiness, repeating to them: “Jesus has no interest outside of sanctifying your soul.” Confession is when the entire sacramental economy exists just for each of us, as we begin to experience what Saint Paul exclaimed to the Galatians, the “Christ died for me and gave his life up for me.” And by the time he gave to individual penitents, he should each of them just how valuable they were to God. All sin, as Pope Benedict wrote in his apostolic exhortation on the Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church (Verbum Domini), can be summarized by a refusal to hear and live the Word of God. He sought to heal that existential deafness so that we could hear and enflesh the Words of eternal life.
- Padre Pio was a man of prayer who urged others to pray, founding prayer groups all over the world. Even after long grueling hours in the confessional, he would spend much of the night in prayer. He once described himself as “only a poor friar who prays” and encouraged lay people to come together to pray in small groups, tens of thousands of which still exist across the globe under his celestial patronage. “In books we seek God,” he said, but “in prayer we find him. Prayer is the key that opens God’s heart.” In prayer we listen for God’s whisper and take care of what we hear!
- And he was a man of suffering who taught the world about the meaning of suffering together with the Lord’s sufferings. Paradoxically as we suffer, we can be built up more and more into Christ’s temple and help him rebuild his Church. Through suffering, we can make up what is lacking in ourselves of Christ’s sufferings for the sake of the Church. He was associated with the Lord’s sufferings on Calvary in a particular way through his stigmata. Two years before his priestly ordination, Padre Pio referred to this unique pathway of the Cross when he wrote, “In order to succeed in reaching our ultimate end we must follow the divine Head, who does not wish to lead the chosen soul on any way other than the one he followed; by that, I say, of abnegation and the Cross.” Christ does not call everyone to bear the stigmata, but he does call everyone to pick up his Cross daily and follow him along the way of the Cross. It is under the Cross, Padre Pio said, that “one learns to love.” It is for that reason, he said, “Calvary is the hill of the saints.” Padre Pio was united to Christ on the Cross in more ways than by the stigmata. For decades he suffered from the suspicions and calumny of many in his order who were confused by and perhaps envious of his divine predilection. He bore all these hardships humbly, with religious obedience, as a “crucible of purification.” When St. John Paul II visited his tomb, he said, “The life and mission of Padre Pio prove that difficulties and sorrows, if accepted out of love, are transformed into a privileged way of holiness, which opens onto the horizons of a greater good, known only to the Lord.” Similarly, he helped others to share in it through his founding of the Casa del Sollievo della Sofferenza as a first-rate hospital to care for those who were seriously ill, with paralysis and so many other diseases. It continues that mission until this day.
- In all of these ways, St. Pio built the muscles of faith and helped others to become similarly built on the rock. And his quiet, humble, hardworking faith has been exposed for all the Church to see. The fruitfulness of his response to God’s word, his truly becoming an image of the type of reconstruction project into God’s holy temple God desires for all of us, help us to see what’s possible when we fully align ourselves with God’s words. They inspire us to “take care what [we] hear,” just as much as he did, as we prepare to “do” Jesus’ words “in memory of” him.
The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 EZR 1:1-6
In the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia,
in order to fulfill the word of the LORD spoken by Jeremiah,
the LORD inspired King Cyrus of Persia
to issue this proclamation throughout his kingdom,
both by word of mouth and in writing:
“Thus says Cyrus, king of Persia:
‘All the kingdoms of the earth
the LORD, the God of heaven, has given to me,
and he has also charged me to build him a house in Jerusalem,
which is in Judah.
Therefore, whoever among you belongs to any part of his people,
let him go up, and may his God be with him!
Let everyone who has survived, in whatever place he may have dwelt,
be assisted by the people of that place
with silver, gold, goods, and cattle,
together with free-will offerings
for the house of God in Jerusalem.’”
Then the family heads of Judah and Benjamin
and the priests and Levites–
everyone, that is, whom God had inspired to do so–
prepared to go up to build the house of the LORD in Jerusalem.
All their neighbors gave them help in every way,
with silver, gold, goods, and cattle,
and with many precious gifts
besides all their free-will offerings.
Responsorial Psalm PS 126:1B-2AB, 2CD-3, 4-5, 6
R. (3) The Lord has done marvels for us.
When the LORD brought back the captives of Zion,
we were like men dreaming.
Then our mouth was filled with laughter,
and our tongue with rejoicing.
R. The Lord has done marvels for us.
Then they said among the nations,
“The LORD has done great things for them.”
The LORD has done great things for us;
we are glad indeed.
R. The Lord has done marvels for us.
Restore our fortunes, O LORD,
like the torrents in the southern desert.
Those that sow in tears
shall reap rejoicing.
R. The Lord has done marvels for us.
Although they go forth weeping,
carrying the seed to be sown,
They shall come back rejoicing,
carrying their sheaves.
R. The Lord has done marvels for us.
Alleluia MT 5:16
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Let your light shine before others,
that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel LK 8:16-18
Jesus said to the crowd:
“No one who lights a lamp conceals it with a vessel
or sets it under a bed;
rather, he places it on a lampstand
so that those who enter may see the light.
For there is nothing hidden that will not become visible,
and nothing secret that will not be known and come to light.
Take care, then, how you hear.
To anyone who has, more will be given,
and from the one who has not,
even what he seems to have will be taken away.”
