Courage Flowing from Confidence in our Divine Filiation, Monday after Epiphany, January 7, 2018

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Retreat on Courage in the Christian and Priestly Life
Mount Saint Mary’s Seminary, Emmitsburg, Maryland
Monday after Epiphany
Memorial of St. Raymond de Peñafort
January 7, 2019
1 Jn 3:22-46, Ps 2, Mt 4:12-17.23-25

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

The following text guided today’s homily: 

• In these days after the Solemnity of the Epiphany and before the celebration of the Baptism of the Lord, the Church has us focus on the many ways Christ manifested himself to all peoples, represented by the wise men coming from afar. Today in the Gospel we see Jesus going to the region of Zebulun and Naphtali, the way to the sea beyond the Jordan, all around Galilee, with his fame spreading far north into Syria, the Decapolis on the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee, Jerusalem, Judea the region beyond the Jordan where everyone was bringing to him those who were sick with various diseases, racked with pain, possessed, out of their mind, and paralyzed. He cured them all. He was putting into practice Isaiah’s messianic prophecy that those sitting in darkness and dwelling in a land overshadowed by death have seen a great light, the light manifesting the fulfillment of the prophecy, Jesus himself. Jesus was preaching that the long awaited restoration of the Davidic Kingdom was not only happening but happening in a way that far exceeded even the most pious Jews’ expectations: the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand because the King was present. That required, Jesus said, metanoia, a total change in their worldview.
• Likewise at the beginning of this retreat, the same Jesus who traversed the ancient Holy Land comes here to Emmitsburg to manifest himself to us. He wants to shine his light into all regions of our life. He wants to heal us in the ways he knows we need it. He wants us to bring others to him in our prayers. He wants to have us live fully with him in his kingdom and turn away from anything that prevents that full immersion.
• He wants us, as St. John tells us in today’s first reading, to keep the Father’s commandments and do what is pleasing to him, to believe in Jesus and love each other just as he commanded us, because this is the way, St. John insists, we will remain in Christ and Christ in us, to remain in the kingdom, by the power of the Holy Spirit. St. John makes plain that there despite Christ’s manifestation of himself and of his light to those shining in darkness, some reject that epiphany. There are false prophets full of a spirit of deceit who fail to acknowledge the incarnation of the King and the reality of his kingdom, who belong to the world rather than to God. These, we know from the context of St. John’s letter, are the gnostics who because of their dualism refused to believe that God could enter the material world, take on a human body, be born, suffer, die, give his body and body to the Eucharist and make his kingdom tangible. But there are still many who refuse to allow Christ and his Kingdom to penetrate all areas of their life, whether their sex life, or their relationship to money, or their relationship to pride and vanity, or their need to forgive as Christ as forgiven them and love even those who have themselves their enemies as Christ has loved them first. Christ came into the world not for a visit but to be our full-time God and savior, the one who wanted us to become his friends instead of slaves. He came to give us his light and wants us never to turn off the light switch in any room of the temple he has made us. He wants us to belong to God, body, soul and spirit, to live by the spirit of truth, and to receive the wisdom to test spirits so as to discern God’s true presence from all the imposters.
• But what I would like to ponder the most is the context for the third chapter of St. John’s first letter and in fact the whole epistle and the Christian faith. It’s alluded to by the Psalm today, which responds liturgically to the first reading. After all St. John says to us, we ponder Psalm 2 and not just the affirmation for all the kings and rulers of the earth to give heed and take warning to serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling but the more important one: “The Lord said to me, ‘You are my Son. This day I have begotten you.” This is what we hear on Christmas morning quoted in the Letter to the Hebrews right before St. John, in the Prologue, reminds us that to all who accepted the Logos in the flesh, that Word gave power to become children of God. When Christ took on our humanity so that we might participate in his divinity, he sought to incorporate us into his own divine filiation.
• This is an essential truth in our living our Christian vocation and the priestly vocation with courage, because when we know who we are in relation to God, we can live boldly. St. John tells us at the beginning of the third Chapter of his first letter, “See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” We are God’s children. The same spirit of the world, the same false prophets, the same anti-Christ that rejects that the Word became flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary, was wrapped in swaddling clothes, was heard, seen and touched, likewise rejects that he can take up his abode in us and make us, truly, God’s children. But that’s in fact what God does in Christ. And when we are united to the one who has triumphed over Satan, sin and death, what would we ever fear?
• This trust in divine filiation, this living in Christ’s kingdom and trying to help others to do so, was something that characterized the life of St. Raymond de Peñafort (1175-1275). He is most well-known as being the patron saint of canonists for collating all of the canonical decrees before him into one place (the Decretals of Gregory IX) to guide those in the Church in administering justice and defending people’s rights until the time of the first code of canon law in the early 20th century, but he ought to be known for so much more. He was instrumental in founding the Mercedarians, helping St. Peter Nolasco gain the consent of the King, established a language school to interact with Muslims and liberate Christian captives, wrote a famous book for confessors (Summa de casibus poenitentiae, converted the king who was living with a concubine through a miracle witnessed by hundreds (sailing from Mallorca to Barcelona on just his habit), and was eventually elected Master of the Dominicans. In all of this, he recognized Christ was with him and sought to help people through mercy and justice lived well in Christ’s kingdom. He was fearless out of love and trust in God in confronting problems, not to mention wayward kings and setting out into the deep seas with only his habit. He is interceding for us today to behave similarly as a consequence of our divine filiation.
• The place where all of these truths are entered into more deeply is the Mass. The Eucharist makes the Church as Christ’s body, and the Eucharist renews us in our divine filiation. Jesus comes to fill us with his light. He gives us himself as the medicine of immortality and heals so many other of our ills. As we keep this commandment to do this in his memory, we come to remain in him and he in us, and we know it by the power of the Holy Spirit who makes it possible.

The readings for today’s Mass were: