Children on Fire for God the Father’s Self-Revelation in Christ, Fifteenth Wednesday (I), July 17, 2019

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Wednesday of the 15th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Memorial of the Carmelite Martyrs of Compiègne
July 19, 2017
Ex 3:1-6.9-12, Ps 103, Mt 11:25-27

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today, after several days of focusing on the Christian mission of announcing the kingdom and the welcome or rejection the sowers will receive, our readings turn to God’s revelation of himself and the conditions are for us to receive and respond well to that self-revelation so that we may come to grow in the personal knowledge and love of God.
• In the first reading, God reveals himself to Moses in two ways. Tomorrow we will cover a third. The first was in the burning bush. Moses was fascinated by the sight of a bush on fire but not being consumed by the flames, saying to himself, “I must go over to look at this remarkable sight, and see why the bush is not burned.” God reveals himself as an inexhaustible flame, someone who’s love is infinite and never-ending, someone whose fire continues undimmed without consuming and absorbing into itself the bush or reality it pervades. The second way God reveals himself is as “the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.” He is a personal God. Unlike the pagan deities who were gods of things — fire, war, the sun, eros, etc. — God reveals himself as the God of people. He seeks to enter into relationship with us. God wants us to know him not as an object of study but as an intimate friend, and when we come to know him in this way, we know him as a Father who loves us with an unquenchable burning love.
• In the Gospel today, Jesus describes that it is the will of the Father to reveal himself to us, but Jesus puts two conditions or our receptivity to God’s self-revelation. First, God reveals himself to us in his Son, and then second, in order to receive that revelation in Jesus, we need as spiritual children to enter into Jesus’ own filiation. Jesus tells us, “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.” The way we come to know God the Father and the depth of his ardent love is through Jesus’ revealing him to us. Jesus is the icon of the Father and also speaks not only of the Father but also what he hears the Father saying. His whole mission on earth was to help us establish this loving bond with the Father, teaching us by his example and explicit instructions to pray, “Our Father.” And the way we enter into that relationship with the Father is not just through spiritual childhood but by entering into Jesus’ spiritual childhood. Jesus joyfully exclaims in prayer, “I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to the childlike. Yes, Father, such has been your gracious will!” We can’t get to know the Father as Father unless we see ourselves not just as children, but his children, and we do that in Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit. The wise and the clever of this world try to pretend as “grown-ups,” who say, “Thanks, but I’ve got it from here,” who seek to be self-sufficient rather than dependent on the Father, who behave like the sons in the Parable of the Prodigal Son, the first of whom treats the Father as if he is as good as dead to him and no longer needed, and the second treats him more as a slave master than as a dad. To receive the revelation of the Father we need to be open like children, we need to be receptive and trusting, we need to learn from Jesus, who is not only the revelation of the Father but also the revelation of how to relate to the Father as a beloved Son in whom the Father is well pleased.
• Today we celebrate the spiritual birthday of 16 religious sisters who related to God as his much loved daughters in Christ the Son and Bridegroom. The 16 Martyred Carmelite nuns of Compiègne 225 years ago today were beheaded one by one in Paris during the Terror of the French Revolution. These 11 Discalced nuns, three lay sisters and two Carmelite tertiaries, refused to obey the Civil Constitution that mandated the suppression of their monastery and prayed for the restoration of peace to France and to the Church. They, spouses of Christ, were treated as traitors and experienced the sword of the guillotine. At the foot of the scaffold, they together renewed their vows and sang the Veni Creator Spiritus. As they mounted the scaffold, one by one, from the novices, to the lay sisters and externs, through the Prioress, they began to sing and kept singing until the last was killed. There are different accounts of what they were singing, probably because the listeners were not totally familiar with the tunes. Some said they were singing the Salve Regina, as they were accustomed to do at Compline each day before going to bed, entrusting themselves to the Mother who prayed for them at every moment and was praying for them at the end of their life, preparing to show them after their exile the blessed fruit of her womb. Others say they were singing the Laudate Dominum, Psalm 117, which is sung at the foundation of a new monastery, because they were all being translated to the monastery of the Father’s house. The Reign of Terror ended only a few days after their martyrdom and it’s routinely ascribed that their blood extinguished the fire of that terror. They were able to do this because they knew of God’s fiery, personal love for each of them incarnate in Jesus and they were willing to enter into that Living Flame of Love.
• God’s self-revelation and our receptivity and response to it come to their daily culmination, as it did for the martyrs of Compiegne, at the altar. Pope Benedict is fond of quoting Origen who said about Jesus in the Eucharist, “Whoever draws near to me draws near the fire.” We draw near to the one who came to light the earth on fire, the one who burns with Passion but doesn’t consume us, the one who hopes that we’ll be the bush through which he’ll burn in the world without destroying our identity but perfecting it. This is the place in which we allow Jesus to become our God, the source, summit, root, center and simply most important reality and relationship in our life. This is the place in which God the Father reveals his Son and that Son, the icon, shows the depth of the Father’s love. This is the means by which we get younger — going up to the altar of God who gives joy to your youth — as we recall the joy of our first Communion each time we receive the same Lord Jesus. And this is the means by which we like the Carmelite Sisters 225 years ago today, are prepared to meet the Lord with love at the end of our life. May we recognize not only that this is holy ground but that God wants to make us his holy, burning abode!

The readings for today’s Mass were: