Going to the King like Vultures to a Body, 32nd Friday (II), November 16, 2018

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Friday of the 32nd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of St. Gertrude the Great
November 16, 2018
2 John 4-9, Ps 119, Lk 17:26-37

• Yesterday the Church throughout the world pondered Jesus’ words that the kingdom of God is among us and why that is, because the King is here with us, he took our flesh, he remains with us in the sacraments, in grace, in the Church, in others; and we enter into that kingdom when we follow up our prayer “thy kingdom come!” with the complementary couplet “thy will be done!” We dwell within that kingdom when we’re with the King, when allow his will to be done within us, when he reigns. Today’s readings and memorials provide a fitting commentary on these truths.
• In today’s Gospel, we see that even though Christ the King is present, some live in that kingdom and others don’t; others behave as if they are vincibly oblivious to it. Jesus contrasts Noah with those who perished in the flood, and Lot and those who perished in Sodom. Some were attentive and alert to God’s kingdom in their midst and some were not. Jesus encourages us to be similarly on guard. He says that when he comes we shouldn’t head down into the house to get possessions or come in from the field but we should go straight to the King whose kingdom we were seeking in action. He says that two will be sleeping, two will be cooking, but only one will be taken. This isn’t to be misinterpreted as if God’s going to do an arbitrary 50/50 split. Rather, it’s saying some in the very same circumstances will be ready because they’re connecting sleeping or cooking to God and his kingdom, and others won’t be ready, because all they think they’re doing is sleeping or cooking rather than doing it in communion with God in his kingdom. When they ask where this will take place, Jesus uses an aphorism, “Where the body is, there also the vultures will gather,” to indicate that just as vultures find a corpse, so we should find the kingdom! He also gives the principle of living in the kingdom: “Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses it will save it.” Those who are living in the kingdom are losing their life for God and others, so that his kingdom will come and his will be done. Those who try to preserve their own kingdom, to hallow their own name, to do their own will, will be those who lose their lives.
• In today’s first reading, the only passage we have in the two year liturgical cycle of daily Mass readings from St. John’s Second Letter, the Apostle, who was present when Jesus said the words in today’s Gospel, makes plain what living in the kingdom is all about. He phrases it as “walking in the truth just as we were commanded by the Father,” following in the footsteps of the Incarnate Truth. He describes that involves not a new commandment but the one to “love one another” that Christ gave us, reminding us that love to “walk according to the commandments” because the commandments train us to love God with all our mind, heart, soul and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves. He notes that there are “progressives” who do not “remain in the teaching of the Christ” and says that they do not remain in the Father and the Son, in the kingdom of God, and says, parallel to the upshot of Jesus’ message in today’s Gospel, “Look to yourselves that you do not lose what we worked for but may receive a full recompense,” losing their lives so as to save it.
• Two people who showed us how to live in this way in the kingdom are Saints Gertrude the Great and Saint Margaret of Scotland, whom the Church celebrates today. St. Gertrude was brought to the Monastery at a very early age, either for her education or because she was orphaned. She would spend the rest of her life there. She was an extraordinary student, who learned everything that she could in the classical formation of the day, throwing herself into profane subjects and to literature, music, song and art. She was surrounded by holy nuns, but wasn’t profiting. Even though she wasn’t living a life of sin, she really wasn’t prioritizing the kingdom. After 20 years of study and of sharing in their liturgical prayer, she began to recognize she had been giving herself over much of the time to vanities. In 1280, when she was in her mid-20s, the Lord illumined her to see that she was basically living in a worldly way but that Jesus would take her by the hand to lead her to holiness. And from that point forward, she so invested the gift of the Lord’s grace that she continues to bear fruit seven-plus centuries later. Her conversion involved a different type of study, passing from profane humanistic studies to the study of theology and of divine wisdom, and a different type of obedience, from negligence to intense mystical prayer coupled to a zeal for the salvation of all, and a different spirituality, from spiritual worldliness to the spirituality of the kingdom. She wrote in her Spiritual Exercises something that pointed to how, post-conversion, she wanted to use the gifts God had given her: “I have so little profited from your graces that I cannot resolve to believe that they were lavished upon me solely for my own use, since no one can thwart your eternal wisdom. Therefore, O Giver of every good thing who has freely lavished upon me gifts so undeserved, in order that, in reading this, the heart of at least one of your friends may be moved at the thought that zeal for souls has induced you to leave such a priceless gem for so long in the abominable mud of my heart.” Pope Benedict, when he gave a Catecheses on her life (October 6, 2010) said, “St Gertrude’s life lives on as a lesson of Christian life, of an upright path, and shows us that the heart of a happy life, of a true life, is friendship with the Lord Jesus. … This friendship is learned in love for Sacred Scripture, in love for the Liturgy, in profound faith, in love for Mary, so as to be ever more truly acquainted with God himself and hence with true happiness, which is the goal of our life.” We’re called to learn from what she got wrong and what she got right!
• St. Margaret Queen of Scotland had a similar passion to live in the Lord’s kingdom and use her earthly royalty to help others to experience that same kingdom. The daughter of a Hungarian Princess and Anglo-Saxon Prince, she and her family fled from William the Conquerer and were shipwrecked off the coast of Scotland, where Scottish King Malcolm befriended them and was captivated by Margaret, whom he married in 1070. She helped him become virtuous and was allowed by him, essentially, to become interior minister of the kingdom. She improved arts and education, reformed the country and the clergy religiously through synods she promoted and founded many Churches and monasteries. She had eight kids and supervised their religious instruction so that they would come to know God and his wisdom and live together with him in the world. Her love for Jesus in the Eucharist helped her to grow in love and care for those he died for, and on her way home from Mass would often wash the feet of six poor persons and give them alms. She never refused beggars or sat down to eat without first feeding orphans and poor adults. She died 975 years ago today. She lived truly as a member of the King of King’s royal family and exercised her munus regendi according to his wisdom.
• Today as we come to Mass on their feast days, like them not to reject but to welcome the King within us and we ask for the grace always to remain aware of him and consciously in communion with him so that we will always dwell in his kingdom. We also come to pray that we and others might enter into the eternal fulfillment of that kingdom. St. Gertude is famous for her prayer for the holy souls in Purgatory, for whom the Church prays with particular insistence in the month of November. Like what Jesus revealed to St. Faustina in the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, St. Gertrude’s prayer, inspired by the same Lord, is similarly Eucharistic. “Eternal Father, I offer You the most precious blood of thy Divine Son, Jesus, in union with the Masses said throughout the world today, for all the Holy Souls in Purgatory, for sinners everywhere, for sinners in the universal church, for those in my own home and in my family. Amen.” As we do so, we remember clearly, The Kingdom of God and the King is at hand, and we ask him, reigning in the Eucharist, for a double portion of St. Gertrude’s and St. Margaret’s spirit so that, like them, we may love one another, walking according to the truth in the commandments, lose our life, and so serve others so that when the Lord comes he may not take one of us and leave the other behind, but thanks to our love, take us all!