How God Brings Good Out of Rejection, 13th Wednesday (I), June 30, 2021

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs, Auriesville, NY
Wednesday of the 13th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Memorial of the First Martyrs of the Church of Rome
June 30, 2021
Gen 21:5.8-10, Ps 34, Mt 8:28-34

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• In today’s readings and memorial, we find the strong and sad theme of rejection, but also also see how Jesus seeks to bring good out of those dismissals.
• We find it first in the banishment of Hagar and Ishmael. Sarah, despite having been blessed miraculously by God with her first son in her nineties, rather than being filled with gratitude was consumed by envy. Seeing her servant Hagar, whom she had given to Abraham as a concubine when she had lost hope that God would fulfill his promise to make Abraham a dad and the father of many nations, and who had become with Abraham the parents of Ishmael, she demanded of Abraham: “Drive out that slave and her son!” Abraham was deeply distressed and we hope would have refused. But God said to him, “Do not be distressed about the boy or about your slave woman. Heed the demands of Sarah, no matter what she is asking of you; for it is through Isaac that descendants shall bear your name. As for the son of the slave woman, I will make a great nation of him also, since he too is your offspring.” God reiterated that promise to the exiled Hagar a little later, when she was afraid for their survival in the desert. God told her, “Don’t be afraid; God has heard the boy’s cry in this plight of his. Arise, lift up the boy and hold him by the hand; for I will make of him a great nation.” Much like God provided a well in the middle of the desert for them both, so God, Genesis tells us, “was with the boy as he grew up.” Envy exiled the two of them, but God is the Lord of all the earth, and he brought good out of the evil they suffered.
• We see something similar in the Gospel. Jesus entered into the pagan region of the Decapolis on the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee and he is met in the territory of the Gadarenes by two savage demoniacs. They had been banished by their fellows to live among the tombs. The demons within them called Jesus “the Son of God” and asked, “What have you to do with us?” His very presence was tormenting them. Jesus was going to cure them to restore them not only to their self-possession but to the community. The demons, about to be exorcised, begged Jesus at least to allow them to inhabit the swine that was present, which Jesus then commanded. As soon as they invaded the swine, however, all of them were rushed into the Sea of Galilee and drowned, a sign of two things: first how many and how powerful the demons were that were dwelling within the men; and second how they were seeking, as they always do, to destroy the men. After the men were liberated, the whole town came out to meet Jesus, not rejoicing but upset at the loss of their pigs. Rather that ask the Holy One of God to free them from other manifestations of infernal power, rather than thank him for restoring two of their own, rather than inviting him in to get to know him and how he was able to do such a deed, they “begged him to leave their district.” They didn’t want the holiness of God around. They actually preferred their pigs. They preferred their life as it was. They were indeed under the sway of the evil one, though in less savage form than the two demoniacs. The devil is always the divider. He seeks to lead us apart from others, especially those who are good, most especially those who will bring us to God. But Jesus came as the great restorer, to reconcile us all to God and to each other. In response to the rejection that the men had suffered from their community, they met and were healed by Jesus. In response to the rejection of Jesus by the Gadarenes, Jesus wants us to unite ourselves to him, especially in our rejection. He had warned us that when we lived the faith and proclaimed the Gospel that some would receive us and some wouldn’t, but in the latter case, he wanted us not to stew in the rejection, but let our peace return to us, wipe the dust off our feet, and move on to the next place proclaiming the Good News of the Kingdom. He had promised that if they hated him, they would hate us, too, and that one day those who did harm to us would think they were doing something pleasing to God. But he told us to rejoice and be glad when that would take place, because our reward would be great in heaven, where there would be eternal acceptance by the Triune God and all the saints.
• We see that lesson in the memorial we mark today, of the first martyrs of the Church of Rome, which is in some sense a continuation of yesterday’s feast of SS. Peter and Paul, since those we celebrate today would have been killed alongside St. Peter. After Nero had set fire to the city of Rome on July 19, 64 AD in order to rebuild it to his own glory, destroying 10 of the 14 sections of Rome and killing many of the inhabitants, the Romans blamed him and he needed a scapegoat. He found one in the first Christians who had a reputation of being an atheist, cannibalistic, promiscuous sect: atheist because they didn’t believe in the pagan gods and would get the gods angry at everyone; cannibalistic because when they got together to worship God they were said to eat someone’s body and drank his blood; and promiscuous because after that worship they would have a big “agape” meal, a love banquet, which was interpreted as an orgy. They wouldn’t have many defenders. So a few months later, on October 13, 64, Peter and the first Christians were rounded up in the Circus of Caligula and Nero for a game in which they would be killed as arsonists supposedly for destroying the city of Rome. We have an eyewitness account of what they suffered from the Roman pagan historian Tacitus, who was a 7-year-old boy in the circus when the Christians perished. A few decades later, he wrote down what happened: “To get rid of this rumor, Nero set up [i.e., falsely accused] as the culprits and punished with the utmost refinement of cruelty a class hated for their abominations, who are commonly called Christians. Christ, from whom their name is derived, was executed at the hands of the procurator Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius. Checked for a moment, this pernicious superstition again broke out, not only in Judea, the source of the evil, but even in Rome…. Accordingly, arrest was first made of those who confessed [to being Christians]; then, on their evidence, an immense multitude [elsewhere in his writings he used this expression to refer to 3,000 to 5,000 men] was convicted…. Besides being put to death they were made to serve as objects of amusement; they were clothed in the hides of beasts and torn to death by dogs; others were crucified, others set on fire to serve to illuminate the night when daylight failed. Nero had thrown open his grounds for the display, and was putting on a show in the circus, where he mingled with the people in the dress of charioteer or drove about in his chariot. All this gave rise to a feeling of pity, even towards men whose guilt merited the most exemplary punishment; for it was felt that they were being destroyed not for the public good but to gratify the cruelty of an individual.” Together with Peter, they were rejected, and driven not just out of Rome but out of this world, but, as that was happening and an eternal dwelling place being made for them in the Father’s House, they were beginning the conversion of the Roman Empire, as people began to see their humanity, as bloodthirsty Romans began to be filled with mercy for them, as the spectators grasped that they were being scapegoated, and all of that made it possible for them to go from the scapegoats to the Christ, the scapegoat for humanity, “from whom their name is derived.” Little did Nero know that what he was doing was not extirpating a so-called atheist, cannibalistic, promiscuous sect, but irrigating with their blood and love the soil of Rome, such that the Church of Christ would eventually build its earthly headquarters right on top of that very spot. Pope St. Clement, alive at the time of their persecution, wrote in the 90s what lesson we should all draw from their suffering: “These things, beloved, we write unto you, not merely to admonish you of your duty, but also to remind ourselves. For we are struggling on the same arena, and the same conflict is assigned to both of us. Wherefore let us give up vain and fruitless cares, and approach to the glorious and venerable rule of our holy calling. Let us attend to what is good, pleasing, and acceptable in the sight of Him who formed us. Let us look steadfastly to the blood of Christ and see how precious that blood is to God which, having been shed for our salvation, has set the grace of repentance before the whole world.”
• And so we look to Christ, in his body and blood, as we prepare to receive Him, asking him to help us always embrace rather than reject others, to embrace him more firmly when we ourselves our rejected, to strengthen us always to remain true to him under duress, so that so that we, too, like Ishmael, may have God with us always as we grow up, and like the Roman Martyrs, come to experience eternal joy in heaven.

The readings for today’s Mass were:

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