Greatest in the Kingdom, 10th Wednesday (II), June 13, 2018

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Wednesday of the Tenth Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of St. Anthony of Padua, Doctor
June 13, 2018
1 Kings 18:20-39, Ps 16, Mt 5:17-19

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Within the last couple of weeks, we have contemplated how the Letter of Jude and the Second Letter of St. Peter confronted the problem of gnostic antinomianism, the problem in the early Church and various other times in Church history that believed that Christ’s coming was the opportunity to throw off God’s law and do whatever they pleased, thinking that what one did in the body didn’t matter. Today in the Gospel we see Jesus’ words with regard to the law. He said that he had come not to abolish it but to fulfill it. We’ll be seeing in upcoming days how he would fulfill it. While Jesus wasn’t going to let the smallest part of a letter pass away, he also wasn’t going to get us to focus first on the smallest part of the letter — as many of his contemporaries did — but on the big, bold headlines that oriented every letter and every part of the letter: how God’s law is all about loving God with all we are and have, and loving our neighbor as totally as God has loved us. That’s what the law is and Jesus was coming to fulfill it.
• Because of Jesus’ being the incarnate fulfillment of the law of God, he said that the greatest in his kingdom would be the one who would obey the law and teach others to do the same. The greatest would be the one who loved God and neighbor as fully as he or she could and trained others to love God and neighbor with similar abandon. The law of God, God’s holy word, is something that must be received as a word to be lived. It’s the word of eternal life.
• Elijah was someone who obeyed God and taught others to do the same. He obeyed when God called him. He obeyed when God instructed him to journey through the desert. His whole prophetic life was meant to help others to learn how to obey God. But Elijah, generally considered the greatest of all of the Old Testament prophets (unless Moses is considered a prophet), is not known for his prophetic writings or speeches. He’s know for his prophetic actions. He taught by unforgettable gestures. Today we see one. People were “straddling the issue” as whether to obey God or obey their own impulses through the worship of Ba’al. He told them it was time to decide. And today we have one of the great scenes and illustrative miracles of the Old Testament. (I love it so much that I want it to be read at my funeral). With faith in the power of God, he set up a test to demonstrate the falsity of the Ba’al and the truth of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel. He bathed the sacrifice in twelve big jars of water that needed to be taken from the stream at the bottom of the mountain on which the sacrificial duel was taking place. But he could have put the sacrifice at the bottom of the Mediterranean. That was nothing compared to God’s power. And we see what God did in response to Elijah’s prayer and proclaiming of the Gospel through deeds: “The LORD’s fire came down and consumed the burnt offering, wood, stones, and dust, and it lapped up the water in the trench.” It consumed everything. And the people came to believe.
• St. Anthony, whom the Church celebrates today, had a similar trust in the Lord, in his power, and was great in the Kingdom of heaven for obeying the word of God and teaching others — through word and action — how to obey God too. He became an Augustinian canon at 15 and, because of his memory and faith, a great and precocious Scripture scholar and professor in Coimbra. People marveled. He got to known Sacred Scripture so well that, a little later, Pope Gregory IX would call him, “The Ark of the Testament,” because he bore God’s holy word within him. Pope Pius XII when he declared St. Anthony a Doctor of the Church dubbed him, “Doctor Evangelicus,” the Doctor of the Gospel. He was great because he enfleshed the word of God and taught others that same word.
• Part of the Gospel is a summons to go the path of the grain of wheat and to be humble, and we see that in his life. One day in 1221, when he was 26, some Franciscan friars came to stay at the Augustinian monastery in Coimbra while they were awaiting a ship to take them to Morocco. The Franciscan Order had just been founded by St. Francis in 1209 and had begun to grow in Italy. These Italian friars were heading to the Muslim land of Morocco to take the place of other friars who had been martyred there by the Muslims. Fr. Fernando — his baptismal name was Fernando de Bulhões — was very moved. He desired to accompany them to try to convert the Muslims and, if God willed it, to die in trying to spread the faith. It would have been very easy for him to say, “I’m already a priest. I’m a Scripture Scholar training future priests. I have a comfortable monastery and everything going for me.” He didn’t. Because of his love for God and others, he was willing to leave his comfortable set-up behind in seeking a fuller union with Jesus and his mission for the salvation of the world. He was admitted as a Franciscan, took the name Anthony, and accompanied the friars to Morocco. When St. Anthony arrived in Morocco, he became deathly ill. For a few months he basically couldn’t move from the beach. That incapacitation required him to return to Europe. Even though he was willing to give his life for the Lord, it was not the Lord’s will for him to become a martyr. He wasn’t stubborn about it. He recognized that the Lord wanted him to be a Franciscan but apparently not a martyr, at least not then. After he humbly got back on a boat in Morocco heading to the Iberian Peninsula, a severe storm broke out that basically forced them  eastward, eventually all the way to Sicily. It was there that he heard that St. Francis was meeting with all the Franciscans in Assisi. He crossed over into Italy and went there to meet St. Francis and all his Franciscan brothers. At the end of the general chapter, as everyone was returning to his respective monastery, he asked where they needed him. They really had no idea who he was. They looked at him as the sick Portuguese brother. He told them he was ordained a priest but no one knew that he possessed such incredible talents. He had spent most of his time listening to others and very little time talking. He was assigned to the lonely hermitage of San Paolo near Forli. His main assignment was to wash pots and pans after the common meal. He never complained. He never sought to bring attention to himself. He just tried to sanctify his work, love the Lord, and make as much time to pray in a local cave as he could. But the great light Christ had ignited in him would not long remain covered by a bushel basket. There was a priestly ordination to be held in Forli for Dominicans and Franciscans and there was a reception held at the Franciscan monastery. None of the learned Dominicans had come with a speech prepared for the celebration. As a last resort, they asked Anthony to step forward and say whatever the Holy Spirit moved him to say. They really had no idea what they were about to hear. He began to give a one-hour talk that was so moving, so learned, and so eloquent that all the Franciscans and Dominicans were astonished. He linked together obscure parts of Sacred Scripture into a whole that demonstrated not only a superior grasp of God’s word but an unbelievable capacity to link it to his listeners. The Franciscan superior eventually informed St. Francis of the incredible treasure St. Anthony contained within and St. Francis pulled him from washing pots and pans and gave him instructions to start going from village to village preaching. When he began to preach, he would preach often for hours, opening up Sacred Scripture, calling people to conversion, pointing people toward the Eucharist, getting people to the confessional, inspiring them to love the Lord and others with all they’ve got. He would debate heretics in the center of city squares and call everyone to the Lord. He was so effective in uprooting the errors of his day that were leading people away from God that he earned the nickname “the hammer of heretics.” It’s highly interesting that in God’s plan, when you look at the relics of St. Anthony, his bones remain after nearly 800 years but all his flesh has decomposed except his tongue. His tongue is incorrupt. It’s almost as if the Lord has wanted to bring attention to his tongue, which the Holy Spirit had made such a tongue of fire. It was the sign of his greatest in teaching others to obey the Word of God.
• I want to tell two stories. The first is about the power of the word of God and our need to obey it. When St. Anthony preached, not everyone liked the message. Not everyone wanted to hear the word of God. Despite his holiness, eloquence, learning, power of persuasion, burning zeal for souls and a sonorous and powerful voice, many sought to blow him off. While many hardened criminals and heretics would be converted at his words, many of those who thought that they already loved the Lord “enough” would resist, responding to the seeds of the word of God that he was preaching with hardened, rocky or thorny soil. He would occasionally get angry at the lack of reverence these “good” people would have not toward him but toward God, his word, and their own being, made in God’s image and likeness and their great resistance to be converted and start living truly holy lives. There’s a famous scene that took place in Rimini, where St. Anthony was indignant that a crowd of people, including many heretics, were not really listening attentively to the word of God that he was preaching in the Square. So he told them he was going to go down to the river close to the sea to preach to the fish. They thought he was crazy. But a few followed him. He began his sermon, “Hear the word of God, you fish of the sea and the stream, since heretics and infidels are loath to listen to it.” The observers saw that having uttered these words, a huge multitude of fish miraculously came to the side of the river to listen to his word. Then he proceeded to give them a great sermon on creation. He finished by saying, “Blessed be the eternal God, since fish of the water honor him far more than heretic men and the unreasoning beasts more readily hearken to his word than faithless men.” The miracle softened the hearts of so many in Rimini that he needed to stay there for many days dealing with sucha great catch of souls. The citizens, even many of the skeptics, recognized that the word of God had the power miraculously to make fish approach and jump out of the water in great numbers. They realized that they should have been paying more attention. That image was placed over the original pulpit in St. Anthony’s Church in New Bedford, where I was pastor between 2005-2012,  to symbolize that the same word of God that brought about that miracle in the life of St. Anthony continues to resonate from the pulpit any time a priest preaches. The lesson is that we should all pay attention, just like the fish in Rimini did, just like the residents of Rimini did after the miracle. We should hear the word of God as a word to be lived and proclaimed.
• The second lesson links him, in my mind, to Elijah, and brings us to the Holy Eucharist. When he was preaching in Bourges, France, a Jew named Guillard, a very intelligent, rich and highly skeptical man of the Church’s teaching on the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, challenged Anthony to prove it. To believe in something miraculous, he needed something more than the word of a Jewish carpenter 1200 years before. He needed a miracle to believe in the miracle. So he proposed a challenge to Anthony: He said, “Brother Anthony, if by some tangible, outward sign you can confirm the truth you have demonstrated by reasoning, I will embrace what you teach. He was only half sincere. He said, “I have a mule. I will keep him for three days under lock and key and in all that time will feed him nothing. At the end of the third day I will bring him to the largest public square in the city; and there, in the presence of all the assembled people, I will offer him a feed of oats. You on the other hand, will come carrying the Host, which, as you believe, is the true body of the Son of God. If the mule refuses the food in order to prostrate itself before the monstrance, I will become a Catholic and no longer question the truth of the doctrine taught by the Catholic Church.” Anthony took the challenge and fasted and prayed for three days as the mule was starved. A huge crowd was present on the third day. Guillard showed up with all his friends confident of victory. The mule was brought forward as St. Anthony was approaching with the Eucharist. The food was placed before the mule, as Anthony commanded, “In the name of your Creator, whose body I, though unworthy, hold in my hands before you, I enjoin you, O creature deprived of reason, to come here instantly and prostrate yourself before your God, so that by this sign unbelievers may know that all creation is subject to the Lamb who is daily immolated upon our altars.” Without taking any further notice of the food, the mule walked to the feet of Anthony, and, as attested by many witnesses, knelt before the Blessed Sacrament and remained there in an attitude of adoration.” Guillard and many others, vanquished according to their humanity, were reawakened spiritually and sought admission to the faith. Guillard came and got to his knees besides the mule. He eventually paid for a Church to be built at the site of the miracle. The application to us is that if mules will kneel in adoration of the Lord and account him more valuable than food even when they’re starving, so should we reverence Jesus in the Eucharist and come to receive and adore him every day if we can.
• The daily celebration of the Mass is the greatest miracle of them all. It’s what Elijah’s great triumph points to, because this was the “sign” Christ said he would give to his generation. It was what Anthony’s great triumph in Bourges points to, because this is the definitive presence of God in the world. To help us become great in his kingdom, Jesus enters within us, the Word made flesh, to help us to obey his two-fold command of love and collaborate with us in helping others to do the same.

The readings for today’s Mass were: