Eagerly Holding Fast to Jesus as the Anchor of Our Soul, Second Tuesday (I), January 17, 2023

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Tuesday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Memorial of St. Anthony of the Desert
January 17, 2023
Heb 6:10-20, Ps 111, Mk 2:23-28

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today the Letter to the Hebrews has us focus on the reasons for perseverance in our faith. Up until now, the Letter has been helping us to ponder how we’re called to hear with obedient rather than hardened hearts God the Father’s Definitive Word (Jesus) as he communicates to us in word and witness how God wishes to lead us through suffering and death to perfection and glory. At a time of persecution in which the early Christians would have been reading and hearing the Letter, the author calls them to soldier on: “We earnestly desire each of you to demonstrate the same eagerness for the fulfillment of hope until the end, so that you may not become sluggish, but imitators of those who, through faith and patience, are inheriting the promises.” Those who have inherited the promises through faith and patience would have been the martyrs, the confessors, the perseveringly faithful apostles, disciples, men, women, boys and girls of that apostolic age, and we’re called to be as eager as they were for the fulfillment of all the hopes Christ himself has announced. There’s a temptation to become sluggish, to get weighed down by the concerns of this world and to begin to downplay the enthusiasm we should have for what God is promising to those who persevere.
• The motivation for that hope is the commitment Jesus has made to us in the New and Eternal Covenant. The Letter to the Hebrews makes an analogy to the Covenant God made with Abraham, saying that “after patient waiting, Abraham obtained the promise.” Abraham needed to wait for the fulfillment of the promise of the land that God was giving him. He needed to wait 25 years for the promise that he would become a father. He’d need to wait even longer until he would become the father of many nations. But he waited patiently. He waited eagerly. And God fulfilled his promise. To help Abraham believe, God made a Covenant with him. Abraham had faith in the Covenant. The Letter to the Hebrews also alludes to the Covenant God made with Moses to help all the Jews as well as to the Covenant Jesus made with us to help all of us. “When God wanted to give the heirs of his promise an even clearer demonstration of the immutability of his purpose, he intervened with an oath, so that … we who have taken refuge might be strongly encouraged to hold fast to the hope that lies before us.” That oath was the new and eternal Covenant in Jesus’ blood. Jesus’ Resurrection in a sense verified that Covenant and Jesus has entered into the Holy of Holies in Heaven praying for us to receive the fulfillment of that promise.
• In a striking and unforgettable image, the Letter says that in the Covenant sealed in Jesus, “we have as an anchor of the soul, sure and firm, which reaches into the interior behind the veil, where Jesus has entered on our behalf as forerunner, becoming high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.” We know how important anchors are for boats in stormy harbors. It’s what keep them from being overturned, from being dashed against the rocks or from drifting out to sea. Jesus, the new and eternal Covenant, is like that Anchor for us. Our hope in Jesus and his promises are like that Anchor, cast beyond the clouds, moored in the Holy of Holies of Heaven, preventing not only our spiritual capsizing but keeping us tethered to the promise. Jesus’ covenantal promise is what helps us not to become sluggish but to continue with the same eagerness for the fulfillment of hope until the end.
• Jesus gives us an image of his piercing through the veil in today’s Gospel. When the Pharisees were objecting that Jesus and the apostles were picking the heads of grain to get something to eat on the Sabbath, when according to the Scribes’ interpretation, no one was supposed to do any work even shucking the grains, Jesus reminded the Pharisees that when David and his soldiers were hungry, he went into the Holies of the House of God and ate the showbread that was destined exclusively for the priests after its week-long stay before the Ark in the temple. King David grasped, and Jesus evidently approved, that some things like God’s servants not starving were more important than ritual symbolism. Jesus communicated that the Sabbath was made not to enslave or starve man but to serve him. Likewise, the Son of David, Jesus, is taking all of us not just into the Holies but into the Holy of Holies provided that we have the “hunger” for it and it’s there that he seeks to give us far more than showbread but the eternal wedding banquet. Jesus is the forerunner going before us on earth, leading us across the veil, and anchoring us to the real meaning of revelation, to the true interpretation of Sacred Scripture, and to the way we are called to interact with God.
• Someone who never became sluggish in his following of the Lord, who believed in the Covenant and never lost his Anchor with Jesus in eternity is St. Anthony of the Desert. whom we celebrate today. When he was 18, both of his parents died and he was left with all of their rich lands. He went to Church one day when the story of the Rich Young Man was being proclaimed in the Gospel. Upon hearing the words of Jesus, “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me,” he took them literally and responded wholeheartedly. He did what the Rich Young Man was too afraid to do. He sold all that he had, giving some money to relatives, paying for his sister to enter with a community of faithful women and gave the rest to the poor. Then he went out into the desert for the next 87 years, where he famously was tempted by the devil in various ways. All types of people came to him to receive spiritual guidance and he helped them with confidence and awe to approach God like he had. He shows us how to anchor ourselves to Christ in his holy word. St. Athanasius wrote about him in the passage on which the Church prayed this morning in the Office of Readings, “He was so attentive when Scripture was read that nothing escaped him and because he retained all he heard, his memory served him in place of books.” Pope Benedict cited him in Verbum Domini in a section on how the saints are a living reading of the word of God: “The most profound interpretation of Scripture comes precisely from those who let themselves be shaped by the word of God through listening, reading and assiduous meditation. It is certainly not by chance that the great currents of spirituality in the Church’s history originated with an explicit reference to Scripture. I am thinking for example of Saint Anthony the Abbot, who was moved by hearing Christ’s words: ‘if you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me’ (Mt 19:21). …The Holy Spirit who inspired the sacred authors is the same Spirit who impels the saints to offer their lives for the Gospel. In striving to learn from their example, we set out on the sure way towards a living and effective hermeneutic of the word of God.” The Saints are the ones who show us how to live by the word of God, to receive it as words to be done, to respond to God who gives us that guidance with obedient love. Doubtless St. Anthony of the Desert is interceding for us today for us to respond like him, like Abraham, and like so many of the saints he inspired, Anthanasius and Augustine among the two greatest.
• Today Jesus enters with us into the sanctuary where he gives us himself in response to our deepest hungers. He seeks to Anchor our hope and our life here to the altar, to keep us connected to him in the midst of the sometimes stormy seas of life. We have that type of high priest who has made us heirs of his promise, a promise on which he now gives himself to us as the down payment. This convinces us never to become weary or sluggish. As we prayed in the Psalm, the Lord remembers his Covenant forever! And now we enter into the ever new and eternal Covenant in the Eternal High Priest’s life-giving blood!

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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