Encouraging One Another and Building One Another Up, 22nd Tuesday (I), September 3, 2019

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Tuesday of the 22nd Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Memorial of St. Gregory the Great, Pope and Doctor
September 3, 2019
1 Thess 5:1-6.9-11, Ps 27, Lk 4:31-37

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• In today’s first reading from First Thessalonians, St. Paul reminds Christians that we are “children of the light and children of the day,” called not to be spiritually somnolent “as the rest,” but “alert and sober,” because God destined us “to gain salvation” and whether “awake or asleep” to “live together with him.” He calls us, therefore, to “encourage one another and build one another up” precisely in these ways. He summons us to strengthen each other to live as children of the light and day living together with Jesus. We need that encouragement. We need that help. We’re called to receive it from each other and to give it toward each other. These are important words as we “return to work,” return to a normal schedule, after Labor Day.
• In the Gospel we see how Jesus seeks to build us up. Yesterday, we pondered Jesus as the tekton, the construction worker, who not only built houses in the ancient world but who had come as the Master Builder to become the cornerstone to the spiritual edifice that is the Church. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus described very clearly how to build ourselves up solidly: “Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house. But it did not collapse; it had been set solidly on rock” (Mt 7:24-25). And so Jesus, who yesterday said he had come to proclaim the Gospel to the poor, to announce liberty to captives, today enters the synagogue in Capernaum to encourage us and to build us up in this way. He spoke with authority, unlike the Scribes and the Pharisees, because he wasn’t citing Sacred Scripture or Rabbis but was speaking as the author, as one with first-hand designer knowledge, present at the origin. He was also speaking with power, liberating the captives as shown in the way that he exorcised the possessed man from whom demons. Jesus continues to speak with that same power and authority today in order to encourage us and build us up. We’re called never to lose our astonishment. His word has the authority to blow us away and to wake us up, it has the power to make us children of the light, to return to St. Paul’s words in today’s first reading. His word has the power to reawaken us to who we really are, to sound an alarm clock that snaps us out of spiritual somnambulation, to transform us from darkness into light, a light that will allow us to fill others with strength (“encourage”) and build each other up.
• Today the Church celebrates the feast of a successor of St. Peter whom the Lord used to help the Church, not only during his 15 year papacy but ever since, to live as children of the light and of the day. He was a man who built his life on the Lord’s word and sought to strengthen the Church to be built solidly on the rock. He was prefect (mayor) of Rome when he was just 30 and did a tremendous job in trying to rebuild the buildings and morale of Rome after four brutal sackings within a short period of time. He saw his office as an opportunity not to serve himself but to serve others and used all his talents to try to build up the city and her people. But in his mature discernment, he recognized that God was calling him to something different and more. So he left the civic power behind in order to become a monk, founding the first Benedictine monastery in Rome in his house on the Coelian Hill across from the Colosseum. There he grew in prayer and holiness. Eventually the Pope asked him to leave the Monastery and go as his apocrisarius, his legate, to the emperor in Constantinople. He wisely brought along some of his monks with him so that he could keep up the good habits of prayer and divine wisdom that he had would need among all the intrigues at the imperial court. Eventually he was allowed to return to Rome, where he and his monks would regularly sacrifice themselves  by using their good health to care for those who were suffering from the plague and other illnesses in the city. Eventually, after the death of Pope Pelagius II, Gregory was elected his successor. He tried to refuse the office he didn’t want, but after it became clear it was God’s will, he accepted, and was ordained a priest and a bishop (he had already been ordained one of the seven deacons of Rome while still in the monastery). Over the course of the next 15 years, he encouraged and built up the Church of Rome and universally through passing with vicarious authority the word of God. He wrote commentaries on Job, Ezekiel and the Gospels. He “Dialogues” for the people, so that they might see the word of God lived in lives of the saints. He wrote a “Pastoral Rule” for bishops, one that is still very much consulted today, in which he talked about the bishop’s duties to preach and to instill discipline, which are essential for encouragement and building up. He wrote Pastoral Letters for priests and Commentaries for monks. He reformed the liturgy, both with regard to its music (Gregorian Chant), with regard to the need for mercy (by introducing the three cycles of three Kyries at the beginning of Mass), with regard to the primacy of God’s grace by inserting the “Hanc igitur” in the Eucharistic Prayer, and even with regard the dependence on God the Father by moving the place of the Our Father in the liturgy. Because he knew lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi, that the way we pray forms the way we believe that in turn forms the way we live, he wanted the Mass to be precisely that means by which we’re built up upon God. He likewise had special care for the poor, orphans and widows. He prayed and intervened to help out during terrible plagues that would come from the overflowing, polluted Tiber. He sent his monks to places near and far to evangelize and assist illiterate kings in the government of their feudal empires. He became truly what he chose as his papal title, a servant of the servants of God (servus servorum Dei). As we saw in the breviary lesson this morning, he was well aware of his sinfulness and weakness, but also of the encouragement and strength the Lord given him as he led him from somnolence to alertness, from darkness to light, from night to day, so he could help others make that same holy trek. Today we receive his encouragement and ask his help so that we, indeed, can live as children of the light and day, building our lives on the rock of God’s word and encouraging and helping others to build their lives, too, according to the words of the incarnate divine tekton.
• Today as we prepare to offer to the Father and receive the Word made flesh, we give thanks for how he encourages and builds us up in the Mass. We don’t need a demon crying out in the midst of the Chapel to get us to take this message seriously. Today all of creation cries out with us to call Jesus, the one we’re about to receive, the Holy One of God, and, astonished by his word, construct our existence ouron it.

The readings for today’s Mass were: