Doing No Harm to the Lord’s Anointed, 2nd Friday (II), January 24, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Friday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of St. Francis de Sales
January 24, 2020
1 Sam 24:3-21, Ps 57, Mk 3:13-19

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today in the Gospel we see the calling of the apostles by name. Jesus, we know from St. Luke’s account, had prayed all night before, asking his Father for light on who should be chosen. We know that Jesus has likewise prayed about and for us before calling us by name. It was not we who chose him but he who chose us and appointed us to bear fruit that will last. Today we thank God for the gift of our vocation to the priesthood or religious life, to our vocation to the evangelical counsels, to our vocation to sanctity, to our vocation to protect and enhance the sacredness of every human life. In today’s Gospel we see an essential description of the formation Jesus gives for the apostles’ vocation and every vocation. Jesus called Simon, James, John, Andrew, Philip and the others, just as much as he has called each one of us, to be “with him” and so that “he might send [us] forth to preach and to have authority to drive out demons.” The first criterion is that we are supposed to be with him. This points to our prayer, to the need to set aside the necessary time to be with the Lord, to converse with him, to listen to him, to pour out our needs and the needs of those we serve, our thanks, our praise and our sorrow. This call to be “with Jesus,” however, goes well beyond the necessity of spending time with him in prayer. We need to develop a living awareness that, thanks to our baptism, we have become ontologically united with Christ: that who we are, and everything we do, is in mysterious and wondrous communion with him. No matter how many activities we engage in over the course of a day, year or lifetime, they are all meant to be part of our Christian vocation to be together with Christ, to be yoked to him in daily life, to act as an instrument in essential communion with him. The second criteria is so that he may send us out — united with him — to preach and drive out demons. Every vocation contains a mission and the mission is to continue Jesus’ mission. And essential aspect of our vocation to live in the kingdom is its exorcistic dimension, as we seek to drive Satan’s stranglehold on ourselves, on others, and on the culture.
• Today, as our country Marches for Life in Washington, DC, we ponder just how much we need to be with Jesus and to go forth as salt, light and leaven to overturn the diabolical culture of death and destruction, that permits those made in God’s image and likeness to be rejected and eliminated at the earliest days of life, that refuses love to women in need, that preaches pride rather than repentance and mercy for abortions had. In today’s first reading, Saul was for the second time trying to kill David and David was presented with any chance to take Saul’s life before Saul would take his. But he refused to lay a hand on the “Lord’s anointed.” So great was his reverence for God that he would never seriously countenance doing anything against someone in an intimate relationship with God, regardless of that person’s sins against God or against him. That’s part of the message we preach: doing no harm, in fact loving, those in intimate relationship with God, for children, their mothers, their fathers, even those who make themselves the enemies of the unborn and of those who, like us, seek to defend them.
• With regard to the unborn, from the first moment of their existence they live in a relationship with the God who created them and formed them in the womb. We shouldn’t lay a hand on them to harm them. For those who have already been massacred, we entrust them, as St. John Paul II called us to do 26 years ago in Evangelium Vitae, to God’s mercy. With regard to women who have had abortions or who are tempted to have them, however they got pregnant, whatever choice they’ve made, we need always to remember that they are very much loved by God, reverence them, and help them receive whatever cleansing and healing they need in the Sacrament of God’s mercy, and to seek to care for mother and child both. With regard to those involved in promoting abortion, from those who work in the abortion industry, to politicians and judges who use their offices to allow certain human beings to take the life of those who are smaller, younger and more vulnerable, to boyfriends, husbands, parents, siblings, members of the media and others who encourage or facilitate women to have abortions, although the sins they commit are grave, God’s mercy is greater, and we must be instruments of that charity in truth. We are called to be with Christ so that we can be sent out in tandem with him to help him exorcise the demons through mercy.
• Today the Church celebrates the feast of a saint who shows us how this is done. St. Francis de Sales came from a noble family in southeastern France. His father had given him a tremendous education and he graduated with his doctorate in law at the age of 20. By the time he returned home his father had already arranged for him to marry an heiress and become a senator. When Francis told him he had made a promise of chastity and wanted to become a priest, the Father was outraged thinking his son had lost his mind. A difficult struggle ensued, with Francis trusting in God to find a solution. Eventually the Bishop of Geneva, at the intercession of one of Francis’ maternal uncles who was a priest, obtained for Francis the appointment as second in charge of the Diocese of Geneva, which placated Francis’ father’s sense of pride. Francis was ordained a priest and took up his duties. In addition to the administrative tasks for which he was responsible, he quickly became a much sought confessor and friend of the poor. The diocese of Geneva, however, was in shambles. Decades of scandals among the clergy had made it very easy for Calvinism to spread throughout the region of the Chablais. The people were so poorly catechized that they were not able to respond to Calvinist arguments. They were, moreover, so angry at the hypocrisy of their local churchmen that they were easily incited to turn on the Catholic faith, run their priests out of town and take up a form of Christianity that at least seemed to be moral. The bishop of Geneva even had to flee the see city and take up residence in Annecy. Some reports said that there were only about 20 Catholics left in the vast region. Nine months after Francis’ ordination, the bishop held a meeting with all his priests, seeking volunteers to send to the region to try to win the people back. He didn’t hide the dangers or the difficulties. The people were not only ill-disposed but hostile: the first priest who had been sent had been attacked and driven from the region. None of the clergy at the meeting stepped forward for what minimally was a tough assignment, but could be a fatal one. Finally, Francis stood up and said, “If you think I am capable of undertaking the mission, tell me to go. I am ready to obey and should be happy to be chosen.” The bishop accepted the proposal, over the fierce objections of Francis’ father, who thought his son was signing up for a suicide assignment — and according to worldly logic, his father was absolutely right. At 27 years old, Francis, traveling by foot, set out to try to win back the vast geographic area. He tried to convert the culture. United with Christ, he sought to preach the Gospel and undermine and overturn the work of division that the evil one had been accomplishing. The work was rough and dangerous. For his protection, he was ordered to sleep at night in a military garrison. On two occasions, assassins ambushed him along the way, but both times, seemingly miraculously, he survived. On another occasion, he was attacked by wolves and had to spend a glacial night in a tree. But he labored on, despite having little to show for all his effort. He wrote in a letter to a friend, “We are but making a beginning. I shall go on in good courage, and I hope in God against all human hope.” Through meekness, forgiveness and the publication of many tracts, he patiently set forth Catholic teaching, charitably explaining the errors of Calvinism, and tackling head on controversial issues. To those who still harbored anger toward the clerics who committed “spiritual murder” through scandalous behavior, Francis plainly acknowledged the evil and harm done, but warned his readers not to commit “spiritual suicide,” by using those scandals as a means to cut themselves off from the sacraments and the Church. Within the span of five years, the holy “Apostle of the Chablais” had reconciled and evangelized almost the entire region. With the honey of meekness and attractive holiness rather than the vinegar of condemnation, he brought people and the whole culture back. He’s interceding for us as we seek to overturn the culture caused by Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton and so many choices that led to them and have flowed from them.
• “Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy!,” we prayed in the Psalm today. We asked God to “send his mercy and his faithfulness” and he does that as he sends his Son, the true Anointed One, the Messiah, the Christ. He is the one who calls us to be with him here at Mass. He is the one who, at the end of Mass, sends us out to preach and exorcise. He is the one who teaches us how to treat, and form others to treat, those with whom he is in relationship from the womb with reverence, never laying a hand on them.

The readings for today’s Mass were: