Entering into the Lord’s Goodness and Gladness in His Works, Fifth Monday (I), February 6, 2023

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Monday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Memorial of St. Paul Miki and Companions
February 6, 2023
Gen 1:1-19, Ps 104, Mk 6:53-56

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• After having completed a four week meditation on the Letter to the Hebrews, by which we’re able to see everything in the light of God’s definitive Word, Jesus Christ, and learn how to keep our eyes firmly fixed on him, today we begin a study of the beginning of the Book of the Beginning — Genesis — that will accompany us for the text two weeks. It has an opportunity for us to “re-read” the beginning with the prism of what we have just learned in Hebrews.
• Genesis begins with a focus on the phases of Creation and how good it was. After the creation of light and its separation from darkness, after the creation of the sky and the earth, after the creation of the waters from land, after the creation of vegetation and fruit, after the creation of the Sun and the moon and the stars, Genesis says “God saw how good it was.” Tomorrow we’ll continue seeing this goodness in the creation of the creatures of the sea and the animals, which likewise were good, and arrive at the culmination of the human person whom God saw was “very good.” The goodness of creation leads us to exclaim in the Psalm, “May the Lord be glad in his works!” It ponders the earth, the ocean, the mountains, the streams, the wind, the mountains, the birds, the trees, and then exults, “How manifold are your works, O Lord! In wisdom you have wrought them all— the earth is full of your creatures; Bless the Lord, O my soul!” How important it is for us spiritually to enter into a hymn of praise for the essential goodness of creation!
• In the Gospel, however, we see the breakdown. It’s a corruption of that goodness we’ll see on Friday with the account of the original sin of Eve and Adam. Even though creation was ontologically good, moral evil entered. And that brought about a disharmony that was never originally intended. It partially ruptured the communion that was meant to exist between creatures and God, between creatures and each other, within creatures themselves, and within all of creation. That breakdown caused by sin was the source of the introduction of illnesses and what they lead to, death. We get a glimpse of that pain and suffering in the Gospel. As Jesus disembarked in Gennesaret, “people immediately recognized him. They scurried about the surrounding country and began to bring in the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. Whatever villages or towns or countryside he entered, they laid the sick in the marketplaces and begged him that they might touch only the tassel on his cloak.” Such enormous pain and suffering! It was like whole towns were hospital wards. And they came to the Divine Physician. They must have heard about the miracle of the woman with the hemorrhage who was cured of her 12-year illness by touching the edge of his garment because St. Mark tells us that they were all trying to touch even the tassel of his cloak with faith and that as many as touched it were healed.
• There was a tremendous physical transformation that points to an even greater spiritual one. Jesus’ physical healings — as well as his preaching and all of his other miracles — were all signs of a deeper spiritual one he was accomplishing, the redemption of the world. This is something that should fill us with wonder and gratitude. Every Christmas morning we ponder that Jesus came into the world not just to restore the goodness of creation but to redeem and surpass it. In Latin, we pray, “Deus, qui humanae substantiae dignitatem mirabiliter condidisti et mirabilius reformasti,” which means, “O God, you who wondrously created the dignity of human substance and even more wondrously reformed it.” These are words that have traditionally been said by the priest quietly at Mass at the offertory as he prepares the chalice, as he prays that we might enter fully into that wondrous reform: “da nobis per huius aquae et vini mysterium, eius divinitatis esse consortes, qui humanitatis nostrae fieri dignatus est particeps.”(“Grant us, by the mystery of this water and wine to become shares of the divinity of him who humbled himself to become a participant of our humanity.”). That’s what God does coming into the world. He wants not just to restore us but to raise us beyond where we were before. He wants not to recreate us in his image but conform us to his likeness by yoking ourselves to him in all his holiness. If in creation we praise the Lord and pray that he be glad in all of his works, how much more must we sing his praises for redemption?
• Today the Church celebrates the feast of St. Paul Miki and his 25 Companion Martyrs, who were crucified in Japan in 1597. It’s an opportunity for us to praise God for the redemption that sustained them with hope even in the midst of their persecution, the tortures they suffered, and their martyrdoms. They were the first of the nearly 35,000 Japanese converts who died heroically for the faith between 1597-1639. Because the imperial minister Toyotomi Hideyoski feared that missionaries from the Philippines were actually Spanish insurgents seeking to overthrow Japan, he responded by sentencing these 26 Catholics — 3 native Jesuits, 17 lay Catholics including children and six  Franciscan missionaries — to death by crucifixion. They were marched an unbelievable 600 miles to Nagasaki, suffering so many indignities and tortures along the way to try to frighten any Japanese from seeking to convert to Christianity, but even in the midst of torture, they sang a Te Deum to God. When they were being crucified, they had their last opportunity to evangelize those who were present for the spectacle, and they didn’t miss their chance. In the most powerful pulpit of his life, St. Paul Miki gave his last will and testament: “The sentence of judgment says these men came to Japan from the Philippines, but I did not come from any other country. I am a true Japanese. The only reason for my being killed is that I have taught the doctrine of Christ. I certainly did teach the doctrine of Christ. I thank God it is for this reason I die. I believe that I am telling only the truth before I die. I know you believe me and I want to say to you all once again: Ask Christ to help you to become happy. I obey Christ. After Christ’s example I forgive my persecutors. I do not hate them. I ask God to have pity on all, and I hope my blood will fall on my fellow men as a fruitful rain.” God had blessed the Japanese with many natural virtues. But he was blessing them with something far greater in the redemption, and that’s a treasure not only that they would never give up but that they wanted others to have. This greatness of the “more wondrous” redemption is captured by today’s opening prayer: “O God, strength of all the saints, who through the Cross were pleased to call the Martyrs Saint Paul Miki and companions to life….” The Cross, a sign of death, of suffering, of sin, was transformed into a Tree not just of life, but of eternal life. We see in their martyrdom the surpassing of creation in all its starkness, as they enter full into the Paschal Mystery of death and resurrection.
• Each day at Mass, we come to praise the Lord’s wisdom in all his works. We sorrowfully call to mind the ways we and others haven’t lived up, in our thoughts, words, actions and omissions, to the dignity of our being created very good and beg his mercy, and then we come asking him to make us sharers in the recreation of redemption he came into the world to inaugurate. The offertory symbolizes what we do, taking the good fruit of the earth — grain and grapes — and subduing them by the work of human hands and offering them as the matter that he will take to work this miracle, taking what’s good and making it truly wonderful and the source of our continued redemption. This is the miracle that made St. Paul Miki and his companions courageous until the end. May we, like them, become sharers in the divinity of him we’re about to receive who out of love lowered himself to take on our humanity and take all our sins against the goodness of the created order away, and recreate something even more wonderful. May all of us who touch him on the inside today be healed!

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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