Fr. Roger J. Landry
Chapel of the Vincentian Missionary Seminary, Krakow, Poland
Friday of the 13th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Votive Mass of the Sacred Heart
July 7, 2023
Gen 23:1-4.19;24:1-8.62-67, Ps 106, Mt 9:9-13
To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
The following points were attempted in the homily:
- Many of those on the Tertio Millennio Seminar are actively discerning their vocations within their Christian vocation to holiness. Today’s readings and votive Mass help us to focus on several elements necessary for us to discern our vocation well.
- We begin with the Gospel, which helps us to ponder both the mercy and the specificity of God’s call. None of us is a random creation by God, just another in a big group. With great merciful love, he calls us by name. We see this very powerfully in the calling of St. Matthew in today’s Gospel. Matthew was a despised tax collector who used to extort money from his own people to give it to the occupying Romans. The way the Roman tax system worked was that the Romans needed to get a set fee from a given territory; everything the tax collectors got beyond that was theirs to keep. Because of this system, many tax collectors, filled with greed, would begin rapaciously to rip off their own people with the help of complicit members of the Roman army. They were like modern mafia dons who extort neighborhood small businesses and even families to pay “protection fees” lest an “accident” happen to their businesses or loved ones. For Jesus to go after Matthew at his customs post then would have been as dramatic as Jesus’ entering into Al Capone’s speakeasy and calling him from his booze and hundred dollar bills or into the Playboy Mansion and calling Hugh Hefner from his exploited babes. But Jesus desires mercy and he came to call sinners to repentance and he was going to show that by going after one of the most notorious sinners of his day. Matthew, who lived and worked in Capernaum, must have heard about Jesus and perhaps even stood at a distance to hear him speak, but likely thought that he would never be accepted among Jesus’ associates not to mention friends. Yet in today’s Gospel Jesus enters the place where Matthew was working and says to him, “Follow me!” Many, as we know, objected. The Pharisees, in particular, whose name means “separated ones,” refused to interact with sinners at all, not to mention notorious public ones. When Matthew threw a party to celebrate his conversion and calling and to introduce his associates, friends, and others to Jesus, the Pharisees objected, saying, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” Jesus would later be dubbed, pejoratively in their eyes, a “friend of tax collectors and sinners.” Jesus, however, replied by saying, “Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. Go and learn the meaning of the words, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.”
- We see there a key lesson in every Christian vocation except the sinful Blessed Virgin Mary’s. Jesus has come to call sinners. Like with St. Matthew, he wants us to leave our sins behind and then to become walking advertisements to others that forgiveness of sins is not only possible but life-changing. Jesus did the same with Peter, whose first words to the Lord were “Depart from me, O Lord, for I am a sinful man.” He did the same with Paul, who used to terrorize and kill Christians as a young man. He did the same with Augustine and so many other famous saints throughout the centuries. He’s also done so with every Christian. I don’t think we ponder enough St. Paul’s words to the Corinthians, “Consider your own calling, brothers. Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. Rather, God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise, and God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong, and God chose the lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something, so that no human being might boast before God” (1 Cor 1:27-29). God has called us to be Christians precisely because he has come to call sinners and the sick, the foolish, weak, lowly, despised, nothing-counters! At the same time, however, he exalts the humble by associating us with his holiness as he calls us to be saints! That’s what led Pope Francis to choose his motto miserando atque eligendo from this scene from the St. Bede the Venerable’s commentary on the vocation of Saint Matthew. Saint Bede said that the Lord chooses us in the very act of showing his mercy toward us. The 16-year-old Jorge Bergoglio sensed his call in the confessional of San Jose in Flores, Buenos Aires, on September 21, 1953; he was forgiven and in being forgiven recognized that the Lord was calling him to be an instrument of mercy toward others. Each of us is forgiven by God not just out of the abundance of the Father’s mercy but with a mission in mind, chosen to spread the good news of the reconciliation God offers. God’s mercy toward us in calling us while still sinners to be saints is an element of our Christian vocation.
- We see the merciful specificity of God’s call in his kingdom in the first reading as well. Isaac was bereft after the death of his mother Sarah and Abraham sought for him a wife. But it wasn’t just any woman who would do. Abraham made a pact, a covenant, with his senior servant to find Isaac a good wife, but a wife who would help him keep to the Covenant God had made with Abraham and his offspring. For that reason, she couldn’t be a Canaanite, no matter how tall or beautiful. She also couldn’t be someone who would draw Isaac away from the land God had led them to as a fulfillment of the promise. She had to come to marry Isaac there. The servant, trusting in God, went away, to Abraham’s kin, and discerned together with God who this woman would be through seeing who would offer him and his camels water at a well. God came through and arranged Rebekah to be there. Rebekah, when hearing the servant’s story, consented to return with him to marry Isaac, the son of Abraham. She helped Isaac keep to the covenant. She would become, with Isaac, through Jacob their son, part of the ancestors of Jesus himself. When Isaac saw her, he rejoiced and was consoled at the death of his mother. God — and not just Abraham and his faithful servant — had chosen Rebekah with merciful specificity for Isaac. When we think about how much Abraham cared that much about the wife of his son, how much more do we think God the Father cares about us and everything in our life so that we might keep the covenant? For those with the vocation to holy matrimony, this reading shows how much God wants for us to find someone who will help us to keep our covenant with him, to remain in his kingdom.
- That brings us, on this first Friday of July, to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the heart that beats out of mercy for us. This Sunday, on the Fourteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time (A), when we won’t have Mass together, we have one of the Gospels the Church usually ponders on the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart, when Jesus says to us, “Come to me, all you who labor and find life burdensome and I will refresh you. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart” (Mk 11:27-30). Jesus summons us in the midst of our work, labors, burdens to come to him. He has mercy on us in those circumstances because they will help us to learn how to relate to him in his meekness and mercy. He summons us to be refreshed by him. This year we celebrate the 350th anniversary of the beginning of his apparitions to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque in Paray-le-Monial, during which he pointed to his heart and described how he had exhausted himself in testimony to his love in the Holy Eucharist. He summoned us to treat him not with indifference, irreverence, coldness, sacrilege and scorn but precedence, piety, passion, purity and praise. The Lord Jesus each day seeks to renew us in our vocation by calling us in the midst of our work to him, the Divine Physician, as he seeks to heal, renew and refresh us. This is where his mercy exhausts itself. This is the consummation of the spousal union to which he calls us with great specificity and makes us, not just part of his ancestry, but part of him. This is the source and summit, the root and center of our Christian vocation. Let us respond to this call with the alacrity and total commitment of St. Matthew and then let us bring our friends here to this feast Jesus is hosting for us and the sinners called to sanctity we know.
The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 GN 23:1-4, 19; 24:1-8, 62-67
The span of Sarah’s life was one hundred and twenty-seven years.
She died in Kiriatharba (that is, Hebron)
in the land of Canaan,
and Abraham performed the customary mourning rites for her.
Then he left the side of his dead one and addressed the Hittites:
“Although I am a resident alien among you,
sell me from your holdings a piece of property for a burial ground,
that I may bury my dead wife.”
After the transaction, Abraham buried his wife Sarah
in the cave of the field of Machpelah,
facing Mamre (that is, Hebron) in the land of Canaan.
Abraham had now reached a ripe old age,
and the LORD had blessed him in every way.
Abraham said to the senior servant of his household,
who had charge of all his possessions:
“Put your hand under my thigh,
and I will make you swear by the LORD,
the God of heaven and the God of earth,
that you will not procure a wife for my son
from the daughters of the Canaanites among whom I live,
but that you will go to my own land and to my kindred
to get a wife for my son Isaac.”
The servant asked him:
“What if the woman is unwilling to follow me to this land?
Should I then take your son back to the land from which you migrated?”
“Never take my son back there for any reason,” Abraham told him.
“The LORD, the God of heaven,
who took me from my father’s house and the land of my kin,
and who confirmed by oath the promise he then made to me,
‘I will give this land to your descendants’–
he will send his messenger before you,
and you will obtain a wife for my son there.
If the woman is unwilling to follow you,
you will be released from this oath.
But never take my son back there!”
A long time later, Isaac went to live in the region of the Negeb.
One day toward evening he went out . . . in the field,
and as he looked around, he noticed that camels were approaching.
Rebekah, too, was looking about, and when she saw him,
she alighted from her camel and asked the servant,
“Who is the man out there, walking through the fields toward us?”
“That is my master,” replied the servant.
Then she covered herself with her veil.
The servant recounted to Isaac all the things he had done.
Then Isaac took Rebekah into his tent;
he married her, and thus she became his wife.
In his love for her, Isaac found solace
after the death of his mother Sarah.
Responsorial Psalm PS 106:1B-2, 3-4A, 4B-5
R. (1b) Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good.
Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good,
for his mercy endures forever.
Who can tell the mighty deeds of the LORD,
or proclaim all his praises?
R. Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good.
Blessed are they who observe what is right,
who do always what is just.
Remember us, O LORD, as you favor your people.
R. Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good.
Visit me with your saving help,
That I may see the prosperity of your chosen ones,
rejoice in the joy of your people,
and glory with your inheritance.
R. Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good.
Alleluia MT 11:28
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened,
and I will give you rest, says the Lord.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel MT 9:9-13
As Jesus passed by,
he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the customs post.
He said to him, “Follow me.”
And he got up and followed him.
While he was at table in his house,
many tax collectors and sinners came
and sat with Jesus and his disciples.
The Pharisees saw this and said to his disciples,
“Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
He heard this and said,
“Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do.
Go and learn the meaning of the words,
I desire mercy, not sacrifice.
I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.”
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