Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Agnes Church, Manhattan
Resumed Sixth Sunday after Epiphany
November 14, 2021
1 Thess 1:2-10, Mt 13:31-35
To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
The following text guided today’s homily:
- In the month of November, as we ponder the last things of death, judgment and the eternal realities of heaven and hell, it’s supposed to spur us ultimately to action. The more we recognize our time on earth is finite, that there will be on occasion when we’ll review face-to-face with the Lord how we’ve spent that time, and that our eternal destiny will be determined by the mutually obvious conclusion as to whether we’ve lived for God and others or self-alienated to live for ourselves, then the more motivated we are now to live by faith, hope and love.
- That’s why today’s readings are so helpful and challenging. Jesus speaks to us about the growth of his kingdom. It starts small like a mustard seed but then it grows into a huge shrub where so many others are able to abide. This can of course be applied to the Church as a whole, which can start with the one yes of Mary, or a small band of 12 men, or a few committed families in a parish, or a particular founder or foundress in a religious order. But it can, and is meant, to apply also to each of us. Elsewhere Jesus says that if we have the faith the size of a mustard seed we can transplant mulberry trees and even whole mountain ranges into the sea. This is a great image of hope. What happened to us physically, being conceived as a one cell embryo in our mother’s womb, growing bigger over the course of subsequent months, being born and growing still toward adulthood, is supposed to happen spiritually. Every act of faith matters. Every act of hope matters. Every act of charity matters. Not only does our faith grow like the mustard seed or human body, but we become — to use Jesus’ second image in the Gospel — like leaven lifting up those around us.
- St. Paul describes this reality in today’s epistle from his First Letter to the Thessalonians. He had planted in each of the first Christians in Thessalonika a mustard see of faith and then it began to grow. St. Paul recalled with gratitude several elements of the receptivity and response of the first Christians there. He mentioned their “work of faith and labor of love and endurance in hope.” They worked to grow in faith, they labored to love, they endured plenty of difficulties, setbacks and contradictions, but never lost their hope. He spoke to them about the mystery of “how [they] were chosen,” and they took confidence in their divine vocation. He said that they received the Gospel not by “word alone, but also in power, in the Holy Spirit and much conviction,” and that power and Spirit were at work within them, changing them and through them history. He praises them for having become “imitators of us and of the Lord,” for modeling their life on Jesus and on Paul himself, of “serving the living and true God,” and becoming themselves “a model for all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia” and “in every place [where] your faith in God has gone forth.” Their growth in faith was what the Lord hopes to see in all of us.
- Today the Church calls us to focus on one particular way we’re supposed to be growing spiritually in response to our Christian calling and in view of the last things. It’s with regard to charity. As we know, Jesus calls us to love God with all our mind, heart, soul and strength and says that will be shown in the way that we love all those whom the Father loved enough to send his Son to die for. Today is the fifth World Day of the Poor, started by Pope Francis in 2017, and it’s meant to help us all get very practical about the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. In his Message for this day, he focused on Jesus’ words “The poor you will always have with you,” which Jesus said to Judas right after Judas complained about Mary of Bethany’s pouring out oil on Jesus in anticipation of his burial rather than selling it for 300 days wages and given to the poor. Pope Francis contrasts Mary’s extravagant love for Jesus versus Judas’ fake concern for the poor. Jesus’ words, “the poor you will always have with you but you will not always have me,” the Pope says, was reminding them that “he is the first of the poor, the poorest of the poor,” as he would make clear when he announced he had no place to lay his head, and also “because he represents all of them,” as he would declare when he would say that whatever we did to the poor, the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the stranger, the ill or imprisoned, we would be doing to him. Pope Francis continued, “Jesus teaches that poverty is not the result of fate, but a concrete sign pointing to his presence among us. We do not find him when and where we want, but see him in the lives of the poor, in their sufferings and needs, in the often inhuman conditions in which they are forced to live. … We are called to discover Christ in them, to lend them our voice in their causes, but also to be their friends, to listen to them, to understand them. … The poor are not people ‘outside’ our communities, but brothers and sisters whose sufferings we should share, in an effort to alleviate their difficulties and marginalization, restore their lost dignity and ensure their necessary social inclusion. In short, believers, when they want to see Jesus in person and touch him with their hands, know where to turn. The poor are [like] a sacrament of Christ; they represent his person and point to him.”
