Consecrated by and in Jesus, Seventh Wednesday of Easter, June 5, 2019

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, New York, NY
Wednesday of the Seventh Week of Easter
Memorial of Saint Boniface
June 5, 2019
Acts 20:28-38, Ps 68, Jn 17:11-19

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

The following points were considered in today’s homily: 

• Today we continue to ponder the valedictory words of Jesus in the Upper Room and St. Paul in Melitus. Jesus’ words were to the Father, but he said them aloud so that the apostles could hear them — and through them, we could hear them — and that we might “share [Jesus’] joy completely.” They were also given to us so that we might become Jesus’ glory through coming fully alive in him and so that the Father might be glorified in the Son through our having life and joy to the full in the Son. St. Paul’s words were to the presbyters of Ephesus, so that they could continue the work that St. Paul had laborered for “three years, night and day … with tears.” As we’ll see, St. Paul’s words were an echo of what Jesus prayed to the Father.
• Today Jesus stresses his relationship to the Father and to the world and the relationship he wishes us to have to the Father and the world.
  • He says that he’s one with the Father and he wants us to be as united to each other as the Father and the Son are united.
  • He stresses twice that he doesn’t belong to the world and we shouldn’t belong to the world, emphasizing that we do not belong to the world “any more” than he does. Those are extraordinary words. He says that we’re supposed to have the same relationship to the world that he does and that we shouldn’t belong to the world any more than he.
  • He asks the Father to consecrate us so that we might belong to the Father just like he belongs to the Father. He wants to cut us off from the world to be united to him so that united to him we might come out of love for the world to continue his work, so that the world might be saved.
  • The way we will be consecrated to the Father is “in the truth” of his word. He is the Truth. He is the Word made flesh. To be consecrated means to be cut off from the profane (sacer) to be with (con) him to such a degree that we share his mission. He sends us into the world just as the Father sent him and this can only happen when we’re consecrated as a part of his Mystical Body, when we bring into the world the truth of his word.
  • He asks the Father to protect us, just as Jesus himself sought to protect us in the Father’s name. He says that the world will hate us because, like him, we do not belong to the world, and the darkness of the world will seek to extinguish the light of Christ. For that reason, Jesus prays, not that we be taken out of harm’s way, but that we be protected from the Evil One and what the Evil One ultimately wants to accomplish, which is to make us worldly and through that alienate us forever from God. The response of Jesus to that diabolical strategy is consecration.
• In all of this there’s a central point, that Jesus wants us in the middle of the world, as salt, light and leaven. There’s a tendency to try to say, “The world is evil. I’m getting out of here.” There are many, upset with the direction of society and culture, who are promoting a so-called “Benedict option,” named after St. Benedict, saying we all need to retreat far from the world behind the high walls of monasteries while the world corrodes around us. That’s not only a misinterpretation of what St. Benedict did but also a failure to grasp what the Gospel requires. St. Benedict and the Benedictines lived in monasteries precisely so that they could be strengthened by God, strengthen each other, and allow others to be strengthened, and be more equipped to cooperate in the world’s salvation as salt, light and leaven. Just like soldiers often retire at night to the safety of the base but leave the base on the morrow in order to continue the campaign, so that’s what the oasis of the monastery provides: not a permanent residence per se, but a base from which to launch more effectively at a time of chaos the new evangelization needed. Jesus prayed that the Father not take his disciples from the world, but consecrate them in the truth so that we could go out into a world that would hate us and make it a place of divine love.
• St. Paul got this message and lived it. He retired for 14 years to Arabia to pray, and more time in his native Tarsus, and it was from there that he became the greatest missionary in Church history. In his final words to the presbyters of Ephesus meeting him in Melitus, he reiterated the points by which he tried to live and that he believed God was calling them to imitate:
  • Jesus as Jesus prayed that the Father protect the flock of those entrusted to his care, St. Paul instructed the priests to “Keep watch over yourselves and over the whole flock of which the Holy Spirit has appointed you overseers, in which you tend the Church of God that he acquired with his own Blood.” He warned them to be vigilant in this way because the Evil One would be at work, trying to attack the Church from within and without, to disrupt the consecration, to destroy the unity, to replace the truth with a lie. He said, “After my departure savage wolves will come among you, and they will not spare the flock.” We would see those savage wolves in the Roman emperors and soldiers who for 250 years assailed the Church. But they would not be the only ones. “From your own group,” Paul continued, “men will come forward perverting the truth to draw the disciples away after them.” These would be the heretics who would try to change the Gospel to suit their own desires, rather than change their desires to conform with the Gospel. So St. Paul said, “Be vigilant,” reminding them of his three years of tears admonishing them about the false gospels so that they might live the true one.
