Heeding the One Greater than Jonah and Solomon, 16th Monday (II), July 21, 2014

Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Bernadette Parish, Fall River, MA
Monday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of St. Lawrence of Brindisi, Doctor
July 21, 2014
Mic 6:1-4.6-8, Ps 50, Mt 12:38-42

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today’s readings are forceful appeals by God to conversion. It’s important for us to recognize that they’re not just historical summons to repentance but very much actual.
• In the Gospel, the Scribes and Pharisees asked Jesus for a “sign.” A sign was a miracle that pointed to something else, namely Jesus’ authority to preach and do what he was saying and doing. But we know that Jesus had been doing nothing but miracles: he had immediately before cured a man with a withered hand and had expelled demons. But the Scribes and Pharisees didn’t want to accept what those miracles signified. So they kept asking for other ones. Perhaps they were waiting until a supposed miracle attempt failed so that they would be able to feel justified in their rejection of Jesus. Jesus cut to the core of why they were asking for such a miracle, saying, an “evil and unfaithful generation seeks a sign.” If they were of a good and faithful generation, they would have already taken seriously all of the miracles and words that Jesus had already done and grasped that he himself was the sign for which the Jews should have been looking.
• But Jesus nevertheless says that the one sign that would be given to the evil and perverse generation that constantly seeks another sign is the Sign of Jonah. On the one hand this certainly points to his death, burial in the belly of the earth, and resurrection on the third day, the greatest of all his miracles. But the fundamental sign of Jonah is a sign of conversion. Jonah was himself a convert — he had run away from the mission the Lord had given him, much as many of the Scribes and Pharisees were running away from the mission the Lord had given all the Jews in preparing for and receiving the long-awaited Messiah — and called the pagan Ninevites to conversion. And we remember how the Ninevites responded: they all repented, from the king down to the pets, who all fasted in sackcloth and ashes. Jesus told them that he was greater than Jonah and a greater sign of conversion. If the pagans of Nineveh had changed their ways at the preaching of Jonah on the first day, then the supposedly religious Jews of his day should have much more readily changed when they heard Jesus preaching “Repent and believe in the Gospel” and working all the signs to back up his message. Jesus added that the Queen of Sheba had traveled a great distance with many caravans in her retinue in order to hear Solomon’s wisdom — she had in fact traveled 1660 miles or, at a pace of 15 miles a day, over three months each way — but that his wisdom was greater than Solomon’s and they weren’t willing to travel any intellectual or moral distance. The question for us is how much are we willing to do to “acquire” Jesus’ wisdom? Are we willing to go to adult education classes? Are we willing to buy good Catholic books? Are we willing to start getting to know the Bible much better through personal study and lectio divina? For many of us, one of the most urgent aspects of conversion involves our hunger to know and live by God’s holy wisdom and Jesus calls us to change the same way he was calling the Scribes and Pharisees.
• The chief problem with the Scribes and Pharisees is not that they didn’t want to convert “in general.” It’s not that they didn’t consider themselves sinners in need of mercy. They marked, probably with great fervor, Yom Kippur each year and recognized their need for atonement “in general.” But they wanted to convert on their own terms and in their own way. They didn’t want to convert in the way God wanted and to begin to do what he was asking. We see that problem laid out starkly in the reading from the Prophet Micah and in the Responsorial Psalm. God through Micah puts words on their lips about the type of repentance they were willing to do and were already doing: “With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow before God most high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with myriad streams of oil? Shall I give my first-born for my crime, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” Those in Judah around 700 BC were bringing burnt offerings, year old calves, thousands of rams, huge quantities of oil, even contemplating offering their first born children, as if those could atone for the sins of their souls. None of these signified the type of conversion God ultimately wanted. God speaks to this in the Responsorial Psalm. He says, “Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you, for your burnt offerings are before me always,” but rather he rebukes them because they’re not acting on his words and living by his wisdom: “Why do you recite my statutes, and profess my covenant with your mouth, though you hate discipline and cast my words behind you?”
