Faithful and Prudent to the End, 21st Thursday (II), August 27, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Thursday of the 21st Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of St. Monica
August 27, 2020
1 Cor 1:1-9, Ps 145, Mt 24:42-51

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today Jesus uses a shocking image to describe himself in relation to us. We’re used to so many other titles he gives himself that are rich and inviting: Good Shepherd, Son of Man, Son of God, Savior, Lord, the Way, The Truth, the Resurrection and the Life, the Light of the World, the Gate, and more. Today he labels himself as a Thief, putting that title in parallel with “your Lord” and “Son of Man.” We normally don’t hold thieves in esteem. The whole reason why the Good Thief is remembered by that title is because “good” and “thief” together are paradoxical terms. But this is clearly what he means to communicate. In the Book of Revelation, he addresses St. John twice by saying, “If you are not watchful, I will come like a thief and you will never know at what hour I will come” (Rev 3:3) and “Behold I am coming like a thief” (Rev 16:15). St. Paul, in his First letter to the Thessalonians says, “For you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief at night. … But you, brothers, are not in darkness, for that day to overtake you like a thief” (1 Thess 5:2-4). St. Peter in his Second Letter likewise reminder the early Christians, “The day of the Lord will come like a thief” (2 Pet 3:10).
• Why does Jesus choose this image? I think for two reasons. The first is to help us acknowledge and overcome our sense of ownership of our life, our time, our things. We’re afraid of thieves because we are afraid of losing what we have. But none of what we have — even our life — is our own. We’re stewards of a gift. We can’t and won’t be afraid of the “thievery” of God if we’re already seeking to give him all we have and are. The second reason is to focus on the aspect of surprise. We’re afraid of thieves because we want to feel safe, we want to think that while we’re asleep or awake that we, our loved ones and our possessions are protected, that they’ll all be there when we return or wake up, that somebody won’t kidnap those we love, liquidate our bank account, or empty our house of all its valuables, or even swipe and use our identity. Unlike armed robbers who act in daylight overpowering us with threat of force or death, thieves are more like pickpockets, working when we don’t expect. Jesus does not want us to be surprised, but rather always expecting him, always awake, sober, looking forward to an encounter with him, so that we’re never surprised when he comes, in day to day life, or, more apropos to today’s Gospel, at the end of our life on earth.
• The types of virtues Jesus wishes for us in awaiting his thievery are given in the second part of today’s Gospel, when Jesus describes the “faithful and prudent servant.” Faithful, pistis in Greek, means first “believing” or “trusting,” indicating that it’s someone who trusts in the Master and in turn earns the Master’s trust. He believes in the Master. He loves the Master. He believes the Master is good and worthy of his trust and so behaves, intentionally, consistent with that. The other virtue is phronimos, which is generally translated “wise” or “prudent” but basically means practical, acting considerately on the truth, incarnating goodness in needs. It’s someone who is passionately committed to fulfilling one’s duties out of that trust and love in the ruler. The faithful and prudent servant does two things. First, he remains awake and alert constantly to God’s presence and “prepared” to respond to him. Jesus calls us to be more alert to God’s coming than a householder would to a burglar’s. Many times we go through life asleep. We can even sleep-walk through Mass, through the Rosary, through other prayers, without really grasping that God is present listening to us and trying to speak. Therefore, the first thing needed to become the type of steward God wants and expects is to stimulate a vivid, continuous awareness of the presence of God. The second quality of a faithful and prudent steward is that he distributes the master’s food to the members of the master’s household at the proper time. It’s not enough for him to have presence of God, but, as a result of that awareness, he enters into the love of the Lord for the members of the Lord’s family, distributing the nourishment he himself has received to them as they need it. Jesus says, “Blessed is that servant who his master on his arrival finds him doing [this distribution],” promising that he will be “put in charge of all of his property.” Since that Master will come “at an hour you do not expect,” the faithful and prudent steward is always seeking to give the Lord to others.
• Jesus contrasts this faithful and prudent steward with the “wicked servant,” who thinks his master is long delayed and is unaware of his coming, who gives into a life of pleasure as he “eats and drinks with drunkards,” who rather than serving the other servants “begins to beat” them, who thinks that there will always be time to clean things up later and fake as if he were faithful and prudent. These are activities he would never do if he were awake to the Master’s presence, but because of that lack of awareness, of being asleep to the Master’s coming, he begins to act in a wicked way, abusing his office. This image conveys to us very clearly what CS Lewis used to say was the devil’s most seductive ploy: to convince us that there’s always time. Jesus on the other hand wants us to live as if every day is the day of his coming. He doesn’t tell us the day or the hour precisely so that we might treat every day as that day or hour, and rather than dread an ambush, live in alert, loving expectation.
• God wants to help us to do this, to become his faithful and prudent servant. In today’s first reading, from the beginning of St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians which we will be hearing for the next three-plus weeks at daily Mass (through Sept 19), the apostle tells us that God who calls us “to be holy” and “to communion” (fellowship) has “enriched [us] in every way, with all discourse and knowledge … so that [we] are not lacking in any spiritual gift as [we] wait for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ,” who, as he himself says in the Gospel, may come at any hour. St. Paul says, “He will keep you firm to the end, irreproachable on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  God will give us all the help we need to be alert to his presence so that we may give him to others, but we have to receive and respond to that help, which he seeks to give us by “breaking in” to our home with our permission constantly. The wicked servant refuses that help in a practical way whereas a faithful and prudent servant cooperates and corresponds.
• The saints are the good and faithful servants who show us how to do this. St. Therese Lisieux, during the last couple of years of her life, as she was dying of tuberculosis, she began to relate to Jesus as “Le Voleur,” the “thief,” more and more. She wanted to help the thief steal her heart. When her sister Pauline (Mother Agnes of Jesus) asked her whether she was afraid of the thief who seemed to be at the door, she replied, “He’s not at the door. He’s already come in,” adding, “How could I be afraid of someone I love so much?” She made up a small aspiration that she would pray, showing her approach to Jesus the Thief, “Le Voleur viendra et m’emport’ra! Alleluia!” “The thief will come and snatch me away! Alleluia!” Her whole approach was summarized by her waiting for the Thief quietly with loving expectation to take her to be with him forever. She was always alert and awake for his coming.
• Another was the faithful and prudent servant of the Lord whom we celebrate today, St. Monica, one of the most endearing figures in history. Through many difficulties, she exuded pistis and phronimos. She received God’s spiritual gifts and vocation to holiness and remained firm to the end, living in his presence, giving herself over to him with generosity, seeking to distribute to her family members at the proper time, always and everywhere, what she had received. And she prayed for the break into the lives of her husband and famous son and for him to come with haste for her once he had granted her incessant petitions. Whereas many saints have inimitable qualities, she is one of the most relatable, approachable and practical of them all. As a Christian wife, her chief role was to sanctify her husband, who was a violent and dissolute pagan named Patricius. Though he was rich, he could not take Monica’s generosity to the poor distributing to others what they needed at the fitting time. Though she was as faithful and loving to him as she sought to be toward God, he constantly chastised her piety. If all of that was not hard enough to bear, her cantankerous mother-in-law lived with them and daily multiplied the insults. All of this could have driven Monica to divorce and despair, but instead it propelled her to even greater devotion to God and them. For 17 years, she joined her sufferings to prayers for their conversion. Eventually, the power of God’s grace and the example of her Christian virtues penetrated their hardened hearts and they both received baptism. For her husband it was just in time — Patricius would die a holy death in the hands of the Divine Thief less than a year later. But that work as a wife was just a warm-up for her labors as a mother. The oldest of her three children, Augustine, was then a brilliant teenage rhetoric student living away from home in Carthage. She hoped that he would follow the example of his father’s conversion, but, instead, especially after his father’s death, he went full-steam in the opposite direction. He joined the Manichean heretics. He invited a woman to cohabitate with him and fathered a child out-of-wedlock. When he would come home, he would intentionally blaspheme so much that Monica prevented him from eating or sleeping at home until the budding rhetorician learned to discipline his tongue. Monica prayed unceasingly for her son’s conversion, praying he would turn in time. She fasted. She got friends to intercede. She arranged for priests to argue with him. She flooded her bed and various churches with her tears. When Augustine decided he was going to Rome, Monica, fearing lest he never convert, decided to go with him. While waiting in port before their departure across the Mediterranean, however, Augustine lied to his mother about the departure time and left without her, caring so little about her as to leave his own mother helpless in a busy metropolis, without any word as to his whereabouts. But she didn’t “quit her job,” she didn’t give up. A bishop, seeing her weeping, assured her on behalf of God, “It is not possible that the son of so many tears should perish.” So she boarded a ship to Rome to look for Augustine there. She eventually received word that he was among the rhetoricians in Milan, and that’s where she and the Good Shepherd at last found their lost sheep. Thanks to the help of the bishop of Milan, St. Ambrose, who captivated Augustine first by his oratory and then by his faith and charity, Augustine renounced Manicheanism, accepted the Christian faith, made a promise of celibacy and received the gift of baptism at the age of 32. Mother and son decided to return home to Africa, but Monica would not make it. She took ill in the Roman port of Ostia and was soon on her deathbed. Augustine was now the one full of tears, but Monica replied, “Son, my hopes in this world are now fulfilled. All I wished to live for was that I might see you a Catholic and a child of heaven. God has granted me more than this in making you despise earthly felicity and consecrate yourself to his service.” What a beautiful testimony of a mother’s chief work, and she rejoiced not just at his baptism but that he had decided to become a celibate to serve God and to strive to become the Lord’s faithful and prudent servant. Monica became a saint precisely because of the way she was a faithful and prudent servant of her family, especially in difficult times. Her prayers, her tears, her fastings, her intercessions, caused because of the problems they made for her, ultimately not only helped them get to heaven, but helped her to become even more rich with every spiritual gift.
• As her other son was weeping that she would die outside of her native Africa making it impossible for them to bury her in her native land, she said, “Bury my body wherever you will; let not care of it cause you any concern. One thing only I ask you, that you remember me at the altar of the Lord wherever you may be.” What a powerful preparation that thought is for Mass. Little did she know at the time that her son Augustine would become a priest and a bishop and be able to celebrate Mass for her at that altar. Little did she know that ordained son would keep the fourth commandment by honoring his mother’s faith and tears by eventually becoming one of the most famous Christian theologians of all time. But perhaps most of all, little did she grasp that today, 1633 years later, we would all be remembering her at the altar of the Lord in a continent that no one during her age would have even guessed existed. And all of this happened because she was faithful to her work as a spouse and a mother, even when it was excruciating. All of this happened because she was conscious of God’s presence, of the vocation to holiness not just for her but for her husband, son and mother-in-law, of her prudence in always giving an example of faith and offering an abundance of prayers for them at every time. It was here at Mass where she would bring her ceaseless prayers and where God responded in a way far greater to her good work than she could have ever imagined. Today as we come to pray at Mass as well, we recognize that the Lord comes here not as a thief but humbly, in order to sanctify us, enrich us in every way so that we may not be lacking in any spiritual gift, and to make us from the inside firm to the end. God is faithful, God is eminently practical, and he seeks to form us in his image.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Gospel
MT 24:42-51

Jesus said to his disciples:
“Stay awake!
For you do not know on which day your Lord will come.
Be sure of this:
if the master of the house
had known the hour of night when the thief was coming,
he would have stayed awake
and not let his house be broken into.
So too, you also must be prepared,
for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.
“Who, then, is the faithful and prudent servant,
whom the master has put in charge of his household
to distribute to them their food at the proper time?
Blessed is that servant whom his master on his arrival finds doing so.
Amen, I say to you, he will put him in charge of all his property.
But if that wicked servant says to himself, ‘My master is long delayed,’
and begins to beat his fellow servants,
and eat and drink with drunkards,
the servant’s master will come on an unexpected day
and at an unknown hour and will punish him severely
and assign him a place with the hypocrites,
where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.”

Podcast: Play in new window | Download