Choosing the Blessed Life in the Short Time We Have, 23rd Wednesday (II), September 9, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, New York
Wednesday of the 23rd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of St. Peter Claver
September 9, 2020
1 Cor 7:25-31, Ps 45, Lk 6:20-26

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• St. Paul tells the Corinthians today and us, “I tell you brothers, the time is running out. … The world in its present form is passing away.” The world is in the midst of a “present distress.” These words don’t mean that St. Paul was predicting the imminent end of the world, but rather that he was describing the urgency of reordering our priorities for the eternal rather than the ephemeral. The biggest trick in the devil’s arsenal, if he can’t convince us that he doesn’t exist, is to persuade us that there’s plenty of time “later” for us to get our act together, that there’s no urgency for us to make big choices for God now. Today St. Paul is continuing to teach both us and the Christians in Corinth the path to true wisdom, which is also the path by which we’ll be considered foolish by those who are worldly. But he’s not just indicating the path: he’s also urging us to choose to live by that path.
• There’s no greater illustration of the choice we’re called to make for what’s everlasting instead of what’s evanescent than what Jesus mentions in the Gospel today. This is St. Luke’s version of the Beatitudes, taken from Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain. The fact that there are differences between this version and what Jesus says in Matthew 5-7 in the Sermon on the Mount is a clear sign that Jesus returned to his central messages often and developed different nuances. Rather than the eight beatitudes he proclaimed on the mountain, today in the plain he focuses on four and contrasts them clearly to four “woes.” But his essential teaching remains the same: that the real path to happiness, the way to have life to the full forever, is not just different, but in fact opposite, than what those infected by spiritual worldliness often presume.
• Jesus makes four contrasts today.
  • The first is “Blessed are you who are poor, for the Kingdom of God is yours,” and “Woe to you are rich, for you have received your consolation.” It is simply revolutionary — not just in Jesus’ age, not just our era, but in every epoch — to believe that we’ll be happier if we’re poor than if we’re rich. Jesus says that the “rich” are to be pitied because they have already received their consolation in their money and possessions, whereas the poor are blessed because they are therefore able to seek with hope God and his kingdom. Material wealth is what those who live for the present age often believe will bring them happiness, but God’s kingdom is the hope and the treasure of those who are living knowing that time is running out and eternity is about to begin. Today many people, including Christians, spend more time nourishing their hope to win the lottery rather than to win the eternal bonanza, and Jesus says that these people are “woeful” because they think that the monopoly money and temporary houses on Park Avenue are more valuable that the Father’s House and treasure.
  • The second is “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be satisfied,” versus, “Woe to you who are filled now, for you will be hungry.” Like at Paul’s time with the Epicureans, there are many people today who have made pleasure their deity. St. Paul says in his letter to the Christians in Philippi that the “enemies of the Cross” have made their “bellies their god.” There are people who live to satiate their bodily appetites, obsessing about meals at restaurants, storing up precious wines in cellars, all living with their hearts set on earthly banquets and often, like the Rich Man in Jesus’ parable (Lk 16), ignoring those who don’t even have crumbs on which to eat each day. Jesus warns them with a “woe” that even though they are now filled and fattened, one day they will hunger for the things that matter most, just like the Rich Man Jesus describes. Those who are blessed, on the other hand, are those who are hungry for the eternal wedding banquet, hungry for God, hungry for what God hungers for. These are people who are hungry to receive Jesus in the Eucharist more than they do sumptuous breakfasts, filet mignon and lobster. These are people who hunger and thirst for holiness more than they do for water and sweets. This is a hunger that allows them to put off the “junk food” of the present world for the food of eternal life.
  • The third is “Blessed are you who are now weeping for you will laugh” and “Woe to you who laugh now, for you will grieve and weep.” There are always people who want to make fun their god, who make jokes out of life, who go from diversion to diversion, party to party, who don’t take life seriously because they’re living for the present moment unaware that the present moment is passing away. They try to escape from reality, seeking to insulate themselves from sadness and suffering as much as they can. They even make fun on occasion of those who are saddened by their own or other’s vicissitudes. They don’t realize that there will be a time when the music will stop, when all the lights will be turned on, and they’ll come face to face with their Creator and need to give an account of how they’ve invested the talent of their time, either in caring for others or in carousing (Mt 24). These people are woeful, even though those of the present age consider them blessed. The blessed, on the other hand, are those who weep now: weep over their and others’ misfortune, weep over their and others’  sins that have brought so much suffering and death into the world, weep over seeing Christ be crucified for the forgiveness of these sins, weep over so many who live as if God doesn’t exist, as if life has no direction or meaning, as if there’s not going to be a final exam of life. These are the people who weep like St. Monica, weep like Our Lady of LaSalette, weep like Martha and Mary of Bethany, weep like Mary Magdalene at the tomb, weep like Jesus over Jerusalem. Jesus says they’re blessed because one day they will laugh, not just the “last laugh” but a laugh that will last. They will laugh at how God has brought good out of evil. They will laugh at how what seemed so foolish in the perspective of eternity now seems so wise. They will laugh with the Good Thief and so many others who seemed so likely to reign forever with God eternally. They will laugh with those who successfully bet Pascal’s wager and won an eternal jackpot.
  • The last is “Blessed are you when people hate you, … exclude and insult you, and denounce your name as evil on account of the Son of Man” and “Woe to you when all speak well of you.” Jesus contrasts their fate in this world and in the next by comparing them to the true and false prophets. Here in this passing world the real prophets were persecuted and many of them even killed, whereas the false prophets, those who told the people what they wanted to hear, those who manipulated  their position to ingratiate themselves to their listeners rather than proclaiming to them God’s word even when unpleasant, were those who were praised and rewarded. But in the world that endures, it’s the true prophets who “rejoice and leap for joy” and who have in store a “great reward in heaven,” whereas the false prophets will be “grieving and weeping” either at having lost their souls in order to gain the esteem of kings and crowds or, if by God’s mercy some repented and made it, “grieving and weeping” at how many were lost because they turned the signs pointing to heaven around and led many into dead ends. Jesus says for us we’re blessed when we’re persecuted, when our lives and our speech are prophetic, and when we announce to people God’s revelation, both the consolations and the castigations. Such witness is called in Greek “martyrion” for a very good reason, because it is a challenge to worldly ways of living and will bring us, to some degree, to share in Christ’s own suffering to bring us the Good News. Jesus meant it when he said that if they hated him, they’d hate us, too, and we see that when we live conformed to Jesus. We’re called misogynists declaring war on women because we say with Jesus that no one, mothers included, should have the right to kill their children in or out of the womb. We’re called homophobic bigots — despite our love for those with same-sex attractions for whom Jesus died — for defending Jesus’ teaching on marriage as the life-long, fruitful, faithful union of one man and one woman. We’re called socialists or communists because of our defense of the poor together with Jesus. We’re called anti-American for reminding everyone that immigrants, both legal and illegal, are our brothers and sisters — are in fact, Christ in disguise (Mt 25) — and need to be embraced with love like we would embrace Christ or natural siblings. To be a Christian is to be a prophet, and to be a prophet is to suffer for the Gospel when the message of the Gospel is not in conformity with the spirit of the age. There are many false prophets who try to water down or change the Gospel to accommodate “modern times” and many others who by their behavior proclaim something other than the Gospel as the way to happiness and the path to please God. Jesus is essentially saying “Blessed are the true prophets” who live for God and for eternity and “Woe to the false prophets” who live for being praised by the mobs today rather than by God and the saints forever.
• Saint Paul’s teaching on how “time is running out,” how “the world in its present form is passing away,” and how about the “present distress” influences very much the “opinion” he gives in today’s passage, which has been misinterpreted often over the course of the centuries. His essential advice is, because the time is short, everyone should sanctify their present situation, “to remain as he is,” rather than look to change its externals. Those married should remain married, those not married should remain unmarried. We should not focus too much, he says, on earthly joys and sorrows, on purchases and possessions, or getting the most out of the world, but rather focus on God and living these moments fully for him, like Paul, so that we might live eternally. This teaching is always relevant. We know neither the day nor the hour. Jesus promises to come like a thief. And so we should live always ready, like a wise virgin with lamp lit and flasks full of oil. We can sanctify every situation, like marriage and virginity for the sake of the kingdom, and should not be looking to change our exterior as much as our interior. He makes clear that changing our exterior is not sinful, and we should, if we become convinced in the present that that is what God is asking of us, calling us to marry or to consecrate ourselves to him in apostolic chaste celibacy. But the key is living in the present with God, grounding ourselves on the eternal rock as the present world is passing away.
