Following Jesus, like St. Nicholas, Along the Holy Way, Second Monday of Advent, December 6, 2021

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Monday of the Second Week of Advent
Memorial of St. Nicholas, Bishop
December 6, 2021
Is 35:1-10, Ps 85, Lk 5:17-26

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

The following points were attempted in the homily:

• Throughout the first week of Advent, the Church has us focus on the triple dynamism of Christ’s coming to us, our going to meet him, and, having been transformed by the encounter, traveling with him forward. That’s what I’ve been doing with the pilgrims from the Leonine Forum in the Holy Land since the start of Advent, but it’s what the Church has been doing liturgically through the Advent readings. Yesterday, St. John the Baptist reminded us of our need to prepare the way for this encounter and make straight the paths. On Saturday, Isaiah prophesied that the Messiah who will feed us, quench our thirst and teach us will speak to us from behind and say, “This is the path. Walk in it!” Today the Prophet Isaiah tells us that this path Jesus will come into our world to indicate is a special one: it’s a highway called “the holy way.” And Isaiah says that this way of sanctity has several characteristics:
  • First,  “no one unclean may pass over it.” It’s not only for those who desire holiness, but those who have been cleansed. God’s mercy, in other words, precedes our repentance, our making straight the paths.
  • Second, it’s “for those with a journey to make.” It’s not for the inert who desire to remain exactly where they are, who don’t want to change, who don’t want to move.
  • Third, it’s an exodus route on which “the redeemed will walk.” Even when we’re redeemed that is not the end of the journey, but in a sense the beginning. Once we’ve been redeemed, now we can begin that journey. “Salvation,” as we prayed in the Psalm, is “along the way of his steps.”
• But this journey along the highway of holiness is something that sometimes we don’t have the strength to journey on our own. Jesus said elsewhere in the Gospel that the road that leads to life is narrow and few find it but the way that leads to perdition is broad and there are many on it. Many of us need the help not only of God but of others to get on the path of holiness. We can think of those who first taught us the faith, those who nourished us in faith, those who continue to pray for us, and guide us, and inspire us, correct us with love, and set the example for us. We can think about those people who really helped us when we couldn’t move, when we were neck-deep in uncleanness. We can think about those who are constantly picking us up as we fall and helping us anew. And we can think about the way as Catholics we’re called to assist others to come to God’s mercy, to gain the strength for the journey, and to walk with us on the pilgrimage of the redeemed.
• Today’s Gospel is about that. We see how the friends of the paralyzed man perseveringly and faithfully overcame every obstacle to bring their friend to Jesus. When they couldn’t get him in through the front door, they did what was very difficult — keep him balanced on his stretcher as they lifted him up on the roof and then lowered him right on top of Jesus. In the case of the paralyzed man, he needed more than to fill in valleys and level mountains. He needed friends to help him overcome the obstacle of too many people in the way and to climb roofs. But he got that help. And when Jesus saw him, he helped him with the first condition Isaiah specifies: he made him clean, saying to him, on account of the true friends’ faith, “Your sins are forgiven.” To show in the face of criticism he had that power and that desire to make us all clean, he cured him of his paralysis and sent him on a journey: “Rise, pick up your stretcher, and go home.” He began the journey of the redeemed: St. Luke tells us, “He stood up immediately before them, picked up what he had been lying on, and went home, glorifying God.” And that praise was contagious. St. Luke adds: “Astonishment seized them all and they glorified God, and, struck with awe, they said, ‘We have seen incredible things today.’”
• During this Advent season, we need not only to thank God for all those who have brought us to Jesus so that we may be cleansed, healed, strengthened, and begin the walk of the redeemed following the Redeemer, but become true friends of others, bringing them to Jesus in our prayers, through our invitations, even in our cars or other ways of transportation. Like the friends of the paralytic, we have to be willing to break social convention, to do something others might consider crazy, in order to help them come to Jesus. We need to allow others, including each other, to carry us in this way rather than out of shame prefer to stay paralyzed in our own problems. Jesus came into the world to transform and change us, but sometimes to receive what he wants to give, we need to allow others to help us. Jesus has the power to make deserts, parched lands and steppes all bloom with abundant flowers and shine like the splendor of the forests of Lebanon. He has the power and desire to strengthen feeble hands, to make weak knees firm,  to embolden frightened hearts, to open blind eyes, to clear deaf ears, to make the lame leap and the mute sing. No matter how injured we or others are, he wants to touch us and make it possible for us to journey with the redeemed along the highway of holiness, the way of the saints.
• Today we celebrate the feast of a great saint who received God’s mercy and was so transformed by it that he was able to lead for Christ many people along the holy way of the redeemed. St. Nicholas was born in the town of Patara in the Roman Province of Asia, which is now southern Turkey. He grew up in the light of faith, formed in a good Christian home. After his parents both died when he was young, and before he would enter training to become a priest and then later become the Bishop of Myra (modern day Demre, Turkey), he was already following the Lord, acting on the Lord’s summons to love God with all he had and love his neighbor as Christ does and trying to keep them on the way of the redeemed. We see this, while he was still a layman, in the famous story of his help for a poor family in Patara. The culture of the time looked at women as burdens of the men who were responsible for them. In order for a girl to marry, the father had to provide her with a dowry so that her new husband would be able to pay for her upkeep, at least for some period of time. Families without money for a dowry often couldn’t get their daughters married. One poor father didn’t know what to do for his three daughters for whom there was a danger, if he were to die or be incapable of work, that they would be driven or drawn into prostitution for survival. Nicholas heard of the family’s situation and one night threw a bag of gold coins through the family’s open window, enough for the dowry for the oldest daughter who was soon married. The next night, Nicholas threw in another bag, sufficient for the dowry of the middle daughter, who likewise was married. The third night Nicholas tossed a third bag to help marry the third daughter of the father, who was waiting this time to find out who was the anonymous benefactor. The generosity of Saint Nicholas is continued through the generosity of Santa Claus (a translation of St. Nicholas) every Christmas, when all of us, like St. Nicholas, pay forward the generosity we have received from Christ. As a bishop he continued courageously to see things in Christ’s light, to live and walk in the light, let the light of his deeds of charity shine before all so that they might glorify the Father in Heaven, and help others to see and live in the light as well. He was one of the fathers at the Council of Nicaea, that helped respond to the heresy of Arianism, which taught that Jesus really wasn’t God, just the greatest man who had ever lived. He worked hard so that the Church and the world would look at Jesus not just as a prophetic carpenter, not just as the Messiah, but as God from God, light from light. Today he wants to help us like he helped the people of his day.
• That journey of the redeemed always leads to and from the altar, where we meet the same Jesus who healed the paralyzed man. It’s here that we bring all our loved ones in our prayers, like Heidi Seubert, my spiritual directee for the last ten years, who died yesterday. It’s here that the saints in heaven and so many praying on earth they bring us. It’s to get here that we should overcome every obstacle. It’s here that the Lord wants to strengthen our hands in prayer and in work, fortify our knees for kneeling in adoration and in service, make our frightened hearts steadfast in love, our eyes see him in others, our ears hear his voice and the cries of those in need, and help us to sing and to leap with joy. It’s here that kindness and truth meet, that justice and peace kiss. It’s here that the Lord wants to help us rise with his Risen Body, pick up our stretcher rather that continue to use it as a crutch, and go not only home but throughout the world proclaiming God’s glory to every creature and helping them to join us on the road of the redeemed. It’s here that astonishment should seize us all as we glorify God and, struck with awe, say, “We have seen incredible things today,” and “heard incredible things,” and most amazing of all, we have received within the one who not only has power on earth to forgive sins, but power to make us saints like Saint Nicholas.

The readings for today’s Mass were:

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