Humility and Faith, 24th Monday (II), Holy Name of Mary, September 12, 2022

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Monday of the 24th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of the Holy Name of Mary
September 12, 2022
1 Cor 11:17-26.33, Ps 40, Lk 7:1-10

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today the Church celebrates the feast of the Holy Name of Mary, a name we invoke every day when we cry out, “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners!” The feast originated in Spain in 1513, but it was extended to the whole Church in 1683 by Pope Innocent XI to mark the great victory of King Jan Sobieski of Poland in the Battle of Vienna on September 12 of that year, a victory that most historians believed kept Europe Christian against the invading Muslim Turks. When we turn to Mary and invoke her holy name in the battles we’re fighting, we think of her virtues. Based on today’s Gospel, we can think of two, her humility and her faith, both of which are reflected in the humility and faith with which the centurion related to Jesus.
• The centurion loved his slave and was desperate for help. There was no doctor who could help him, but he heard of Jesus the miracle worker. Even though he was a powerful centurion, he didn’t think he was worthy to approach Jesus himself, and so he sent the local Jewish leaders. They were not as humble as he. They approached Jesus and said, “He deserves to have you do this for him, for he loves our nation and he built the synagogue for us.” No one ever merits a miracle; it’s always an a gift from God. Yet Jesus humbly went with them. When he was on his way, the Centurion humbly sent word that he didn’t think he was worthy to have Jesus visit his house, but asked simply that Jesus command from where he was the life-threatening illness of his servant to depart. He believed that even at a distance Jesus could command and even sicknesses would obey, in a way similar to how he commanded soldiers. Jesus was amazed at the man’s faith. He turned to the crowd and said, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.” Not among the disciples, not among the apostles, not even it seems in his Mother had he found faith like that in his power to command at a distance. What an extraordinary witness of trust in the reach of God’s power and love! Jesus normally worked physical miracles as preludes to the greater miracle of faith he desired to give those healed, but in this case, Jesus didn’t need to meet the man to help him grow in faith because his faith was already remarkable.
• The Church wants to help us to grow to have the humility and faith of the Centurion in today’s Gospel. Every Mass we repeat the Centurion’s words, “Lord, I am not worthy that you should come under my roof, but only say the word and my [soul] shall be healed.” Do we have that same faith that Jesus can and wants to heal our soul like he healed the Centurion’s slave and make us worthy of him? Do we have the same humility in asking for this gift or do we proudly think we deserve the Eucharist and God’s other gifts?
• In today’s first reading, St. Paul takes the Corinthians to the woodshed for their lack of humility, reverence and faith for Jesus in the Eucharist and for the miracle he wishes to accomplish coming under their collective roofs. The apostle says something astonishing: “Your meetings,” meaning the way they were going about their Sundays, “are doing more harm than good.” The Sunday was structured with a Mass and then an agape meal that they would share as a family. But rather than sharing, Paul says, “when you meet as a Church there are divisions among you.” Therefore, he said, “When you meet in one place, then, it is not to eat the Lord’s Supper,” because “in eating, each one goes ahead with his own supper, and one goes hungry while another gets drunk.” They were becoming selfish instead of selfless, focused on their own desires rather than becoming united. St. Paul says the were showing “contempt for the Church of God and mak[ing] those who have nothing feel ashamed.” After describing that Jesus gave his Body and Blood for us in the Lord’s Supper, and that we were to celebrate it “in remembrance of him,” they weren’t remembering him at all, because their Masses were dividing rather than uniting, leading to factions rather than love.