• Someone who lived the Beatitudes as Christ announces them today, someone who made the most out of his present moment and sought to help others sanctify their “present distress,” is St. Peter Claver, the great apostle to the slaves in Colombia. He was poor in spirit, hungered for holiness, wept over the condition of slaves and suffered as a result of his apostolic labors, but he was blessed and became an instrument for helping many others find hope in their present situation and set their sights on the place where every year will be turned to joy and where slaves will be set forever free. As a young Jesuit, he left his native Spain in order to go to Cartagena to minister to the African slaves when they would disembark after a brutal trans-Pacific journey, be sold and bought. Their condition was execrable. He spent his last 44 years of life as a slave to the slaves, a Good Samaritan, catechizing them by learning their dialects or finding translators, baptizing more than 300,000 of them, sharing their life and doing everything he could to introduce them to Christ and to how he has overturned worldly values. He slept in the slaves’ quarters rather than in their masters’ when he came to preach missions to them. And he sought to bring the message of conversion to the slaveowners. In the letter that the Church ponders on his feast day in the Office of Readings, he shows how everything culminated in introducing them to the mystery of God’s love on the Cross, so that they may unite their own sufferings to Christ and become truly interior free. “Yesterday, May 30, 1627, on the feast of the Most Holy Trinity,” he wrote to his Jesuit superiors, “numerous blacks, brought from the rivers of Africa, disembarked from a large ship. Carrying two baskets of oranges, lemons, sweet biscuits, and I know not what else, we hurried toward them. … We had to force our way through the crowd until we reached the sick. Large numbers of the sick were lying on the wet ground or rather in puddles of mud. … We laid aside our cloaks, therefore, and brought from a warehouse whatever was handy to build a platform. … There were two blacks, nearer death than life, already cold, whose pulse could scarcely be detected. With the help of a tile we pulled some live coals together and placed them in the middle near the dying men. Into this fire we tossed aromatics. Of these we had two wallets full, and we used them all up on this occasion. Then, using our own cloaks, for they had nothing of this sort, … we provided for them a smoke treatment, by which they seemed to recover their warmth and the breath of life. The joy in their eyes as they looked at us was something to see. This was how we spoke to them, not with words but with our hands and our actions. And in fact, convinced as they were that they had been brought here to be eaten, any other language would have proved utterly useless. Then we sat, or rather knelt, beside them and bathed their faces and bodies with wine. We made every effort to encourage them with friendly gestures and displayed in their presence the emotions that somehow naturally tend to hearten the sick. After this we began an elementary instruction about baptism, that is, the wonderful effects of the sacrament on body and soul. When by their answers to our questions they showed they had sufficiently understood this, we went on to a more extensive instruction, namely, about the one God, who rewards and punishes each one according to his merit, and the rest. We asked them to make an act of contrition and to manifest their detestation of their sins. Finally, when they appeared sufficiently prepared, we declared to them the mysteries of the Trinity, the Incarnation and the Passion. Showing them Christ fastened to the cross, as he is depicted on the baptismal font on which streams of blood flow down from his wounds, we led them in reciting an act of contrition in their own language.” Everything ultimately led to their focus on Christ fastened to the Cross and how the blood and water flowing from his side made Baptism a real share in his passion, death and resurrection. He was showing them how to enter into and participate in Christ’s sufferings. He was lead them to the reality of having Christ in them. He helped them to recognize Christ could make them rich in their poverty, and to sanctify their hunger, their sufferings, even their dehumanization, for Christ ultimately identified with them in their maltreatment. Today St. Peter Claver is praying for us that we may not be enslaved to the things of this pressing, passing age, but like those he catechized, rejoice in the reality of baptism, renew our faith in the Triune God, in the incarnation, in the passion, and in the resurrection, and set our hearts on the things that last.
• It’s at Mass that we focus on becoming anxious for the affairs of the Lord, that we prioritize God and live as if we don’t have all the time in the world left. We come here poor to receive Jesus’ richness, hungry to be fed, sorrowful and desiring to do reparation for our sins and those of the world, and seeking the strength to remain true even when we should have to suffer on account of our faith. Jesus comes to meet us and to him we listen, see and bend our ear!

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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