Choosing the Better Part, 16th Sunday (C), July 17, 2022

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Saint Monica Parish, Kalamazoo, MI
Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, C
July 17, 2022
Gen 18:1-10, Ps 15, Col 1:24-28, Lk 10:38-42

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

The following text guided the homily: 

It is such a great joy for me to be with you, brothers and sisters, to celebrate with you, and thank God abundantly for, the upcoming twentieth anniversary of perpetual Eucharistic adoration here at St. Monica’s. For the last 7,217 days, Jesus Christ has been here blessing those who have come into his presence, and for the previous 173,199 (8 am) [173,201 (10 am); 173,203 (noon)] hours and counting, one or more from Saint Monica’s and Catholics from surrounding parishes have been here to receive Jesus’ Eucharistic love and to love him back. What an incredible gift on the part of the Lord and what an extraordinarily grateful response on behalf of this parish!

To get to this point requires more than just a pastor on fire like Father Lawrence Farrell, who ardently loved the Lord Jesus and longed to see Jesus loved and adored by his people. It demands more than a few devout parishioners who share those loves and act on them, making commitments rain or shine, sleet or snow, health or pandemic, to come to be with Jesus who never ceases to be truly present for us. It is a collective work that needs at least hundreds of committed people, hour by hour, week by week, year by year, in a holy relay of faith and love. And that’s what the parishioners of Saint Monica’s have remarkably done together. And so we celebrate these 20 years of graces, with gratitude to God for all the prayers heard, souls converted, minds renewed, wounds healed, miracles granted, vocations unveiled, disciples strengthened, families transformed, apostolates initiated, neighborhoods and cities changed, and states, countries and the world lifted up.

My name is Father Roger Landry and it’s a great honor for me to be here to celebrate with you, and without a doubt, with Saint Monica, Our Lady, St. Joseph and all the happy heavenly host of angels and saints. I’m a priest of the Diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts, and am one of 56 priests the US Bishops have appointed as National Eucharistic Preachers as part of the three-year Eucharistic Revival that the Church in the United States began a month ago on the Solemnity of Corpus Christi. I’m grateful to your new pastor, Father Russell Homic, to Deacon Kurt Lucas, and to Anne Cooper, the Head Coordinator of St. Monica’s Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration Chapel for their invitation to come to preach this Parish Eucharistic Mission, for their warm welcome, and for all the work they’ve done in preparation for it.

The U.S. Bishops have initiated this three-year Eucharistic revival because they know the Church in our country is presently experiencing a crisis in Eucharistic faith and love. Extensive recent surveys have shown, for example, that only three of ten Catholics believe what the Church believes about the Holy Eucharist, that after the words of consecration, what began as bread and wine are totally changed — the technical term is transubstantiated — into Jesus Christ, his Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity. The Eucharist is not a symbol. The Eucharist is not bread and wine. The Eucharist is really, truly, and substantially Jesus, the same Jesus through whom all things were made, who took on human nature in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who was adored by shepherds and magi, grew up and worked as a carpenter in Nazareth, precociously amazed the scholars in the temple, was baptized by John in the Jordan, who called the apostles, preached from mountains, valleys, boats and synagogues, who cured the sick, blind, deaf, mute, crippled and possessed, who walked on water, who suffered, was crucified, died, rose on the third day, and ascended to the Father’s right hand. The same Jesus. Therefore, the Eucharist is a double-miracle: by the power of the Holy Spirit working through a priest ordained to act in the person of Christ, not only are the bread and wine changed into Jesus but the appearances of bread and wine wondrously remain, so that we won’t be nauseated as we eat Jesus’ body given for us and drink his blood poured out for us. Seven out of ten Catholics — the vast majority of whom have attended Catholic schools and religious education programs, and who have been prepared for and made not just their first Holy Communion but received the Lord hundreds or even thousands of times — do not believe that they are actually receiving the Lord Jesus. That’s the first crisis, a real crisis of Eucharistic faith.

The second crisis is not of Eucharistic faith but of love. Even among the three of ten Catholics who believe what the Church professes, many do not come to Mass to be with, adore and receive Jesus. Across the country, after COVID, only one of five Catholics attends Mass each Sunday, and half of those who come say that they believe the Eucharist is just a symbol. What that means — and I apologize for all the math — is only one of three Catholics overall who believes in Jesus’ real presence in the Eucharist comes to receive him each Sunday [half of the Mass-going 20 percent is 10 percent, versus 30 percent of the total Catholic population].

There are plenty of challenges the Church faces, but the crisis in Eucharistic faith and love is the greatest crisis of all, because, as the Second Vatican Council teaches, the Eucharistic Jesus is the source, summit, root and center of the Christian life. Jesus has given himself to us on the altar and in our tabernacles as our spiritual nourishment and in order to be with us always until the end of time. If we don’t believe that God is with us in the Eucharist, and if we do not come to receive his love and love him back, then our individual lives as Catholics, not to mention our parishes, Dioceses, and all our institutions, are enfeebled and endangered. The early Church proclaimed Ecclesia de Eucaristia pointing to the reality that the Church draws its very life from Jesus in the Eucharist, and if we are not attached to him as body to head and bride to bridegroom, then we are essentially lifeless, like branches severed from the vine.