  • Jesus as Jesus prayed to the Father that the disciples may be consecrated in the truth, St. Paul likewise entrusted them to God in the truth of God’s word. “I commend you to God and to that gracious word of his that can build you up and give you the inheritance among all who are consecrated.” Consecration in the word of God builds us up in communion, it unites us, and it gives us the inheritance of God.
  • This leads us to share Christ’s mission, to be sent out into the world as Christ was sent by the Father, as the apostles and Paul were sent by Christ. “It is more blessed to give than to receive,” Paul reminds them, and his mission to the world out of the love God has to save the world is a far greater gift than remaining apart from the world exclusively with God. God loved us so much that he gives us the privilege to give with him as generously as we have received from him.
• Someone who similarly lived out in correspondence to the fruits of Jesus’ prayer was St. Boniface. He was a holy young man who became a Benedictine early in life. At the age of 41 left his English monastery where he was a Latin scholar and a Scripture teacher to become a Missionary. In his first attempt, in modern Holland, he was rejected. He went to Rome where the Pope ordained him and sent him as a Bishop to evangelize Germany, where he helped pagans overcome their worship of trees and through four decades of labor built up the structure of the Church. At the very end of his life, he went back to Frisia, to Holland, to try to bring them to the knowledge of the truth, but they killed him as he was preparing for Mass. Pope Benedict gave a catechesis on him in 2009 in which he stressed his zeal to bring the Word of God to the stubborn even in his ninth decade, so that they might become consecrated in the truth. “Although he was getting on in years (he was almost 80), he prepared himself for a new evangelizing mission: with about 50 monks he returned to Frisia where he had begun his work. Almost as a prediction of his imminent death, in alluding to the journey of life, he wrote to Bishop Lull, his disciple and successor in the see of Mainz: ‘I wish to bring to a conclusion the purpose of this journey; in no way can I renounce my desire to set out. The day of my end is near and the time of my death is approaching; having shed my mortal body, I shall rise to the eternal reward. May you, my dear son, ceaselessly call the people from the maze of error, complete the building of the Basilica of Fulda that has already been begun, and in it lay my body, worn out by the long years of life.’ While he was beginning the celebration of Mass at Dokkum (in what today is northern Holland) on 5 June 754, he was assaulted by a band of pagans. Advancing with a serene expression he forbade his followers from fighting saying, ‘cease, my sons, from fighting, give up warfare, for the witness of Scripture recommends that we do not give an eye for an eye but rather good for evil. Here is the long awaited day, the time of our end has now come; courage in the Lord!’ These were his last words before he fell under the blows of his aggressors.” Pope Benedict asked, “Centuries later, what message can we gather today from the teaching and marvellous activity of this great missionary and martyr? For those who approach Boniface, an initial fact stands out: the centrality of the word of God, lived and interpreted in the faith of the Church, a word that he lived, preached and witnessed to until he gave the supreme gift of himself in martyrdom. He was so passionate about the word of God that he felt the urgent need and duty to communicate it to others, even at his own personal risk. … His ardent zeal for the Gospel never fails to impress me. At the age of 41 he left a beautiful and fruitful monastic life, the life of a monk and teacher, in order to proclaim the Gospel to the simple, to barbarians; once again, at the age of 80, he went to a region in which he foresaw his martyrdom. By comparing his ardent faith, this zeal for the Gospel, with our own often lukewarm and bureaucratized faith, we see what we must do and how to renew our faith, in order to give the precious pearl of the Gospel as a gift to our time.” His model of total self-giving as a young man, as a Scripture scholar living the evangelical counsels, as a Missionary, as a Bishop, and as a Martyr is a model for us all.
• The greatest way we live out all of the truths contained in Jesus’ prayer is here at Mass, where in the midst of the world, we consecrate ourselves anew within Jesus’ consecration in the Mass to the Father. This is where we each morning reiterate before all that we belong to God and not to the world as, within the world, we are strengthen against the wiles of the evil one to complete Jesus’ mission!

The readings for today’s Mass were: