Christian Perseverance in Reading the Writing on the Wall, 34th Wednesday (I), November 29, 2023

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Wednesday of the 34th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Votive Mass for the Faithful Departed
November 29, 2023
Dan 5:5:1-6.13-14.16-17.23-28, Dan 3, Lk 21:12-19

To listen to a recording of today’s homily, please click here: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• November is a month in which we pray for our faithful departed and focus on the last things, especially about our call to holiness and heaven. It’s also a month in which the Church forms us concretely for what is to come. In the early Church, catechumens could not be baptized until they were ready to be martyrs, because many of them would be threatened with martyrdom as soon as they were Christians. As we ponder Jesus’ words at the end of his journey to Jerusalem, we can see that he was doing the same. He was telling us what was to come so that we wouldn’t be surprised, shocked, scandalized, or paralyzed when they occurred, and so that, just like a soldier well-trained in boot camp for war, we might be prepared to know what to do when these eventualities transpire.
• In the Gospel Jesus describes what was coming for his faithful followers. Just like would happen to him, so they, too, would be seized and persecuted, handed over to religious and civil leaders, thrown in prison, betrayed my family members and friends, hated by all, and even martyred. But he also told them why it would occur: so that they would be able to give witness. Sometimes persecution is the Christian’s greatest pulpit. Jesus told them not to worry about what to say, that the Holy Spirit would teach them what to say, and despite their martyrdom, not a single follicle would be destroyed but that all would be restored — even to the baldest of them! — in the resurrection. “By your perseverance,” he stressed, “you will secure your lives.” He was stressing — in words that are highly relevant to our age of rampant personal insecurity — that real security comes from building our whole life on God. Once we do, nothing in all of creation — not persecution, peril or the sword (Rom 8:31-39) — will be able to separate us from God. By persevering in faith, we will be secure now and secure later, even if all fleeting forms of worldly security disappear. This is a lesson we always need to learn. The first Christians suffered so much, including the plundering of their property and even their lives, as we read in the Letter to the Hebrews (10:34), but they didn’t fear, because they had a greater security in God. True security in God can’t be given by the world or stolen by those in the world. That’s why the martyrs in every age weren’t afraid even while suffering torture or death.
• There’s a great contrast between this type of security in faith in relation with God that Jesus wants us to have even in the humanly worst of circumstances and the type of insecurity we see in King Belshazzar in today’s first reading. He was living outwardly very securely. He was throwing a banquet for 1,000 courtiers and their wives at a time of great prosperity. He decided to have some of the 5,400 gold and silver chalices that King Nebuchadnezzar had stolen from Jerusalem brought out, using what was sacred for the Jews for their drunken party. But when, straight out of a script of the Addams’ Family television program, a hand started writing on the wall, we see that his security was just an outward show: “When the king saw the wrist and hand that wrote,” the Prophet Daniel tells us, “his face blanched; his thoughts terrified him, his hip joints shook, and his knees knocked.” None of his pagan experts could mollify his anxiety, because no matter how smart they were, they didn’t have divine wisdom, which is the capacity to look at things from God’s perspective. Daniel, the one who had interpreted King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, was brought in and he was able to interpret the three words that were being written on the wall: mene, tekel, peres, which were three terms for coins. Mene was a full payment, and Daniel used it to express that Belshazzar’s kingdom was “fulfilled” or all over; a tekel was 1/60 of a mene, indicating that Belshazzar doesn’t weigh very much; and peres, which was half of mene, indicating that his kingdom would be divided in half. Belshazzar’s kingdom would come to an end that very night when his kingdom and the palace would be invaded by Darius and Belshazzar would be killed. The gold head we read about yesterday was eliminated by the silver torso. Like the man in the parable whom Jesus called foolish for building bigger grain bins to store his harvest only to have his life taken that very night, Belshazzar was an even bigger fool, sacrilegiously debauching the things of God not realizing that he would be weighed in the balance and found less secure than a feather. Today there are still many who, even though they’re in prominent positions with body guards or have incredible houses with state-of-the-art security systems, aren’t really secure at all. There are also many who, as they approach their own mene or the fulfillment of their life, might indeed be as weighty as a tekel because their life is peres, or divided, among many things. The writing on the wall of King Belshazzar’s palace is also written for us.
• Today God the Father is not sending a hand to start moving on the walls of this chapel, but his Son, who in the Eucharistic Prayer we’ll use, is described as the “hand You stretch out to sinners.” We will not take up sacred vessels to use for alcohol, but Jesus himself will take up a chalice and change wine into his blood. He will seek to make us, indeed, vessels used not for debauchery but to give him “glory and eternal praise.” This is the greatest means by which we will become not tekel but qadosh, weighty or holy, and have our names written by God’s hand in the eternal book of life.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Reading 1
DN 5:1-6, 13-14, 16-17, 23-28

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