Coming with Joy Ever New into the Presence of the Bridegroom, 22nd Friday (I), September 3, 2021

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life
Friday of the 22nd Week of Ordinary Time, Year I
Memorial of Pope St. Gregory the Great
September 3, 2021
Col 1:15-20, Ps 100, Lk 4:33-39

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

The following points were attempted in the homily:

• Four times a year at daily Mass — on the 2nd Monday of Ordinary Time, on the Friday after Ash Wednesday, on the 13th Saturday, and on the 22nd Friday — the Church has us focus on Jesus’ words about feasting and fasting and the parables of the patch and of the wineskins. It is one of the most common themes we have, because it’s central to our life as believers. Jesus, in them, teaches us about how he wishes us to relate to him. He has come to give us new life but the new life is not a minor revision to our “operating system,” to eliminate some “bugs” in the software; rather it’s a thorough revamp. At the time of Jesus there were three purposes for fasting: reparation for one’s sins and those of others; supplication, or prayer in the body, for some petition; and the desire for authentic self-mastery through the capacity to say “no” to one’s appetite for food and “yes” to some other purpose, developing a moral muscle that can help to say no to other temptations in order faithfully to say yes to God. These purposes flowing from Old Testament times were not bad or immoral. But Jesus today gives thoroughly new purpose. He says the purpose of fasting is to help us hunger for him in his absence. When he is “ripped away” — the same verb that is used for his arrest in Gethsemane — it is then that we fast. With regard to fasting, we need to do more than just copy what they did in previous times. We need more than a minor correction or  “patch.” We need a new heart. We need a new longing. We need a new hunger.
• But Jesus teaches us in this passage about the characteristic attitude we should have toward his presence. We similarly need a revolution in our feasting. He says that the “friends of the bridal chamber,” which is what is poorly translated as “wedding guests,” cannot fast when the Bridegroom is with us. Because Jesus the Bridegroom is with us, pouring himself into our life, we must like groomsmen and bridesmaids on a wedding day be full of joy. That’s the first type of wine Jesus wants to pour into us anew. To be a Christian is, to some degree, is to be characterized by joy, it is always to be living out the joy we see on wedding days, as friends of the Bridal Chamber as Christ unites himself to others, and as Bride, as the Bridegroom unites himself to us. Sometimes as Christians we do better at fasting than we do at feasting in the Lord’s presence. We behave as if the Lord is absent more than we live in his presence, pondering in depth what it means. We don’t live our spousal reality. We don’t go into the presence of the Lord with joy, as we say in the Responsorial Psalm. Our joy is meant to be radically new. Each time, as we pray in Psalm 43, we go up to the altar of God, the God who gives joy to our youth, we are supposed to have our joy made more complete. Jesus, who came so that his joy might be in us and our joy made complete, wants to give us his joy each day and have us respond with fresh gratitude. Today is an opportunity to receive new wineskins from Christ so that we might live out that spousal mystery.
• In the first reading today, St. Paul writes that Jesus Christ is the true “icon” of the invisible God, that God had come in the flesh, that Jesus had manifested of God-is-love in Christ’s redemption on the Cross. Those affected by gnosticism in Colossae had, to use Jesus’ image in the Gospel today, “old wine skins” such that they were not ready to receive the significance of the Incarnation. We, too, need to have new wineskins to receive the true image of God — to receive Jesus according to his categories rather than our own — so that we, in turn, can grow more and more into the image and likeness of God, so that we will be united to him and become the manifestation of his love. That’s particularly important with regard to joy. Often the image we have of Jesus is not of the happiest person who ever lived. We don’t picture him with the most radiant smile we’ve ever seen. And we can sometimes try to emulate the somber image of Jesus we have formed. I was listening yesterday to some criticism of Jonathan Roumie’s depiction of Jesus in The Chosen, because the critics were thinking that his portrayal of Jesus, with his human sense of humor, was not sufficiently reverent. It is, of course, reverent, but they are challenged by a Jesus who points out the incongruities of life and discipleship, who smiles a lot, who rejoices always.
• Someone marked with joy in this world and in the next is the great saint we celebrate today, one of the greatest figures in Church and world history. After the darkness of the barbarian invasions, the depression of Rome’s glory days gone, the prospects that the day after would be worse than the day before, he sought to ground the Church in the fonts of true Christian joy in every season. He was prefect (mayor) of Rome when he was just 30 and did a tremendous job in trying to rebuild the buildings and morale of Rome after four brutal sackings within a short period of time. He recognized, however, that God was calling him to something different and more. In an act considered foolish by so many who look at earthly power as the goal of life, he left the civic power behind in order to become a monk, founding the first Benedictine monastery in Rome in his house on the Coelian Hill across from the Colosseum. There he grew in prayer, holiness, divine wisdom and Christian joy ever new. Eventually, however, the Pope asked him to leave the Monastery and go as his apocrisarius, or legate, to the emperor in Constantinople. It would have been easy for him to beg off returning to public life, but he grasped that God was asking him to serve him in this new way, to put out into the deep as a diplomat sent to a place where he didn’t speak Greek, and so he took the commission. He wisely brought along some of his monks with him so that he could keep up the good habits of prayer, study, work and the joy of communion that he had established and would need even more among all the intrigues at the imperial court. Eventually he was allowed to return to Rome, where he and his monks would regularly sacrifice themselves to care for those who were suffering from the plague and other illnesses in the city. Eventually, after the death of Pope Pelagius II, Gregory was elected his successor. He tried to refuse the office he didn’t want, but after it became clear it was God’s will, he accepted, and was ordained a priest and a bishop (he had already been ordained one of the seven deacons of Rome while still in the monastery). Over the course of his 15 years, he set an example of of the joy of the Gospel and sought to train others in the same discipline. He wrote Dialogues for common folks, pastoral letters for priests, and a Commentary on Job for monks so that they might learn how to unite their whole life to the Bridegroom. He wrote a “Pastoral Rule” for all bishops, one that is still very much consulted today, in which he talked about the bishop’s duties to preach and to instill discipline,. He reformed the liturgy, both with regard to its music (Gregorian Chant), with regard to the need for mercy (by introducing the three cycles of three Kyries at the beginning of Mass), the focus on God’s grace by inserting the “Hanc igitur” in the Eucharistic Prayer, and even the dependence on God the Father by moving the place of the Our Father in the liturgy. Because he knew lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi, that the way we pray forms the way we believe that in turn forms the way we live, he wanted the Mass to be precisely that means by which we’re filled with God, his light and the Bridegroom’s presence. He had special care for the poor, orphans and widows. He prayed and intervened to help out during terrible plagues that would come from the overflowing, polluted Tiber. He sent his monks into the deep as fishers of men, to places near and far, evangelizing and assisting illiterate kings in the government of their feudal empires. He became truly what he chose as his papal title, a servant of the servants of God (servus servorum Dei), so that the whole Church as Christ’s mystical Body would reflect the nuptial icon of the Invisible God.
• As we celebrate Mass today that still bears many of the reforms made by Pope St. Gregory, as we come into the Lord’s presence singing for joy, as we are rejuvenated by this contact with the divine Bridegroom as friends of the bridal chamber at the wedding feast, we ask God for new wineskins to receive the abundant graces he desires to give us today and the joy that is their fruit.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Reading 1
COL 1:15-20

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