Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Thursday of the Second Week of Advent
Memorial of St. John of the Cross
December 14, 2023
Is 41:13-20, Ps 145, Mt 11:11-15
To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
The following text guided the homily:
- The Jews were waiting in the long Advent for two figures. The most important was the Messiah. The second was Elijah, whom God had said through the Prophet Malachi, “Behold, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes” (Mal 4:5; Mal 3:1). Jesus in today’s Gospel identified the work of Elijah with St. John the Baptist, telling us, “If you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah, the one who is to come.” Later in St. Matthew’s Gospel, as we will hear on Saturday, after Elijah appeared with Moses speaking to Jesus during the Transfiguration, Jesus was even more explicit, pointing out how they had manhandled his precursor: “Elijah will indeed come and restore all things, but I tell you that Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him but did to him whatever they pleased. So also will the Son of Man suffer at their hands” (Mt 17:12). “Elijah” pointed out the “Messiah” and the “Messiah” was pointing out “Elijah.” The fulfillment of the Advent for the one who would come in the person of Elijah was an indication of the even greater fulfillment.
- But because of John the Baptist’s role in pointing out the Messiah, not to mention because of his personal holiness and witness to the point of martyrdom, Jesus said something astonishing in today’s Gospel: “Amen, I say to you, among those born of women, there has been none greater than John the Baptist, yet the least in the Kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” First, Jesus was saying that up until then John was the greatest human being who had ever lived. We need to ponder that. There were lots of heroic martyrs and faithful Israelites, but he had the role to make straight the paths of the Lord. He was one born of a woman having already been blessed by God in the womb. No one had been born so exalted as to have pointed out by his leaping the Messiah. And he was still pointing him out, at the Jordan, through preaching repentance and faith, through martyrdom. But Jesus goes on to say that the littlest in the kingdom of God was even greater than John, that the one sanctified in the womb of the Kingdom is greater than all those born just of women. This is not so much a testimony about moral greatness, but about objective greatness, and a reminder to us of just how lucky we are to have been reborn in that womb of the Church soon after birth or whenever we entered into the sacred waters. We’re also greater because we’ve seen and received the full revelation of Christ to which John was still in some sense prophesying, because John hadn’t seen what would come later: Jesus’s incredible love revealed for us on the Cross that gave us the power to become children of God.
- But just as there was a cost for John’s becoming the greatest born of woman — his suffering on account of pointing out not only the Lamb but the Bridegroom and therefore the truth about marriage before Herod — so there’s a cost for our Christian greatness in fully entering the kingdom. Jesus describes both sufferings in the Gospel: “From the days of John the Baptist until now, the Kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent are taking it by force.” There are two types of violence Jesus describes: violence against the Kingdom and violence for the Kingdom. We see the violence against the Kingdom from the beginning: the slaughter of the Holy Innocents; Jesus’ neighbors in Nazareth trying to murder him by throwing him off the Nazarene cliff; the collusion of the arch-inimical Sadducees, Pharisees and Romans to have Jesus executed; the sufferings of the apostles; the slaughter of so many martyrs; the persecution of the Church throughout time right down to what our brothers and sisters are suffering today, especially in northern Nigeria. Jesus told us that we would be hated by all because of his name and that what they did to him they would try to do to us. The Kingdom will suffer violence against it until the end of time and we need to be prepared. But there’s also a violence Jesus describes for the Kingdom. St. Luke says in a similar passage, “The kingdom of heaven has suffered violence and men of violence take it by force” (Lk 16:16). We need to seize the Kingdom. We need to be able to do violence to ourselves, to our earthly values, in order to enter into it. We need to agonize to enter through the narrow gate. We need to deny ourselves, pick up our Cross and follow Jesus. We need to sell what we have, give the money to the poor, and follow Jesus up close. We need to lose our life to save it. We need to love him more than our parents, families and even ourselves to be worthy of it. None of this is easy, but when we recognize the value of the kingdom, we’re able to give up everything else to seize this pearl of great price. We’re able to do violence to gain that lasting peace.
- Many of us, however, when we hear about this violence against and for the Kingdom shudder. Many of us don’t like to get shots at the doctors office because we’re afraid of needles, yet Jesus calls to us — with nails through his limbs on the Cross — to come follow him. It can be hard to take. It can seem as if it’s not really part of the “good news.” The suffering itself is not part of the good news any more than suffering and death are ontological goods. What is part of the good news is what God says to us today through the Prophet Isaiah. We don’t suffer alone. With words that would deeply console the Jews in Babylon during the exile, God tells them, “Fear not, I will help you. … I am the Lord, your God, who grasp your right hand.” He promises that he will answer the prayers of those who are parched in search of water, and not just give them a few drops, but open up rivers on mountain tops, fountains in valleys, turn deserts into marshlands, dry ground into springs, “so that all may see and know, observe and understand that the hand of the Lord has done this.” These words of God — “Fear not, I will help you,” “Do not be afraid I am with you” — are often repeated throughout salvation history. God said them to Moses at the burning bush when he asked how he, a simple shepherd, could go before Pharaoh. He said them to Joshua when he feared how a group of nomads could defeat the fortified city of Jericho. He said them to Paul when he was in jail in Corinth. He said them to the apostles who were frightened on the sea. “Do not be afraid I am with you.” Every Advent we pray for the triple coming of God-with-us, and Jesus comes not in a static way, but comes to save us, to rescue us, to redeem us, to strengthen us, to take away our fears, to make us great, to quench our thirst, and to help us to take the Kingdom of God by force by being willing to suffer violence for it.
- Someone who shows us the violence we will suffer and need to do to ourselves in order to seize the kingdom, someone whose life manifests the the tenderness of God in grasping us by the hand and helping us confront and overcome our fears, is the great saint and doctor of the interior life the Church celebrates today: St. John of the Cross. John’s father died when he was two and he, his mom and two brothers grew up in poverty. Eventually he began working in a hospital while taking simple classes as the hospital administrator paid for his education. He eventually became a Carmelite, but the worldliness and in some places sinfulness of the Carmelites led him to think that he might be called to be a Carthusian. That’s when he met with St. Teresa of Avila, the foundress of the Discalced Carmelites, who asked him to work with her to reform the whole order. He did. And he suffered violence for it. Many of the Carmelites did not want to be reformed and they weren’t open to the fact that this reform was coming from God. On one occasion, the unreformed Carmelites essentially imprisoned him for months in a dirty, dank cell with just a sliver of light coming in. On a second occasion, they brutalized him as he prepared for death. But the religious name he had taken as a reformed Carmelite, St. John of the Cross, was well chosen: and it was through bearing that Cross that he discovered God’s power and wisdom and wrote some of his greatest spiritual works — his four great poems on the interior life that led to his four great commentaries — during those sufferings. He persevered in faithful, hopeful, loving prayer despite terrible persecutions from within; he feared not because God was with him. He wrote once, in a short series of aphorisms called The Degrees of Perfection, “Remember that everything that happens to you, whether prosperous or adverse, comes from God, so that you become neither puffed up in prosperity nor discouraged in adversity.” He saw that even the violence he suffered was permitted by God and so he maintained his courage to the end, where he died maltreated and abandoned by seemingly everyone but God. And in the process, John became Jesus the Master’s greatest teaching assistant in the school of prayer and life. In the passage the Church gives us in the Office of Readings for his feast, he teaches us about the need for the violence of the Cross in order to enter the kingdom of God, to become holy, and to advance into the depth of prayer. He writes, “Would that men might come at last to see that it is quite impossible to reach the thicket of the riches and wisdom of God except by first entering the thicket of much suffering, in such a way that the soul finds there its consolation and desire. The soul that longs for divine wisdom chooses first, and in truth, to enter the thicket of the cross. … The gate that gives entry into these riches of his wisdom is the cross; because it is a narrow gate, while many seek the joys that can be gained through it, it is given to few to desire to pass through it.” We ask St. John of the Cross to help us learn how to do and endure the violence necessary to enter into the thicket of the Cross, to correspond to our great dignity as baptized into the Kingdom, to bear sufferings like Christ and how to agonize to enter through the narrow gate into the fullness of the kingdom and of life.
