Growing in the Hope in Which We’re Saved, 30th Tuesday (I), October 27, 2015

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Tuesday of the 30th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Votive Mass for the Family
October 27, 2015
Rom 8:18-25, Ps 126, Lk 13:18-21

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• The Kingdom of God is both now and not yet. Jesus says it’s among us but also something that we pray will come. Like a mustard seed, it is meant to grow. It’s still the kingdom, but it’s basically in embryonic form in a seed and late will come to full stature.
• Once we understand this dynamic of the Kingdom we can more easily grasp what St. Paul is saying in the first reading. Yesterday, in the passage from his Epistle to the Romans, he said that we have already “received a spirit of adoption” but today he tells us “we also groan within ourselves as we wait for adoption.” He describes the whole process as “groaning in labor pains” and labor is an appropriate image. There’s a child waiting to be born; the child is the same before and after, but there is a massive change between the womb and the light. Likewise the mother remains a mother to the child, but there is a massive growth in that relationship after birth.
• This is why St. Paul says that “in hope we were saved,” which means we are saved as we hope — what Pope Benedict would call in Spe Salvi “living with Christ in the world” — and are saved through hope, meaning by faith in the fulfillment of Christ’s promises.  Part of that salvation in hope happens through suffering, which are like labor pains. Pope Benedict in Spe Salvi had said, basing himself on the Letter to the Hebrews, that faith/hope is the substance of things hoped for and the guarantee of things not seen: there’s already something present that is meant to grow. And because of that substance, that presence as a mustard seed of what will flourish later, the early Christians were willing to suffer the plundering of their property because they had a better possession: namely the treasure of the faith that they already had, even if unfulfilled.
• That’s why we can say with the Psalm today, “The Lord has done marvels for us,” while recognizing that greater marvels await. And the greatest downpayment of all is Christ in the Eucharist. To live with him, to be conscious of his Eucharistic presence, is to live with hope in the world, which is the path of salvation. Let’s take this truth and this “substance” and let it grow in us so that we might be like mustard seeds or leaven in making Christ’s kingdom come in the world.

The readings for today’s Mass were: