God’s Loving Discipline to Strengthen Us to the End, Fourth Wednesday (I), February 1, 2023

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Wednesday of the Fourth Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Votive Mass of the Mystery of the Holy Cross
February 1, 2023
Heb 12:4-7.11-15, Ps 103, Mk 6:1-6

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• As we’ve been noting for the past three-and-a-half weeks in our daily meditation on the Letter to the Hebrews at Mass, this letter was written to the early Christians at a time in which many had undergone fierce persecution and when much more persecution was anticipated. We’ve seen that Jesus Christ, the definitive Word of the Father, took on our flesh and entered into our world to lead us to eternal glory, to perfection as sons and daughters, but that he would do so precisely through uniting our suffering and death to his salvific suffering and death. He pierced the veil of the heavenly holy of holies precisely to give us confidence that follow him along this path. We’ve discussed the holy hypomone — the sacred stamina or endurance — that we need to live the faith in the midst of hardships and difficulties. The Letter to the Hebrews has inspired us by focusing on the persevering faith of so many heroes in a great cloud of witnesses. Yesterday, the sacred author reminded us to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, who despised the shame of the Cross and endured opposition, and teaches us how not to grow weary or lose heart. Today it gives us a third motivation for courage: our trials are all permitted by God “as discipline” out of love, so that by enduring and surviving that training, we will become truly holy disciples.
• Quoting Proverbs 3:11-12, the Letter exhorts us: “My son, do not disdain the discipline of the Lord or lose heart when reproved by him; for whom the Lord loves, he disciplines; he scourges every son he acknowledges.” Therefore, he says, “Endure your trials as ‘discipline’; God treats you as his sons. For what ‘son’ is there whom his father does not discipline?” He tells us that discipline isn’t fun, but it’s important if we’re ever going to mature: “At the time, all discipline seems a cause not for joy but for pain, yet later it brings the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who are trained by it.” Then he gets to the punch line, to help us supervene any potential self-pity party, or diabolical temptation that because we’re suffering God mustn’t love us. The author appeals: “So strengthen your drooping hands and your weak knees. Make straight paths for your feet, that what is lame may not be dislocated but healed.” And he indicates how to use our restored hands, feet and knees for genuine love of neighbor: “Strive for peace with everyone, and for that holiness without which no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one be deprived of the grace of God, that no bitter root spring up and cause trouble, through which many may become defiled.”
• Many of us don’t like discipline because we’re not really docile. We don’t think we really need to learn, at least in ways we don’t want to learn. We may not think we’re opposed to discipline, just only to the discipline that we don’t want… We’re resistant to being surprised by the Lord. We see that in the Gospel. In Nazareth, most were not willing to become disciples of one of their own, one with whom they grew up, one whose furniture and perhaps even houses he and Joseph had made. From initial amazement at his words, they turned to taking offense at him and, as we see in St. Luke’s account, they’d even reach homicidal rage. Jesus was amazed at their lack of faith. St. Mark tells us that Jesus could work no miracles there, except for healing a few sick people. Normally healing the sick and the lame would be considered great miracles; the greatest miracle Jesus wanted to work was salvation, was the forgiveness of sins, was growth in faith, but the lack of faith in the most of the recipients in his home town prevented that. They disdained the discipline of the Lord because they didn’t want to be a disciple of the more-than-a-prophet in their midst.
• Today Jesus comes to this Church, now his native place, so we may meet him with faith. As we witness the great miracle of transubstantiation and prepare to receive him in Holy Communion, we pray that he may discipline us to become more and more like him, sharing his priorities, sharing his word, sharing his training, so that we might continue his mission.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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