Eyes That See What Advent and Life Are About, First Tuesday of Advent, December 3, 2024

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Tuesday of the First Week of Advent
Memorial of St. Francis Xavier
December 3, 2024
Is 11:1-10, Ps 72, Lk 10:21-24

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today in the readings, we continue to focus, as we do each Advent, on the qualities of our response in preparing to run out to meet Christ who comes to us in history (Bethlehem), mystery (prayer, the Sacraments, his word, and other) and majesty (on the clouds of heaven at the end of time). As we run out to this encounter, we get ready for him to change us, so that from this point forward, we might run with him toward the eternal Jerusalem.
• Today the Church wants us to focus, first, on the virtue of childlike trust that is necessary to live Advent and the Christian life well. In the Gospel, Jesus praised his Father for his “gracious will” to reveal the mysteries of the kingdom to the “childlike,” to those who trust in him as beloved children, to those who are docile, uncomplicated, simple, pure, and unrebelliously dependent on his providential care and love. These mysteries are hidden from the “wise and the clever” of the world, not because God doesn’t want them to receive the revelation and come to salvation but because they obscure their own perception of revelation through their self-made complications. The fullness of revelation, Jesus says, is the knowledge of the Father and the mystery of his love. The fullness of revelation is seen in the image of the Father, Christ himself, who incarnates that wisdom, and received when we into Christ’s own relationship with the Father by the work of the Holy Spirit. Elsewhere in the Gospel Jesus says that unless we convert and become like little children, we will not inherit the kingdom of God. Unless we learn to trust in him, unless we see things with simple and pure faith, unless we learn to depend on him and recognize that we’re never going to be “self-sufficient,” we won’t be able to understand his kingdom and receive it. Jesus says these words in the Gospel right after he castigates those in Chorazin and Bethsaida for not converting after all his miracles. They witnessed him and his works, but it didn’t lead them to conversion and faith because they sought “adult” explanations that were, in fact, erroneous. The Church wants us to recover the pure vision, the wonder, the trust that should characterize everything we do as Christians. Jesus says that when we do recover that vision, we will be filled with joy. At the beginning of today’s Gospel, St. Luke tells us, “Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit.” He was full of joy at the reality that it was God the Father’s “gracious will” to reveal the mysteries of the kingdom to the “childlike.” And at the end of today’s Gospel, Jesus turned to his disciples and told them, “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see! For I say to you, many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it.” The great heroes of Old Testament times all hungered to receive “all the things” that had been handed over to Christ by the Father. They longed to see and hear the fulfillment of all the prophecies in the Messiah who would be Son of God and Savior in a way far greater than they had imagined. Jesus rejoiced at the disciples’ good fortune. If that’s true, how much greater is Jesus’ joy that we not only behold him in his Real Presence, hear his words in the Gospel, but have a chance to touch him and be touched by him in a way far more profound than even his disciples when he was proclaiming these words for the first time! This is why St. John, in his first letter, overflowing with joy, wrote, “What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we looked upon and touched with our hands concerning the Word of life … we proclaim now to you … so that our joy may be complete.”
• In the first reading we see one way in which we really need to have that childlike trust, accepting these images Jesus will give. The Prophet Isaiah tells us about the “shoot” that will “sprout from the stump of Jesse.” Jesse was David’s father and David began the Davidic line of kings. Just two generations after David, however, there were attacks to that line and eventually the kingdom of Judah and Israel would be chopped down. Jesse’s line was just a “stump,” but Isaiah foretells that a “shoot shall sprout” from it, fomenting among the Jews the longing for the Messiah, the longing ultimately for Jesus. Isaiah tells us that he would be filled with the spirit of God, that the Spirit would rest on him, the “spirit of wisdom and of understanding, … of counsel and of strength, … of knowledge and of fear of the Lord.” When Jesus entered the Nazareth synagogue to preach for the first time, he cited Isaiah and said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” and gave the purpose of that anointing: “because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor, …  to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.” He was the shoot who would bring justice to the world, not judging, as Isaiah describes, by appearances or deciding by hearsay. That new ordering of things in his kingdom would bring about a revolution. It requires true childlike trust to embrace what Jesus says. Isaiah describes the impact of the Messiah’s coming by means of unimaginable consequences in the animal kingdom that were meant to be a metaphor for what would happen among human beings living in a childlike way by the Spirit: wolves and lambs, leopards and kids, calves and lions, cows and bears, children and cobras, would play together without fear, without bloodshed, without destruction. If that’s what the shoot from Jesse’s stump would bring to the animal kingdom, how much of a greater impact should he have on human beings, as he helps us to live according to his justice, to enter his kingdom, to receive that same Spirit that fills with wisdom, understanding, counsel, strength, knowledge and awe of the Lord! There are many who on hearing these words will treat them like pie-in-the-sky utopianism, but we’re supposed to receive them conscious of the fact that the power of the Spirit of the Lord and his gifts can bring about that state in which enemies learn how to love each other rather than destroy each other. That’s what the one who is coming in history, mystery, and majesty wants to accomplish. That’s a revolution that will be led by spiritual children. Isaiah says that when the shoot sprouts, “a little child [will] guide” both calf and young lion, a “baby shall play by the cobra’s den and the child lay his hand on the adder’s lair.” That’s not only a prophecy about the child Jesus, but also about the child-like children of the kingdom who will lead this revolution by turning lions, cobras and adders into siblings.
• The second thing today’s readings teach us is about how we, having received that gift of revelation as children, are meant to share it. As we, in Christ, are filled with the spirit of wisdom, understanding, counsel, strength, knowledge and awe of the Lord, the Spirit sends us forth just like he did the apostles on the day of Pentecost. Like St. John, we can’t keep within “what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we looked upon and touched with our hands concerning the Word of life.” We must “proclaim” it, not just so that others’ eyes and ears may be similarly blessed but so that “our joy may be complete,” because we cannot hold it within. At the end of today’s prophecy from Isaiah, he says that “the root of Jesse,” Jesus, will be “set up as a signal for the nations. The Gentiles shall seek out, for his dwelling shall be glorious.” We’ll sing about this as we draw closer to Christmas in the O Antiphon for December 19, my last daily Mass among you, when we will pray, “O Radix Iesse, qui stas in signum populorum, super quem continebunt reges os suum, quem Gentes deprecabuntur: veni ad liberandum nos, jam noli tardare.” “O shoot from the stump of Jesse, who stand as a sign of the peoples, about whom the kings remain silent and the Gentiles praise: come free us, do not delay.” Jesus will be a sign for the nations, even more, an efficacious sign or sacrament, of God-with-us. And we’re called to take him as that sign to others.
• This is what the saint we celebrate today did in an extraordinary way. St. Francis Xavier, the patron of the missions, was marked, as we prayed in the opening Collect, by the “zeal of faith” that led him to seek to spread it in multiple places where faith in Christ had never been proclaimed, like portions of India, Borneo, Indonesia, Japan, and even the shores of China. Today the Church has us pray that we might have the same passion, raising up to God the petition that we might “burn with the same zeal” and, after Communion, that God will “enkindle in us that fire of charity with which St. Francis Xavier burned for the salvation of souls.” Every year priests, religious and all those who pray the Liturgy of the Hours ponder this letter he sent in 1544 to his friend, former college roommate and religious superior, St. Ignatius of Loyola. In it we see that zeal of faith, that fire of charity, that is meant to mark us all as we see to bring the Root of Jesus as a sign to all nations. St. Francis Xavier wrote, “We have visited the villages of the new converts who accepted the Christian religion a few years ago. … The native Christians have no priests. They know only that they are Christians. There is nobody to say Mass for them; nobody to teach them the Creed, the Our Father, the Hail Mary and the Commandments of God’s Law. I have not stopped since the day I arrived. I conscientiously made the rounds of the villages. I bathed in the sacred waters all the children who had not yet been baptized. This means that I have purified a very large number of children so young that, as the saying goes, they could not tell their right hand from their left. The older children would not let me say my Office or eat or sleep until I taught them one prayer or another. Then I began to understand: ‘The kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.’ I could not refuse so devout a request without failing in devotion myself. I taught them, first the confession of faith in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, then the Apostles’ Creed, the Our Father and Hail Mary. I noticed among them persons of great intelligence. If only someone could educate them in the Christian way of life, I have no doubt that they would make excellent Christians. Many, many people hereabouts are not becoming Christians for one reason only: there is nobody to make them Christians.” Then we get to the heart of his message, something that he wanted to proclaim at his Alma Mater, something that he would want to proclaim here at Columbia. He continued: “Again and again I have thought of going round the universities of Europe, especially Paris, and everywhere crying out like a madman, riveting the attention of those with more learning than charity: ‘What a tragedy: how many souls are being shut out of heaven and falling into hell, thanks to you!’ I wish they would work as hard at this as they do at their books, and so settle their account with God for their learning and the talents entrusted to them. This thought would certainly stir most of them to meditate on spiritual realities, to listen actively to what God is saying to them. They would forget their own desires, their human affairs, and give themselves over entirely to God’s will and his choice. They would cry out with all their heart: Lord, I am here! What do you want me to do? Send me anywhere you like – even to India.” Reading those words soon after they were published for the first time, the future St. Philip Neri went to his spiritual director and said that he thought the Lord was asking him to follow Francis to India. His wise spiritual director told him, “No. Rome will be your Indies!,” and St. Philip worked as hard bringing people back to the faith in Rome after the sack and so much debauchery as St. Francis Xavier had been doing in far away lands. Likewise, for us, Manhattan must be our Indies. The campus of Columbia is our missionary land now. There’s no reason why we can’t do here what St. Francis did in Goa, Malaysia and Japan. He had 46 chromosomes just like us. But he burned with the love for Christ for those who did not know him. And when we burn with a similar fire, we will say, as he wrote in that 1544 letter, “Send me anywhere you like.”
• When I read those words today I am brought back exactly a decade ago, December 3, 2014. My bishop had called me the previous night at 9 pm, asking if I might come to see him. I was actually in the Detroit airport flying back from Green Bay and told him I couldn’t get to his house until about 11:30 pm. So we set up an appointment the following morning. Because of the urgency with which he wanted to meet me, I knew that my life was about to change, although I didn’t know how. In the morning, before Mass, as I was praying the Office of Readings in the Liturgy of the Hours, I was arrested by St. Francis Xavier’s words, “Send me anywhere you like — even to India.” I realized once again that God was asking of me a blank check, to be willing to go wherever he wanted. When I met with the bishop later that morning, he agonizingly made some polite small talk, as interiorly I impatiently waited to find out where the Lord was sending me. He then told me that he had received a letter from Archbishop Bernardito Auza requesting that I be released to come to work with him. As a diocesan newspaper editor and commentator on Church affairs, I knew the names of all 32 archbishops who head archdioceses in the United States as well as all of the Archbishops who headed Roman departments. I hadn’t heard of Archbishop Auza, whose four-letter name my bishop somehow elongated to five different syllables. I thought he had to be a bishop somewhere in missionary territories. I began to imagine sleeping in mosquito nets and being far away from civilization. For a moment I wondered if I might be able to take my blank check back. Eventually my bishop said something about New York City and I wondered what that meant. I knew Cardinal Dolan was the Archbishop. I remembered that there was one other Archbishop in the city, the papal nuncio to the United Nations, but I thought he was Archbishop Francis Chullikatt from India. Eventually, however, Bishop da Cunha made clear that Archbishop Auza was the Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations and that therefore the request was to come to New York to help in the work of the Holy See to bring the light of Catholic Social teaching to the needs and problems of the world. With an interior sigh of relief, I told my bishop that I would do it! That changed my life, as I came to New York and had the chance for the next seven years to proclaim the Gospel to all nations, all at the same time. It’s also what made possible, eventually, my remaining in New York after that was done to serve as Catholic chaplain at Columbia University and the founding chaplain of the Merton Institute. That’s what has also made possible my being named National Director of the Pontifical Mission Societies, trying to promote a missionary spirituality among Catholics in the United States and, under the patronage of St. Francis Xavier, catalyze the support among Americans for the spread of the Gospel worldwide, by actualizing his message and crying out like a madman to have people everywhere recognize that many are not living in relationship with Jesus Christ because too many of us are focused on other things as more important than sharing Jesus’ light and love! Today is a day on which all of us are reminded that the Church and we don’t have a mission, but are a mission, and Christ summons each of us to continue his saving mission. We the Church have been set up as a signal for the nations, conscious that many prophets and kings of all, and people of every race, tongue and social class today, long to see what we see and to hear what we hear.
• How blessed our eyes are to behold the Lamb of God here on the altar! How blessed are our ears to hear him speaking to us today! How blessed are we to have received the outpouring of the Holy Spirit who once again today seeks to fill us with the spirit of wisdom, understanding, counsel, courage, knowledge and awe of the Lord, and to come down upon us to make us one body, one spirit in Christ. With childlike trust, we turn in prayer to Jesus whom we’re about to receive and beg him for all the graces He knows we need to become more childlike and joyful still and to move us inwardly to spend our lives bringing that joy out to those around us, so that we might live with them in the kingdom when all Isaiah’s prophecies will be fulfilled.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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