• That’s why God tells us through Micah that the conversion he wants is to do what he asks: “You have been told, O man, what is good, and what the Lord requires of you: Only to do the right and to love goodness, and to walk humbly with your God.” He specifies three things. First, to do justice, to treat everyone fairly, to give God and others their due. The fact is that many of them were treating others unjustly in myriad ways. God is always asking that conversion of us, so that we will love and sacrifice for our neighbor rather than hurt or take advantage of our neighbor. Second, to love mercy. The real word translated as “goodness” is “mercy.” God wants us to love him in his merciful love, to recognize we need it, to come to get it, and then to share it with others as we have received it freely from the Lord. It wants us not merely to receive and reciprocate mercy but to love receiving it and love sharing it. So many of us in every age need a profound conversion on this point. Third, “to walk humbly with your God.”  God never tells us to stay where we are. He calls us to get up and follow him. He wants us not merely to know his ways but to walk in his ways. But once we’re moving, we’re called to walk humbly, letting God lead, knowing we need direction, receiving from him all the help that he knows we need. The Vulgate word that we translate as “humbly” is sollicitum, which basically means that we walk solicitously, seeking from God what we need rather than walk with an air of self-sufficiency. This, too, is a perennial point of conversion for us, because many of us prefer to stay put and if we get up to go our own way. God through Micah is calling us to follow him solicitously and humbly. And if the people of Micah’s day acted on his words, how much more do we need to act on the “greater than Micah” among us, who calls us to imitate his justice, love his mercy and follow him?
• So this is a call to conversion that all of us are called to ponder today. But we also need to grasp, building on yesterday’s Gospel which is meant to influence our entire week, that we’re called to be a “leaven” of conversion within the Church and society, that the Church is meant to be an enormous “Mustard Tree” of Mercy in which all people can find forgiveness, and that the Lord wants to sow each of us as good seed among those who do injustice, hate mercy and piety, walk proudly and defiantly away from God and lead others to do the same.
• One person who was this type of leaven of conversion, who helped the Church to become that great merciful Mustard Tree and showed vast numbers how to walk with him humbly in the Lord’s ways is St. Lawrence of Brindisi, the great Capuchin Doctor of the Church whom we celebrate today. He was one who from his earliest days recognized in Jesus someone greater than Jonah and Solomon and all of the other great figures of salvation and world history, and he sought to enter his school. He was gifted with extraordinary intelligence and an incredible memory such that he learned almost all of the modern European languages as well as the ancient ones used in the Bible, which he learned inside out in the original languages. But rather than allowing his intelligence to go proudly to his head, he humbly sought out God’s wisdom not as a thing to be known but a gift to be lived and nourished through prayer. As a six year old boy, he used to give powerful homilies to his family members and other parishioners on the meaning of Christ’s incarnation at Christmas time. Eventually after he had become a Capuchin Franciscan, he became a famous preacher of conversion, first to Catholics in traditional mission and sermons, then to Protestants in Germany who had left during the Reformation and finally, at Pope Paul V’s request, to the Jews in the Jewish Ghetto in Rome. In all three circumstances, his enfleshment of the beauty of God’s mercy, his awe at God’s holy wisdom, and his radiance of the happiness that comes from walking in the Lord’s way brought many to profound conversion and to the fulfillment of faith through the Catholic Church. At the beginning of Mass today, we prayed to God the Father to grant us “that in the same spirit [of St. Lawrence], we may know what must be done and, through his intercession, bring it to completion.” Today God makes abundantly clear the conversion he’s asking of us and we ask St. Lawrence to bring us to complete conversion.
• And the best place to begin that conversion of the whole of our life is the same place where it began for this great Capuchin doctor, here at Mass. Mass is where we come to meet the Sign of Jonah, to hear his wisdom, to enter into the belly of the earth with him and arise with him on the third day. This is where we recognize our need to change and are strengthened by the Lord to go out as leaven for the world showing for all an example of justice, love of mercy, and humble walking in the Lord’s footsteps.

The readings for today’s Mass were: