Following God the Father’s Chosen and Beloved Servant, 15th Saturday (II), July 18, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Saturday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of St. Camillus de Lellis
July 18, 2020
Micah 2:1-5, Ps 10, Mt 12:14-21

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• It is quite an opening sentence to today’s Gospel. “The Pharisees went out and took counsel against Jesus to put him to death.” The Pharisees, as we know, had the reputation for being the most religious of Jews. Whereas the typical Jew fasted once a year on the Day of Atonement, the Pharisees fasted twice a week. Whereas the typical Jew prayed once a day, the Pharisees prayed three times a day. Whereas the normal Jew tithed only those things that were explicitly prescribed, the Pharisees tithed everything. They were the ones who tried to practice to the letter all of the Scribes’ prescriptions. But as much as they had a reputation for religious zeal, many of them were “whitewashed sepulchers,” as Jesus would call them later. They looked great on the outside, but on the inside they were full of dead men’s bones. They seemed to be living by the law of God but on the inside they were hateful, unloving and even murderous. In the first reading, the Prophet Micah (whom we have today for the first of three daily Masses) says, “Woe to those who plan iniquity, and work out evil on their couches,” who “mark out boundaries [of poor persons’  property they want to seize] by lot in the assembly of the Lord.” The Pharisees were those who would come in and out of the Synagogues and Temple areas, who would practice the faith, but who would then conspire to have someone killed. They were the ones, to quote today’s Psalm, whose “mouth is full of cursing, guile and deceit” and “under his tongue are mischief and iniquity,” the one who “lurks in ambush near the villages; in hiding he murders the innocent; his eyes spy upon the unfortunate.” It’s a practical hypocrisy that remains stunning 2,000 years later. It is a prelude to every religious scandal and an illustration of the ancient aphorism corruptio optimi pessima, the corruption of the best is worst of all.
• Why did they want to put Jesus to death? Because of Jesus’ whole approach to the Sabbath and to the law in general, which went against their rigid interpretation. In yesterday’s Gospel, they criticized Jesus for allowing his disciples to eat pick the heads of grain and eat them — even though that was totally permitted in the Mosaic law — because they were “working” on the sabbath, picking grain and threshing it in their hands. The Pharisees would rather have the disciples starve than to do that simple, unstrenuous work because they thought that that work was a violation of God’s command to keep holy the Sabbath day. Then, when Jesus entered the Synagogue to teach, he saw a man with a withered hand and he cured him, and the Pharisees were outraged that he did the work of healing on the Sabbath, as if what pleased God more was to have someone suffer than to be healed. Jesus gave the example that they would all rescue their animal on the Sabbath if it fell in a ditch, but they didn’t want this handicapped man to receive God’s healing. Both scenes show just how ignorant they were to God’s will and how resistant they were to anyone’s indicating to them what that will really was. God’s whole plan was to have men and women share his very life, to receive and live in his love, and to grow in his likeness by loving others in the same way. They thought in practice that God wanted people to starve and continue to live handicapped and burdened — which they considered part of sabbath worship! — and they were totally resistant to anything Jesus might say otherwise. Their real hypocrisy with regard to God’s law was exposed in all its ugliness when they would conspire, against the fifth and eighth commandments, to murder Jesus.
• What was Jesus’ response? He could have exposed their plans. He could have had a “preventive intervention,” eliminating them before they would eliminate him. Instead, when he realized what they were doing, St. Matthew tells us, “he withdrew from that place.” In doing so, he wasn’t running away. He knew his hour eventually would come. But he was leading the people away from them. “Many followed him,” the Gospel says, “and he cured them all.” He left the place of confrontation in order to continue his divine work of healing love and bringing people into communion with him. He told them not to speak about the miracles so that he would be able to continue to his Messianic work and the formation of the Church before those who were plotting his death would eventually catch up to him.
• In doing all of this, he was showing himself to be the fulfillment of the meek and humble spiritual child he called all of us to be earlier this week when he told us to yoke ourselves to him and “Learn (from) me, for I am meek and humble of heart.” In Matthew’s Gospel account, the evangelist has God the Father “speak” a word about his Son as the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy (Is 42:1-4): “Behold, my servant whom I have chosen, my beloved in whom I delight; I shall place my Spirit upon him, and he will proclaim justice to the Gentiles. He will not contend or cry out, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets. A bruised reed he will not break, a smoldering wick he will not quench, until he brings justice to victory. And in his name the Gentiles will hope.” The word translated as “servant” is the Greek pais, which doesn’t mean “slave” (doulos) but obedient child, like a child who respectfully helps out his Father. The Father praises his Son upon whom he places his Spirit and whom he chooses, loves, and delights. The Son proclaims justice to the nations. He doesn’t fight or cry out, he doesn’t break those who are bruised like reeds or those who have just a few burning embers of faith and life, but he strengthens and revivifies. In all of this, he shows his meekness, that he wishes to bring about his kingdom not by an earthly force of arms of armies but by the power of his love that dies even for those seeking to kill him. That’s the reason why this Suffering Servant Song from Isaiah 42 is read on Monday of Holy Week. He sets for us the example of how to respond when we meet opposition and persecution. The temptation is to respond with human means and logic, to cry out, to fight back, to get the others before they get us. He shows us the way of the Gospel, the way of praying for persecutors, turning the cheek, and doing good to those who do evil.
• The great model of one who follows Jesus down this path of meekness and humility is the one from whom Jesus paradoxically learned these virtues according to his humanity: the Blessed Virgin Mary, whom we remember in a special way on Saturday. Like Isaiah’s words about Jesus, she, too, was the beloved, highly favored daughter of Zion in whom God was much pleased. She was the one chosen by God from all women and in whom God delights. She was the one upon whom God placed the Holy Spirit to overshadow her. She never fought or cried out at the time when Herod was trying to assassinate the infant Jesus, when his fellow Nazarenes were seeking to throw him off a cliff to his death, when she witnessed the naked body of him she used to bathe exposed for all to see on Calvary and bathed in blood. The only time she cried out was in exultation at the Magnificat, letting her soul magnify the Lord, her spirit exult in God her Savior, for all that the Almighty had done for her in her humility. With maternal care she tenderly comforts those who like broken reeds are about to crack and places her own warmth in those who are like smoldering wicks in order to keep the fire of love for God burning and growing. She is the perfect contrast to the Pharisees.
• We all are called to follow Jesus away from the crowds who live in a way contrasted to Jesus meek and humble of heart, the Chosen, Beloved, Delightful Pais, the obedient Son of the Father. For most of us, that requires conversion and the saint the Church remembers today gives us hope that that conversion is possible for everyone. When St. Camillus de Lellis was young, he picked up many of the bad habits of his Neapolitan father, a mercenary soldier, most notably his terrible temper. With his father, he joined the military as a means of handling his aggression, but it only increased his violence. He would crush not only bruised reeds but try to crush firm ones. He would cry out in anger. He contended with everyone in the streets and everywhere else. When he left military service because of a failed campaign and a serious leg infection, his violent streak had only grown, and he had become a gambling addict. He was hired by the Capuchins as a laborer, and one of the Capuchins saw some goodness in him and patiently pushed him to conversion and to trust in Christ’s power to make something good of him. At 25 he converted so thoroughly that he wanted to spend the rest of his life serving God through the Capuchins, but because his leg injury was incurable, he was refused. He was cared for in Rome by the Hospitallers of St. John in such a way that he resolved to use his organizational skills, talents, and charity to revolutionize the type of care that was given to incurables in their clinic. Under the guidance of his spiritual director, St. Philip Neri, he began to organize around himself a group of men who would care for the sick. They were called the Ministers of the Infirm, now known as the Camillians. They took a fourth vow to care for the sick even at the risk of their life, something they routinely did in caring for those with the bubonic plague and other infectious diseases. St. Camillus taught his brothers in religious life how to care for Christ in the sick. So great, in fact, was his focus on Christ in the sick that he would literally treat them as if he were handling Christ, even expressing sorrow to them for all his past sins and begging mercy. When St. Camillus couldn’t walk to see the sick, he would crawl on the floor. He sought to treat others as they deserved, as images of Christ. He allowed them to come to him with all of their labors, burdens and sufferings and he sought to refresh them with Christ-like love, because he had learned that love from taking on Christ’s yoke and learning humility, meekness and compassion from learning Christ. He became very much a beloved, chosen, delightful obedient son of the Father and of Christ, whose desire, as we saw yesterday, was for mercy, not sacrifice.
• We pray through his and Our Lady’s intercession today that as we prepare to receive within us the same Jesus Mary bore in her womb for nine months and St. Camillus de Lellis gave to so many at Mass, we may follow Jesus apart from the crowds so that he can continue to heal us and form us so that we, too, might be his true obedient sons and daughters chosen, beloved and Spirit-filled to proclaim his justice and love to the nations, especially to those whose faith is weak and whose lives are fragile.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Gospel
MT 12:14-21

The Pharisees went out and took counsel against Jesus
to put him to death.

When Jesus realized this, he withdrew from that place.
Many people followed him, and he cured them all,
but he warned them not to make him known.
This was to fulfill what had been spoken through Isaiah the prophet:

Behold, my servant whom I have chosen,
my beloved in whom I delight;
I shall place my Spirit upon him,
and he will proclaim justice to the Gentiles.
He will not contend or cry out,
nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets.
A bruised reed he will not break,
a smoldering wick he will not quench,
until he brings justice to victory.
And in his name the Gentiles will hope.

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