That’s why what you have been doing here at Saint Monica’s for the last twenty years is so important, not just within the Diocese of Kalamazoo, but for the Church in the United States and beyond. By means of perpetual Eucharistic adoration, you are proclaiming in action the Church’s faith and love for Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. You are not coming to worship and receive a thing, however holy; you are coming to adore God and to enter into life-changing communion with Him. Throughout this Eucharistic revival, the bishops of the United States are hoping that many parishes, in fact, every parish, will start to become truly Eucharistic parishes like yours. And I’m here on their behalf not only to thank you and thank God for your witness of Eucharistic faith and love, but to ask you to help spread that faith and love and to pray for it without ceasing before Christ perpetually exposed in the perpetual adoration chapel. Jesus said in the Gospel, “To whom more is given, more is to be expected” (Lk 12:48). You have been blessed as a parish with a resplendent Eucharistic faith and love and I want to invite you not to rest on your laurels, but to correspond to God’s help to make your flame even greater. The theme of this Mission, taken from St. Thomas Aquinas’ beautiful sequence for Corpus Christi, is “Dare to Do All You Can.” It’s a challenge not just to do “something,” not just to do a “little more,” but boldly to strive to do all you can do out of love for Jesus who has loved us to the last drop of his precious blood. I’d encourage you in that spirit to dare to come to this Mission tonight and Monday night at 7, and, if you can, Monday and Tuesday morning at 8 am Mass, all of which will be integrated into this Mission. I’d encourage those who are not yet adorers to make a bold commitment to come to spend at least one of the 168 hours a week he gives us with Jesus in loving adoration. In that same spirit of daring to do all we can, I’d encourage those who are already adorers to talk to the Lord about how he might be asking you to increase the quality and quantity of your time together.

The readings that the Church gives us today show the importance of receiving Jesus’ Eucharistic self-gift, of spending time with him listening to him and loving him, of making the sacrifices necessary to prioritize him, and of responding to his help to make our whole life a participation in his.

In the Gospel, Jesus visits the house of his good friends Saints Martha and Mary. Both of them loved Jesus very much and both wanted not only to welcome him but to make him feel loved. But they did so in different ways. Martha sought to prepare a meal for Jesus and doubtless busied about getting the house, table, and food ready, while Mary just sat at Jesus’ feet listening to him. When Martha complained to Jesus asking him to tell Mary to do her fair share of the work, Jesus surprised Martha by gently correcting her: “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things, but there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken away from her.” Jesus wasn’t disparaging in the least all that Martha out of love was doing for him. He had in fact come as one who serves, told us that the greatest among us would be the one who would serve the rest, who even at the Last Supper, himself washed the feet of his disciples as an example that just as he had done, so they should do. Jesus was grateful for Martha’s loving commitment and service. But he was helping her to see that as good as what she was doing was, there was something more important, a “better part,” a “one thing necessary,” which Mary had chosen and that Martha as of yet hadn’t recognized. That better part and unum necessarium is Jesus himself. Jesus had come to their home in Bethany essentially not to be fed but to feed, and it was only Mary, seated at Jesus’ feet, hanging on his every word, who received that gift.

Many of us are like Martha. As Americans, we are a hard-working lot, who proudly pick ourselves up from our own bootstraps and cherish our independence and self-reliance. Not only do we ask ourselves not what our country can do for us but what we can do for our country, but we similarly focus not on what God has done for us but on what we should do for God. We dedicate a lot of time to doing things for Him, for the Church, for our family members, for others through our work and through various forms of volunteer service. This is obviously good up to a point. But Jesus reminds us today that something is better. And he wants us, like Mary, to choose that better part. He wants us to choose him. To choose him at Mass, to come to Mass not just because we have to (as we do on Sundays and holy days of obligation), but because we want to. One of the most consequential decisions I ever made was on September 23, 1988 as a freshman in college when I asked myself whether there was anything more important I could be doing on a given day than receiving God himself inside through Holy Communion at Mass, and I chose that day to become a daily Massgoer. Since the following day, by God’s mercy, I have never missed receiving Jesus in Holy Communion each day — 12,350 days and counting — and God has blessed me abundantly, grace upon grace for choosing him each day as the better part. I’d urge everyone to try to make a similar choice to come as often as you can to Mass during the week. I know that some of you, because of a conflict between Mass times and your work and school schedules may not be able to come, but I’d hope that you’d at least desire to come, to want to choose Jesus as the better part, and to make an effort to do so on days off or during vacations. For me it was one of the most important choices of my life. Likewise, Jesus is encouraging us to choose him in prayerful adoration and to make the time to come, like Mary, to sit at his feet in prayerful adoration. In one of the parishes where I was pastor in Massachusetts, I remember especially many of the men, veterans and Knights of Columbus, whom I asked to play sentinel for the Lord during the night hours. They were not particularly enthusiastic, but did so because their pastor had asked them. But after a few months of doing so, several came to me to thank me for having asked them, saying that doing so was one of the best choices they ever made in life. I’d invite you to experience the same blessing. Jesus wants us freely to choose him as the better part. He wants us to recognize that he is the “one thing necessary,” that being with him, like Mary of Bethany was, is the one thing we really “have to” do, and freely to order our life in accordance with that realization.

This lesson is reinforced in today’s first reading. The Lord himself visits Abraham, revealing himself mysteriously as one-God-in-three-persons, appearing as “three men” but whom our father in faith recognized and addressed in the singular as one “Lord” and “Sir.” Abraham first and foremost welcomed God with love and hospitality, bringing water, bathing the feet of each person. Then he prepared a proto-Eucharistic feast, preparing bread from the finest flower and sacrificing a tender, choice steer. In response to God, he was offering back both bread and a sacrifice of true flesh. The Eucharist is the fulfillment of this act. God similarly wants us to welcome him and respond to him, as we offer him not bread and beef, but Christ himself as the Sacrificial Victim under the appearances of bread and wine. There’s no greater means to welcome and worship the Lord that in the way that Christ fulfilled Abraham’s sacrifice. And we see the fruit of it. In the scene from Genesis, Sarah miraculously conceives her first son, Isaac, at 91 years old. What happens us is something even greater: it’s essentially what happened within the Blessed Virgin Mary, as in the Eucharist, the same Jesus who became man and dwelled in Mary’s womb for nine months, comes to abide in us!

Saint Paul in today’s second reading points to the centrality of the Eucharist in salvation history. He urged the Colossians to make up in their flesh what is lacking in Christ’s sufferings for the sake of his body, the Church. Christ’s sacrifice on Calvary, we know, was perfect; in itself, it lacks nothing. But our participation in that sacrifice is incomplete. We need to conform ourselves to it more and more so that as the apostle says, the mystery “hidden … from ages past but now … manifested to [God’s] holy ones” may be revealed. And what’s that great mystery? St. Paul tells us: it’s “Christ in you, the hope for glory.” “Christ in you” means literally Christ in us, which happens in the Holy Eucharist. The way we make up in our flesh what’s lacking in Christ’s sacrifice on Golgotha is by entering more fully into Christ in the Mass, living truly Eucharistic lives. At the ordination of a priest, the bishop presents him with a chalice and a paten with bread and says, “Receive the oblation of the holy people, to be offered to God. Understand what you will do. Imitate what you will celebrate. Conform your life to the mystery of the Lord’s Cross.” All of us are called to understand what we are doing in the Mass, to imitate it and to conform our life to it. That is the way we become other Christs in the middle of the world, as the greatest mystery of all, Christ in us, becomes revealed. This is, St. Paul says, our hope for glory, because our Eucharistic communion is our embryonic participation here on earth in the glory of heaven, which Jesus promises to all those who eat his flesh and drink his blood with faith.

The final encouragement God gives us today through his holy word is in the Psalm. We prayed, “He who does justice will live in the presence of the Lord,” which means the righteous person, the holy person, lives in God’s presence. That’s what it means to live a Eucharistic life, to respond to the gift of the Lord’s real presence in the Eucharist by coming to adore him, to receive him, and to relate all aspects of our life to him. That’s the type of life Christ wants for us. That’s the type of existence the U.S. Bishops, through this Eucharistic revival, are hoping all Catholics in our country will come to seek, love and live. That’s the type of life Jesus wants you and I to choose as the better part.

So as we begin this parish Mission, thanking God for so many graces during the last 20 years, we ask him to help all of the parishioners of St. Monica’s to build on that holy and firm foundation. We ask God the Father to send out the Holy Spirit to inspire us to dare to do all we can in response to the ongoing self-giving love of his Son in the Holy Eucharist, starting during these days of Mission. We ask him for the grace to choose Him as the better part and one thing necessary, to sit in adoration at his feet like Mary and prayerfully listen to his wisdom. We ask him to help us, like Abraham, to welcome and worship him, by entering more fully, consciously, lovingly and frequently into the sacrifice of the Mass so that we may make up in our flesh whatever is not in conformity with Christ’s sacrifice from the Last Supper and Calvary and thereby enter into the mystery of mysteries, which is Christ — literally, astonishingly, Eucharistically — in us. And we ask him to help us to live in his Eucharistic presence all the days of our life until we come to share in the fulfillment of the Eucharist mystery of Christ in us at the heavenly banquet, together with Saint Monica and all the angels and saints. This is our faith. This is the faith of the Church. How proud and blessed we are to profess it and live it in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.

God bless you!

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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