- If we are seeking to grow spiritually, to learn how to love more and better, we have so many opportunities here in New York City. The poor we always have with us. On almost every block, there is someone in need of a hand. None of us can obviously help everyone, but each of us every day can help someone or several. Pope Francis writes that we should “never to lose sight of every opportunity to do good.” He quotes the Book of Deuteronomy, where God tells us, “If one of your brothers and sisters… is in need, you shall not harden your heart nor close your hand to them in their need. Instead, you shall open your hand to them and freely lend them enough to meet their need… When you give to them, give freely and not with ill will; for the Lord, your God, will bless you for this in all your works and undertakings. For the needy will never be lacking in the land…” (Deut 15:7-8, 10-11). In a similar vein, the Holy Father also mentions St. Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians, where he urged Christians to come to the aid of the poor of the first community of Jerusalem and to do so “without sadness or compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver” (2 Cor 9:7). It should fill us with joy to give, because we are participating in the overflowing of God’s providential love.
- That love begins in us like a seed but then it is meant to grow to become a large plant capable of sharing God’s love with many others and through the witness of generosity spawning many others, like leaven, to do the same. This is what the word of God inspires in us and the power of the Holy Spirit makes possible. Just like the faith of the Thessalonians before us, whom St. Paul elsewhere praised for their extraordinary sacrificial generosity to the suffering Christians in Jerusalem, so our faith working through charity is supposed to go forth to every place.
- This whole mystery of spiritual growth starting small and becoming big is summarized in the Mass. The Mass is the place where Jesus seeks to plant himself within us as a seed, as a “grain of wheat” (Jn 12:24) on good soil that together with him can bear abundant growth. He implants himself on our insides and allows us to enter through Holy Communion into the inner life of God. This is where he loves us and empowers us to love others by his same body-giving and blood-shedding standard. This is where all spiritual growth ultimately begins. If we receive even the littlest piece of the Sacred Host within us, we receive God and all his power, and from that seemingly small start are transformed in such a way that with him living in us we might become leaven for the whole world as we become model for all believers in Manhattan and in every place our faith in God goes forth.
The readings for today’s Mass were:
A reading from the First Letter of St. Paul to the Thessalonians
We give thanks to God always for all of you, remembering you in our prayers, unceasingly calling to mind your work of faith and labor of love and endurance in hope of our Lord Jesus Christ, before our God and Father, knowing, brothers loved by God, how you were chosen. For our gospel did not come to you in word alone, but also in power and in the holy Spirit and [with] much conviction. You know what sort of people we were [among] you for your sake. And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, receiving the word in great affliction, with joy from the holy Spirit, so that you became a model for all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia. For from you the word of the Lord has sounded forth not only in Macedonia and [in] Achaia, but in every place your faith in God has gone forth, so that we have no need to say anything. For they themselves openly declare about us what sort of reception we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God and to await his Son from heaven, whom he raised from [the] dead, Jesus, who delivers us from the coming wrath.
The continuation of the Gospel according to St. Matthew
At that time, Jesus addressed to the crowds this parable. “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that a person took and sowed in a field. It is the smallest of all the seeds, yet when full-grown it is the largest of plants. It becomes a large bush, and the ‘birds of the sky come and dwell in its branches.’” He spoke to them another parable. “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed with three measures of wheat flour until the whole batch was leavened.” All these things Jesus spoke to the crowds in parables. He spoke to them only in parables, to fulfill what had been said through the prophet: “I will open my mouth in parables, I will announce what has lain hidden from the foundation of the world.”
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