Following Jesus Along the Still More Excellent Way, 24th Wednesday (II), September 16, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Wednesday of the 24th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of SS. Cyprian and Cornelius, Martyrs
18th Anniversary of Cardinal François Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan
September 16, 2020
1 Cor 12:31-13:13, Ps 33, Lk 7:31-35

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

The following points were attempted in today’s homily: 

•  In today’s Gospel, Jesus compares the people of the generation to whom he was preaching as “children who sit in the marketplace.” He says they call out to each other, “We played the flute for you, but you did not dance. We sang a dirge for you, but you did not weep.” Jesus was essentially correcting them about two aspects of childish immaturity that was preventing their becoming disciples. The first is that they were seated. They were not willing to get up and follow Jesus along the way of discipleship. They were not willing to change. The second is that that they wanted to be the ones playing the tune to which others would dance. If they were playing a joyful tune on the flute, they wanted people to dance a jitterbug; if they were playing a dirge or a fado, they wanted people weeping. They were not willing to align themselves to the ever new song, the lyrics (Word of God) and melody (tone) that Jesus was playing rather than domesticate him by getting him to conform his message to their music.
• Jesus compared the generation to a group of spoiled, fickle children, because they had hardened their hearts totally to the message of God, trying to control and judge God rather than obey and love him. He said that when John the Baptist came to them, rather than focus on his message of conversion, they criticized him for “neither eating food nor drinking wine,” because he fasted, ate wild honey and consumed locusts. They “classified and conquered” him and refused to convert at his message. When Jesus came with a totally different approach, “eating and drinking” because he was the Bridegroom and wanted to teach them how to feast in God’s presence rather than fast — we would fast when the Bridegroom would be taken away — they criticized him for not fasting and for not abstaining, calling him a “glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.” Again, they avoided his message by judging the messenger, coming at him from a position of superiority rather than docility. The upshot is that no matter whom God sent to them, they weren’t prepared to accept him, but they’d find something to criticize, something to give them the excuse to remain seated, something that would keep them in control of the jukebox or playlist.
• Jesus is forcefully calling us and the people of our generation to be something far different from “children sitting in the marketplace.” He calls us to be spiritually childlike, a son or daughter who lovingly trusts God, who believes what he says is true, recognizes what he or she doesn’t know, and who seeks to become like chips off the old (divine) block. When Jesus says at the end of today’s episode,  “wisdom is vindicated by all her children,” he is communicating that he wants us to be his vindication by living according to his wisdom as sons in the Son, eating and drinking, fasting and abstaining, dancing and making music, and doing everything in union with him and at his lead.
• The truth is that there are many in our own generation who behave before God like the spoiled children Jesus mentions in his image. We judge God, we judge his Church, we judge those whom he sends us by our own criteria. We make our preferences the most important thing of all. Many choose Churches based on whether they play the music they like, whether chant, or polyphony, or hymnody, or polka, or rock, or contemporary praise and worship, or whether there’s no music at all, rather than singing everything as an opportunity to praise God with others. Instead of heeding the message God gives us in a homily, for example, many judge it by its length or evaluate it by their own likes and dislikes rather than seeking to align ourselves to what God is communicating. Many will notice all the things that don’t matter much if anything at all and fail to heed the things that matter most. Jesus is calling us, rather, to real spiritual childhood, to convert and become like the little children whose example he places for us all, not the capricious kids he mentions in the Gospel.
• Today St. Paul tells us that path to spiritual maturity. He said, “When I was a child, I used to talk as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I put aside childish things.” He put away the flute that he was playing and became an instrument in the Lord’s hands. We’re all called to do the same. And what’s the path to spiritual maturity? It’s the path to learning how to love as Jesus loves. Jesus told us during the Last Supper, “Love one another as I have loved you” and then indicated what real love is: “No one has any greater love than to lay down his life for his friends.” Real spiritual maturity is when we’re able to get beyond our likes and dislikes, to get beyond our self-preservation, and learn how to give of ourselves wholly and entirely out of love for God and others. True spiritual maturity is the capacity to die for God and others, it comes from unselfish giving instead of selfish getting. It’s achieved not by playing our own tune but learning by aligning our life to St. Paul’s famous “Hymn to Charity” that he gives us today, one of the most famous and moving passages not only in Sacred Scripture but in all of literature.
• St. Paul begins by telling us to “strive for the greatest spiritual gifts” and then says he will show us whose those gifts are and the “still more excellent way” to obtain them. St. Paul had just finished describing the charismatic gifts that the Holy Spirit gives to the Church, the gift of prophecy, or speaking in tongues, or teaching, or guiding as apostles. St. Paul says something is even greater than those, namely selfless charity is God’s supreme gift. He says that if we have the gift of speaking in “human and angelic tongues” or of “prophecy” or of “knowledge” such that we “comprehend all mysteries” or of “faith so as to move mountains” or philanthropy to “give away everything I own” or even martyrdom to “hand over my body” but don’t have real charity, we are nothing and gain nothing. We’re nothing more than the “resounding gong” and “clashing cymbal” used in the pagan worship of Bacchus. We can do all of those good things, St. Paul is saying, without love. We can do them for “boasting,” for vanity, to get others’ attention, even to use and try to obtain something from God. The fact that we’ve received those good gifts doesn’t make us good; it’s only when they help us to love God and others more that we become good. This is a really important point. Even if we become a martyr but don’t do so out of love for God and others, but allow ourselves to be executed in hatred for the faith but with hatred and resentment in our hearts toward our executioners and even toward God for allowing the persecution to happen, we gain nothing. The most important thing in life is Christ-like charity. If we have it but nothing else, we’re the richest people in the world. If we lack it but have everything else, we’re spiritually among the poorest of the poor. And St. Paul tells us to “strive eagerly” for this greatest spiritual gift of charity. He call us to agonize for it with enthusiasm. We’re supposed to exert ourselves to conform our life to God’s charity more than a great athlete works hard in practice, more than the hardest working student does his or her homework, more than the greediest person works to make money. Are we striving for charity in this way, or are we just sitting in the marketplace saying that we love more than the other skittish kids?
• If we are loving for real, if we’re becoming more and more images of Christ in his love, then we will be able to predicate of ourselves all of the adjectives St. Paul employs about love in his famous hymn. This list is a great means by which to examine our consciences each night and especially before confession, to see whether we are loving God and others in this way.
  • God wants us, like him, to be patient, to be able to suffer others and situations with makrothumia, the word that used to be used to describe the Roman’s ability to wait during a siege for as long as it takes. God is patient with us out of love, he’s slow to anger, and we’re called to emulate that loving patience.
  • God wants us, like him, to be kind, treating everyone with goodness and loving them enough to correct them gently but firmly if needed. How can we ever love someone if we’re mean to them? How can we really love others if we intentionally hurt them?
  • God wants us, like him, not to be jealous or envious. How can we love others if we’re upset when they are blessed by God?
  • God wants us, like him, not to be pompous or inflated. How can we love God or others when we’re egocentrically infatuated with ourselves and stuck up?
  • God wants us, like him, never to be rude. He wants us, rather, to act with grace and to treat others with dignity and courtesy.
  • God wants us, like him, not to seek our own interests, but his and others’. Love never insists on its own ambitions or rights with regard to those we love, but we forget ourselves in seeking what’s good and pleasing for them.
  • God wants us, like him, not to be quick-tempered. Even if we have a quick-fuse temperamentally, love forces us to battle against ourselves and bite our tongue, lest in our anger we ever hurt one whom we love.
  • God wants us, like him, not to brood over injury. Sometimes we can behave like the most fastidious accountants in remembering all the ways others have hurt our feelings, wounded our sensibilities, or even done physical or spiritual harm. God wants us, rather, to imitate his mercy.
  • God wants us, like him, to rejoice in the truth instead of in wrongdoing. If we really love someone, we will never rejoice when they’re doing something wrong, because we know that they’ll be harming themselves. If we love, we will rejoice when the truth prevails, even when the truth may be the last thing people want to hear or do. If we love, we’ll weep over others’ wrongdoing, like we pondered yesterday that Mary does for us.
  • God wants us, like him, to bear, believe, hope and endure all things, to be trusting in Him and in others, to have hope not only in his promises but in the good of others, to bear everything with fortitude instead of resignation. We never really love someone if we can’t stand them, or if we are always suspicious of them, or we think the worst of them. God bears, believes in, hopes in and endures us and calls us to love others in the same way.
• Today the Church marks three people who followed Jesus eagerly and agonizingly along this still more excellent way, who aligned their life to the Word of God and to Jesus’ tone, who gave their bodies not so that they could boast but so that God could be glorified. Saint Cyprian and Cornelius both gave their lives for Christ during the ferocious anti-Christian persecution of the emperor Valerian in 258. Seven years prior, there was the persecution of Decius and various Christians had  either sacrificed to idols or bought certificates saying that they had. Many Christians resented those who had betrayed the faith and there was a question about whether they could be forgiven for their apostasy. Pope Cornelius and Cyprian of Carthage were living by Jesus’ tune of merciful love, shown on the Cross, praying for all who didn’t know what they were doing, forgiving the Good Thief, forgiving Peter and the other ten apostles for abandoning him under trial. Similarly today marks the 18th anniversary of the death, and we humbly pray, birth into eternal life of the Venerable Cardinal François Xavier Nguyen van Thuan — whom I knew, who called me a friend and whose feast I hope to be able to celebrate soon if a miracle is accepted for his beatification. He was imprisoned for 13 years, nine in solitary confinement, but while he was there, being mistreated in many ways, he never stopped praying not just for his flock but for his persecutors and loving his enemies. The only people he came into contact with for a while were his guards. He prayed for them, worked for their conversion, tried to teach them foreign languages, and returned good for evil brutality. Eventually, won over by his meekness, humanity, goodness and faith, they started to give in. Then they were exchanged. He did the same for the next guards. Then they were changed, too. Eventually the communists grasped that he would convert all the guards sent to him and they just kept converted ones with him so that he would convert no more. He wrote from his prison cell, “Wherever love exists, God is there; wherever hatred exists, hell is there.” He taught, “Love of neighbor is the most reliable test of your love of God.” He summarized all of this saying, “You must be a gift in the hand of God that is ready to be presented by him to everyone without distinction.” He sought to live with God, to love God in his neighbor, and to become that gift of love, enfleshing the attributes of love St. Paul describes.
• Today at this Mass, Jesus comes to us not “eating and drinking” but to have us eat his body and drink his blood. He is proving himself a friend of sinners by inviting us here with him. This is the greatest manifestation of his love. This is the greatest gift of all become flesh. This is what he did when, “having loved his own who were in the world, loved them to the extreme” (John 13:1). As we enter into Holy Communion with him, we ask him to help us keep that communion with his love, so that like him we may become more and more patient, kind, humble, and all the other attributes St. Paul lists, and have our whole life develop as a commentary on the words of consecration, as we seek to imitate his love to the extreme.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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