Formed to Hear and Observe the Word of God, 27th Saturday (II), October 10, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Saturday of the 27th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
October 10, 2020
Gal 3:22-29, Ps 105, Lk 11:27-28

To listen to an audio recording of this homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• In today’s Gospel, an anonymous woman from the crowd sought to praise Jesus’ mother Mary. “Blessed is the womb that carried you and the breasts at which you nursed!,” she called out. If any womb was blessed, it was the immaculate womb of Mary of Nazareth that tabernacled for nine months the Creator and Savior of the world. If any breasts were blessed, it would have been those who nursed and fed the one who gives us each day our daily bread. But Jesus wasn’t going to limit the praise of the mother whom he daily honored to her inimitable physical bonds to the Son of God made man. He replied to the woman by highlighting a far greater source of blessing, something that each and every one of us not only can emulate but is called to emulate: “Rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it.” The profoundest source of Mary’s beatitude was her faithful listening and response to God in her life. St. Athanasius described that before Mary had ever conceived the Word of God in her womb, she had already conceived Him in her heart through faith. So many medieval depictions of the Annunciation and the miraculous virginal conception of Jesus in the Incarnation show the Holy Spirit entering through Mary’s ears, to highlight just this faith. In a parallel scene, when Mary had come to see him together with many of his cousins from Nazareth, they told Jesus inside a crowded house where he was teaching and healing that his mother and relatives were outside waiting for him. Taking advantage of the teaching moment, he replied, “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?” And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my heavenly Father is my brother, and sister, and mother” (Mt 12:46-50). Mary is the paradigm of all those who do the will of God the Father, who hear what he asks and who act on it. To be a true brother or sister of Jesus in the family he came from heaven to earth to found, it’s not really enough just to be baptized, although that’s an essential start. We also have to listen to him as he describes for us the will of God and then, just as he did, say, mean and lovingly do the words “Thy will be done!”
• In the first reading, we see how Saint Paul describes that the entire Old Testament, the Covenant God made with the Jews, was meant to train them to hear and observe the Word of God. “The law was our disciplinarian for Christ,” he says, “that we might be justified by faith.” The word “disciplinarian” in English is the word “pedagogos” in Greek. A pedagogue was a tutor who generally lived with the family of the student, supervised his homework and lessons, and took him to class with the master. The law prepared us, he was suggesting, to meet Jesus the Master, to hear what he was saying and to put it into practice. So many times throughout the Hebrew Bible we hear God say to the Jews through Moses or the Prophets, “If you hear my voice and observe the commandments I am giving you today.” All of God’s revelation was to prepare us to hear and obey, knowing that to hear and to obey are the same word in Hebrew. One area in which we’re called to hear and obey the Master is with regard to communion with each other based on communion with God. We focused earlier this week when we pondered the Our Father God’s will for us to be one family in prayer. Yesterday we had a chance again to focus on it in Jesus’ words about how the devil seeks to divide and he comes to gather into one. But many of us, just like the Galatians in St. Paul’s day, do not hear and obey the will of God with regard to communion. St. Paul confronts it. He tells the Galatians and through them us, “Through faith you are all children of God in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” The reality of baptism is meant to become the strongest bond in our life, to see that we are all equally beloved sons and daughters of God the Father, and that this reality is meant to be stronger than our ethnicity, stronger than our cultural upbringing, stronger than sex, stronger than any and all other social distinctions. But that’s frankly not what happened in the building of the Church in so many other major U.S. cities that were populated by Catholics 100-150 years ago. We didn’t hear the Word of God as announced by St. Paul and we didn’t observe it. Even though in Christ there is no Jew or Greek, we thought that there was Irish, French-Canadian, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Lithuanian and more. Even though Mass was celebrated in Latin, we wouldn’t worship together. So many thought that their ethnic differences were more important than their baptismal identity and similarities. That’s one of the reasons why we’re having to close so many Churches today, because we have had a surplus of Churches tailoring to individual ethnic groups rather than tailoring to all the Catholics in a particular geographical area. This system of “national,” “personal” or “ethnic” parishes didn’t happen because poor immigrants came and just wanted to do something themselves. It happened because they didn’t find the welcome from the Catholic groups that were already here, such that they needed to fend for themselves. The Church didn’t work together, but rather in many cases competed against each other. It happened because they were not truly hearing the word of God and acting on it, especially his word about the importance of the Christian unity for which he prayed during the Last Supper, and about how in him, the distinctions among us are far smaller than what unites us. The whole Old Covenant was to prepare the Jews to remain a people, but we know that when Christ came, three was divided against two, even within one’s household. Despite the fact that the Christian community was to live like we see in the Acts of the Apostles, praying together, going to the Temple together, eating together and having all things in common, in Galatia, as Paul will tell us later in his letter, “The whole law is fulfilled in one statement, namely, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ But if you go on biting and devouring one another, beware that you are not consumed by one another.” That’s what actually was happening.
• Today the Church worldwide is celebrating someone who heard the Word of God and observed it, who was prepared from a very age to embrace it, rejoice in it, and contagiously share it. In Assisi later today, Carlo Acutis will be beatified. He lived a beautiful life, before he died of leukemia and passed into eternity at the age of 15 and a half. He grew up with a great devotion to our Lady, praying the Rosary often. He had a great desire for the Eucharist, receiving him a year early at the age of 7 and then asking his parents for the opportunity to go to daily Mass, where he would also spend time before the tabernacle. He had a great devotion to the saints, especially the young saints, particularly Saints Francis of Assisi, Bernadette, Francisco and Jacinta, and Dominic Savio. He had a great and tender charity, inviting friends from school who were growing up in dysfunctional homes or experiencing divorce to his home, and caring for the poor as friends, many of whom came to his funeral. He had a great desire to use his computer skills to spread love of the Holy Eucharist, building a website for the Eucharistic miracles around the world — he wished to visit them all before he died — and planning to build one for Marian apparitions. He likewise had a great love for Assisi. He loved to breath the Catholic air there. Even though he grew up in Milan, he asked to be buried in Assisi, and that’s where his beatification will take place today. He was someone who took the word of God seriously, who took the deeds of God seriously, and not only tried to observe them but contagiously encourage others to join him in doing so.
• He once said about the Eucharist, “The more we receive the Eucharist, the more we will become like Jesus, so that we will have a foretaste of heaven on earth.” If Mary’s wombs and breasts were lauded because of their physical connection with Jesus, how about our hands and mouths, our whole being! Jesus wants to help make us like Him and soon-to-be-Blessed Carlo shows us what happens when we cooperate fully, as we prepare to hear Jesus say to us, “This is my Body!,” “This is the chalice of my Blood,” and observe it by doing this in memory of him!

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Gospel
lk 11:27-28

While Jesus was speaking,
a woman from the crowd called out and said to him,
“Blessed is the womb that carried you
and the breasts at which you nursed.”
He replied, “Rather, blessed are those
who hear the word of God and observe it.”

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