Growing in Faith and Communion with the Help of Mary, 27th Friday (II), October 7, 2022

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Friday of the 27th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary
October 7, 2022
Gal 3:7-14, Ps 111, Lk 11:15-26

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today’s Gospel was the first Gospel I ever had the privilege to proclaim and today’s readings were the first ones about which I ever preached, 24 years ago (October 9 that year), the day after I was ordained a deacon. I’ve always thought that God was very good to me in giving me these readings because they’re not particularly easy to preach on, and so from the first time I ever had the chance to act on what I was instructed at my diaconal ordination, to “Believe what you read [and] teach what you believe,” I had to do so explicitly with far greater dependence on God, far greater cooperation with the Holy Spirit. Whenever I have had the chance to proclaim and preach, therefore, on the readings of the 27th Friday of Ordinary Time Year II, it always reminds me of the summons God gives to turn to him for light!
• I’d like to focus on two huge lessons from today’s readings and then tie them to today’s Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary.
• The first is about faith. In today’s reading from St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians, the apostle talks to us about faith, saying that those who have faith are children of Abraham. St. Paul was writing this to the Christians he had evangelized on his first and second journeys, but whose faith had then been reprogrammed by Judaized Christians coming from Jerusalem, those who thought that in order to be a good Christian, you first had to be a perfect Jew. They didn’t realize that the Mosaic Law was a gift to prepare God’s people for the advent of the Messiah, who would bring the law to perfection. St. Paul will call the Mosaic Law, as we’ll see tomorrow, a pedagogue or tutor, someone who would travel with you to class to the master or professor, and then, after class, go over all of the lessons. St. Paul was stressing throughout this letter as well as his letter to the Romans that we are saved by God through faith: it’s God’s work that we receive through the gift of faith. The Judaizers, like the Pharisees of which he was once one, thought we were saved by our actions of fidelity to God’s law. We’re judged by them, but not saved by them. But the big takeaway is not just why the Judaizing Christians were wrong. The great takeaway is how we’re supposed to live. We’re supposed to live by faith just like Abraham. We’re constantly being asked by God to make journeys of faith like Abraham did at 75, leaving Ur of the Chaldeans, his security, his life as he knew it until then and journey to a place God would show him. God didn’t tell him the destination, but Abraham trusted in him enough to go. God promised that he would become the father of many nations and showed him the stars of the sky as a confirmation of how many descendants he’d have, but the text of Genesis is clear that he was asked to look into the heavens when the sky was blue, not dark, because dusk came afterward. Abraham knew the stars were there, but couldn’t see them, which is a good image of what faith means, a certainty without seeing with worldly eyes. He didn’t know that he would have to wait 25 years for the fulfillment of that promise, but he continued to believe. He didn’t realize that he would be asked to sacrifice the fulfillment of that promise, Isaac, 13 years after his birth, but he did so with incredible faith, knowing, as the Letter to the Hebrews tells us, that God would raise him from the dead if he should be sacrificed. The Lord is calling each of us to a faith like this, to leave our comfort zone, to follow him, to count the stars even when we can’t see them, to trust even when he asks us to sacrifice what’s dearest. As St. Paul writes at the end of this passage, “The one who is righteous by faith will live.”
• The second great lesson from today’s readings is about communion in the Church. In the Gospel, we see the opposition Jesus faced by those who refused to believe in him or his works. By this point, Jesus had already worked all of the miracles foretold by Isaiah (61) that would mark the advent of the Messiah: he had proclaimed the Gospel to the poor, healed the sick, made the blind see, the deaf hear, the mute speak, the lame walk. He had liberated the captives from the snatches of the devil by countless exorcisms. He had fed multitudes. He had walked on water. He had done so much. The people who didn’t believe in him couldn’t deny the facts, but they could give another interpretation: he wasn’t working them by God’s power but by the devil’s, an attempt to justify their lack of faith in him and their opposition. Jesus, in his words to them, spoke about the work of the devil and the main thrust of his own saving work. The work of the devil is to divide and the main focus of Jesus’ work is to save us and sanctify us by bringing us into communion with God and in Him with others. Christ during the Last Supper prayed for a unity among us resembling the Trinity. He did that through his incarnation, his life, his passion, death and resurrection. We prayed in the Gospel verse about what he had said that when he would be lifted up on the Cross, he would draw all men to himself — and out of the clutches of the evil one. We remember from St. Mark’s Gospel the two essential aspects involved in life with Jesus: he calls us to be with him and to send us out (3:14). The devil wants to divide us from Jesus and prevent our going out as effective, ardent apostles. And he normally seeks to achieve both objectives by division, dividing us from genuine love of neighbor and thereby separating us from God. This is exactly the opposite of what Christ seeks: to gather us to him and to send us out to gather others. And then he gives everyone a choice to gather with him or to scatter. He said that Satan wouldn’t do exorcisms because he would then be defeating himself. It’s only God who could do them. God comes in Christ as the “stronger man” to conquer the power of Satan and take his “spoils,” knowing that his “spoils” would be souls Jesus would take out of the devil’s hand. He warned his critics at the end of the Gospel to see that God had freed them through the Old Covenant from the domination of the evil one, but that a worse fate could await them if they cease to live by faith. The devil could return with seven demons and the new state would be worse than the one even before they had been given the Covenant. The whole thrust of Jesus words were to help us to respond to Jesus’ desire to gather us into his family and to send us out to gather with him.
• These two focuses in the readings, on growth in faith, and gathering Christ’s family together, are both important ways by which we can gratefully celebrate this feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. The Rosary is a tremendous school of faith, in which we ponder the central mysteries of Jesus’ life from the faithful perspective of Mary. We learn from her how to receive God and say fiat, to believe everything that the Lord has spoken to us would be fulfilled, to look at Jesus with faith-filled amazement. We learn from her how faith causes us to rejoice, fills us with joy, sustains us in sorrow, leads us to eternal glory. It is also a prayer best prayed with and for others, in union with Mary, the Mother of all Christ’s disciples. That’s why so many families have grasped that those who pray the Rosary together stay together. It’s also important for the family of the Church to pray together, and this prayer sustains us. Against the devil’s desire to divide us, Mary stomps on his head, and lifts us up toward her Son by the heavenly lifeline of the Rosary, as Michelangelo depicted beautifully in his Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel.
• The great work of gathering us to Christ, of uniting us in communion, happens here at Mass where Jesus, the Stronger Man, seeks to make us one body, one spirit with Him and others. It’s here that we receive the help we need to defeat the devil’s attempted sabotage of our lives. It’s here that we remember each day with joy that we are the disciples of the one who has defeated the devil and conquered even death and sin. It’s here, that we commit ourselves anew to holiness and to the work of gathering with Christ into a “United Kingdom” that will stand strong into eternity.

The readings for today’s Mass were:

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