Following the Lord with Faith, 12th Monday (I), June 21, 2021

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Monday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Memorial of St. Aloysius Gonzaga
June 21, 2021
Gen 12:1-9, Ps 33, Mt 7:1-5

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today the Church enters into a two week meditation in the first reading on Abraham, which inaugurates six-weeks of first readings from the Pentateuch. The Church has us begin this study with Abraham, whom we call in the Roman Canon our “father in faith.” He shows us what real faith looks like, in order that we might imitate that total trust in the Lord and desire and obedience to what he asks. Today we get the first powerful glimpse at his faith. God says to him, a 75-year-old man, “Go forth from the land of your kinsfolk and from your father’s house to a land that I will show you.” As a senior citizen, as someone very well-settled, as an “old dog” to whom many say you “can’t teach new tricks,” he sets off, uprooting his wife, his nephew lot, and taking all of their servants and properties. Abraham didn’t know where the Lord was leading him. He just followed. When he eventually arrived in the land of Canaan, God didn’t even give it to him, but required another act of faith, promising him that he would give it to Abraham’s descendants, the descendants through whom God would make of this as-yet childless man a great nation. Little did he know that he would have to fight for this land. But Abraham just kept his eyes on the Lord and followed with trusting faith.
• In the Gospel, Jesus shows us how to keep our eyes faithfully fixed on God. Throughout the Sermon on the Mount — today is the 13th of our 16-part focus on Jesus’ magna charta of Christian life — Jesus has been teaching us how to fulfill the Law by loving the Lord with trust as our Father and loving our neighbor as our brothers and sisters of that Father, loving them even when they make themselves our enemies, persecute us, do evil to us, slap us on the cheek, ask for our tunic, force us to go the second mile. Today Jesus shows us what can poison our vision: when we choose to judge rather than love our neighbor. “Stop judging that you may not be judged,” he says, promising us that “as you judge, so will you be judged, and the measure with which you measure will be measured out to you.” Our receptivity, our openness, to his grace and love, he states, is dependent on the way we treat and love others. For us to receive the love of God, in other words, we must be opened through loving our neighbor. For us to receive God’s mercy, we must be merciful. That’s why Jesus tells us not to judge others, because we cannot truly be merciful unless we stop judging our brothers and sisters. Jesus isn’t indicating that we shouldn’t judge between right and wrong and leave all of that judging exclusively to God. God has given us the moral law precisely so that we can make moral judgments about actions. When we see people worshipping other gods, when we witness people taking advantage of the vulnerable and innocent, when we encounter people telling baldfaced lies, when we encounter terrorists trying to kill the innocent, when we see mobs vandalizing and looting stores or tearing down statues of founding fathers, when we see police officers kneeling on innocent people’s necks, he wants us absolutely to pronounce, as he does, that such actions themselves are evil. But while he wants us to share his judgment on the moral quality of actions, Jesus forbids us to judge people. We must leave that to God, because while we can see externally whether their action conforms or not to what God has taught us or in conscience we know to be good or evil, we can’t judge the agents, since we can never know everything that is going on inside of them. Instead of judging our neighbor, Jesus wants us to love him and show him mercy. To do that, he tells us, we need humbly to recognize that often the temptation to judge our neighbor comes from a desire to deflect the attention from our own thoughts, behavior and sins. He says, “Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove that splinter from your eye,’ while the wooden beam is in your eye? You hypocrite, remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter from your brother’s eye.” Jesus recognizes that many times we judge our neighbor as a superior to an inferior, failing to grasp that we ourselves are sinners, too. He wants us to adopt a totally different perspective: when we see our neighbor’s errant behavior, to use it as an opportunity to examine our own, because often we’re guilty of similar behavior. Compulsive judgmentalism distorts our perception and hardens our hearts. He wants us to take out our own planks. This obviously is a call to examination of conscience, contrition, sacramental confession and conversion. Once our planks are gone, then we can start to see with the eyes of faith, the eyes of mercy, the eyes of charity. Jesus wants to help us to see clearly so that from there we can really love and help our brothers and sisters, especially when they need it. Once our planks our removed — once we recognize that we, too, are sinners who have needed to be forgiven by God — that we can with humility share the mercy we’ve received with others, helping them to see that their vision may be distorted, helping them to correct behavior when it is choosing darkness rather than the light. After we’ve seen our own sins and weaknesses, we’re able to help our neighbor not as an enemy seeking revenge, but as a doctor applying a cure, in many cases the same medicine we’ve needed and received from God. The Pharisees used to criticize harshly from above. Jesus wants us to measure out the measure of mercy we’ve received from God. This is what’s necessary to follow God by faith. This is the interior journey from our own Ur of the Chaldeans that God is asking of us. This is what it means to look on reality with the light of faith.
• Today we celebrate a great saint who shows us purity of vision, who shows us, in youth, what Abraham showed us in senescence: what it means to act according to what we see by faith. St. Aloysius Gonzaga is famous for his purity of heart and Jesus taught us in the Beatitudes that the pure of heart “see God.” St. Aloysius’ pure “eyes” allowed him to see the Lord, to follow him, to love him and to find him in those whom he encountered, including those whom most others found difficult to love. He was born into a rich and noble family — part of the famous Medici family — but had set his heart on God as the true wealth.  He suffered great opposition from his father to his becoming a Jesuit rather than his noble heir. When he entered the Company of Jesus at the age of 17, he took on willingly the most menial tasks, like working in the kitchen, since he, coming from a noble background, knew that that would be a great means to grow in humility and prevent others from regarding him according to his birth rather than his rebirth. Before his death at 23, he distinguished himself by the various penances and mortifications that he took on cheerfully out of love for God and love for others. When the plague hit Rome, he generously gave himself with a serene and comforting smile to caring for the sick. When he contracted a serious fever that within three months caused his death, he approached that whole painful situation, and even the subject of the sacrifice of his life in death, with clear-sighted faith and joy, constantly stating, “Let us go to the house of the Lord.” The ultimate end of our journey is not Canaan but heaven. And when he wrote his beautiful letter to his mother found in the breviary, he asked her to share that joy. He’s a model of someone who sees with and walks by faith.
• Every morning at Mass the Lord Jesus gives us, just like he gave Saint Aloysius, an eye check up. He purifies our vision in the truth of his word and then helps us to keep our eyes on him, the Lamb of God who takes away our sins and the sins of the world so that we may see clearly, see things as they really are, see things as he sees them, and go out to help others see, too. He strengthens us for the journey of faith. As we prepare to enter into holy Communion with him through the reception of his body and blood, we remember that he seeks not only to help us remove all obstacles from our vision, but to give us an eye transplant so that we see as he does, as St. Aloysius did, looking on the crowds with compassion, not judgment, and seeking to bring them to the unobstructed beatific vision. Through the intercession of Abraham and St. Aloysius, we pray for the courage to leave our comfort zones, to follow the Lord’s way, and to measure ourselves out as fully as the One who here says to us, “This is my body … given for you” and “my blood … poured out for you and for many.”

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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