• That’s why St. Paul went on to say, in a passage unfortunately excised from today’s reading, that they needed to examine themselves to make sure they were not eating and drinking condemnation on themselves in receiving the Lord unhealed by the Lord’s saving word. “Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord. A person should examine himself, and so eat the bread and drink the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many among you are ill and infirm, and a considerable number are dying.” To receive the Lord under our roof worthily is to recognize that the Lord often comes in the disguise of the least of his brothers and sisters. St. Paul was saying we need to examine our consciences on sins against unity. If we, like the Corinthians, come to Mass not wanting unity with our brothers and sisters, not loving them and receiving them as we would Christ, we would be eating and drinking condemnation rather than salvation. The “Bread of Life,” as St. Thomas Aquinas wrote in his Lauda Sion Salvatorem, would become for us the “bread of death.” We need to “discern the body,” and this means not only humbly to reverence Christ’s Body in the Eucharist, but at the same time how Christ wants to make believers through communion with Him one Body, one Spirit in him. St. Thomas wrote that the res (ultimate result) of the Sacrament of the Eucharist is not the transubstantiation of the bread and wine into Jesus’ Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, but the transformation of us, by the power of the same Holy Spirit through Holy Communion, into one Body, one Spirit. If we come to Mass not seeking communion with each other, if we’re not saying “Amen!” to the reality of Christ’s real presence and to what he wants to do in us, then we’re not receiving worthily. That’s why Jesus, for example, says that if we come to the altar and recognizing our brother has something against us first to reconcile and then to come, because if we harboring the lack of reconciliation, we’re not really open to what Jesus wants to do. And if he can heal a servant at a distance of a life-threatening illness, then he can heal us, too, of the grudges we may hold. This is the means by which Jesus’ prayer during the Last Supper — that we may be one as the Persons of the Blessed Trinity are one — can come to fruition.
• When we humbly and faithfully invoke the Holy Name of Mary, we simultaneously relate to her as mother — “Holy Mary, Mother of God” — and we recognize that, like any loving mother, she wants, prays for and works to unite her sons and daughters. Like in Vienna in 1683, when the Christian troops needed to be united against the invading Turks, so today and always, we need to be united against the great divider, the evil one. She wants to help us gather us all under her mantle at the foot of the Cross, as Jesus her Son, as he is lifted up, draws all men and women to himself. The prayers for the Mass of the Holy Name of Mary in the Compendium of Masses of the Blessed Virgin Mary emphasize the confidence we should have in praying to her and the unitive impact that should have. In the Opening Prayer (Collect), we ask, “O God, whose Son, dying on the altar of the Cross, willed that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, who he had chosen as his Mother, should be our Mother also, graciously grant, we pray, that we, who fly to her protection, may find comfort by invoking our Mother’s name.” Just as the name “Mama” can unite the children of a family, so our calling out with Jesus to his mother, is meant to help us to see our commonality. In the Prayer over the Gifts, we ask, “that in imitation of Blessed Mary, ever Virgin, we may seek to be faithful to Christ, … to please him in all that we do, and to live only for him,” which involves living a life of faith, humility and unity. And in the beautiful Preface, after asking God the Father to help us place our salvation in no other name than his Son’s — and the name signifies the person in whose life we try to participate both as foundation and life-giving principle — the Church says, “But by your loving providence the name of the Virgin Mary also should echo and re-echo on the lips of your faithful people who turn to her with confidence as their star of hope, call on her as their mother in time of danger, and seek her protection in their hour of need.” In all of this we see that the Church, through the principle of lex orandi lex vivendi is seeking to get us to relate to Mary’s “name” as the way we treat her as a “person,” since in the Biblical understanding the name signifies the person. Mary’s name is maternal. Mary’s name is one that is responsive to our means. Mary’s name is holy and honorable. And so we cry out to her regularly, “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now,” at every moment of our life, “and at the hour of our death,” seeking to make us one with God and with her and the saints.
• Today Mary is doubtless praying for us to celebrate Mass as it deserves to be celebrated, not as something that will do more harm than good but as the means by which we enter into holy communion with the Blessed Fruit of her womb and all those in communion with him. She’s praying in fact that this Mass will do the greatest good in the world, as we, becoming one with Christ, learn how to live in doing union with each other. We’re not worthy to receive Jesus under our roof, but imitating Mary’s humility, faith and love for God and all our brothers and sisters, we pray that Jesus will say the Word and make us worthy to receive him and serve and love our brothers and sisters who with us invoke Mary’s holy name.

The readings for today’s Mass were:

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