- The way we experience all the lessons in today’s readings is in the Mass. This is where our real greatness shines. We come here where God feeds us, but he feeds us in such a way that we can enter into his suffering for the salvation of the world. Some of us need to suffer violence to come here, violence from family members or roommates or friends who mock our practicing the faith or doing more than the minimum. Some of us need to suffer violence to walk across the city on a cold morning in between exams. Some of us need to suffer other forms of violence in order to align our schedules to the value of the kingdom. But in some sense all of us need to do more violence if we’re going to receive more from the kingdom. At the offertory, we present all of that violence endured and chosen, together with Christ’s, to the Father. The Mass is the supreme sacrifice of Christ and his Body to the Father; for us to pray the Mass and to get what God wants to give us out of it we need to go all in, “violently,” seizing this incredible gift and ordering our whole life to this source and summit of our faith and our Christian life. But the Mass is also a means that encourages us to be able to make this sacrifice of our life. The more and the better we receive Jesus worthily in Holy Communion, the more we’re able to make our whole life a commentary on the words of consecration, offering our body, our blood, our sweat, our tears, our breath together with Christ for others and their salvation. Today as we come to receive the Body and Blood of Christ, violently shed for us on the Cross, he tells us, “Fear not. I will help you!,” as he seeks to strengthen us to go out to seize and proclaim his kingdom and, like St. John of the Cross, live in accordance with the greatness we have received from our gracious, merciful, patient and greatly kind God.
The readings for today’s Mass were:
Is 41:13-20
I am the LORD, your God,
who grasp your right hand;
It is I who say to you, “Fear not,
I will help you.”
Fear not, O worm Jacob,
O maggot Israel;
I will help you, says the LORD;
your redeemer is the Holy One of Israel.
I will make of you a threshing sledge,
sharp, new, and double-edged,
To thresh the mountains and crush them,
to make the hills like chaff.
When you winnow them, the wind shall carry them off
and the storm shall scatter them.
But you shall rejoice in the LORD,
and glory in the Holy One of Israel.
The afflicted and the needy seek water in vain,
their tongues are parched with thirst.
I, the LORD, will answer them;
I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them.
I will open up rivers on the bare heights,
and fountains in the broad valleys;
I will turn the desert into a marshland,
and the dry ground into springs of water.
I will plant in the desert the cedar,
acacia, myrtle, and olive;
I will set in the wasteland the cypress,
together with the plane tree and the pine,
That all may see and know,
observe and understand,
That the hand of the LORD has done this,
the Holy One of Israel has created it.
Responsorial Psalm
R. (8) The Lord is gracious and merciful; slow to anger, and of great kindness.
I will extol you, O my God and King,
and I will bless your name forever and ever.
The LORD is good to all
and compassionate toward all his works.
R. The Lord is gracious and merciful; slow to anger, and of great kindness.
Let all your works give you thanks, O LORD,
and let your faithful ones bless you.
Let them discourse of the glory of your Kingdom
and speak of your might.
R. The Lord is gracious and merciful; slow to anger, and of great kindness.
Let them make known to men your might
and the glorious splendor of your Kingdom.
Your Kingdom is a Kingdom for all ages,
and your dominion endures through all generations.
R. The Lord is gracious and merciful; slow to anger, and of great kindness.
Alleluia
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Let the clouds rain down the Just One,
and the earth bring forth a Savior.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Jesus said to the crowds:
“Amen, I say to you,
among those born of women
there has been none greater than John the Baptist;
yet the least in the Kingdom of heaven is greater than he.
From the days of John the Baptist until now,
the Kingdom of heaven suffers violence,
and the violent are taking it by force.
All the prophets and the law prophesied up to the time of John.
And if you are willing to accept it,
he is Elijah, the one who is to come.
Whoever has ears ought to hear.”
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