Increasing Faith and Holy Ambition, Seventh Monday (II), February 21, 2022

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Monday of the Seventh Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of St. Peter Damian, Doctor of the Church
February 21, 2022
James 3:13-18, Ps 19, Mk 9:14-29

To listen to an audio recording of this homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• In Jesus’ miraculous healing of the boy afflicted with a demon who made him deaf, mute and it seems epileptic, we discover two essential things necessary not just for miracles but for the Christian life as a whole.
• The first requirement is true faith. When Jesus descended the Mount of the Transfiguration with Peter, James and John and asked what the commotion was at the bottom of the hill, the father of the afflicted boy said, “Teacher, I have brought to you my son possessed by a mute spirit. Wherever it seizes him, it throws him down; he foams at the mouth, grinds his teeth, and becomes rigid. I asked your disciples to drive it out, but they were unable to do so.” Jesus’ response to that information was, “O faithless generation, how long will I be with you? How long will I endure you?” Jesus was pointing out the lack of faith seemingly both in the father as well as in his disciples. When Jesus asked for the boy to be brought to him and talked with the father about how since childbirth the demon would cause him nearly to kill himself in fire or in water, the father said to him, “But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” Jesus, who came to the earth to help us to believe in God, called the man out on his frail faith: “‘If you can!’ Everything is possible to one who has faith.” And the father replied, “I do believe, Lord. Help my unbelief!” It was his faith that had brought him to come to Jesus in the first place, but he clearly needed more faith, and thankfully wasn’t afraid to ask for it. And Jesus worked the great miracle.
• After the crowd had disappeared, the disciples asked Jesus why they couldn’t drive it out, and Jesus gave us the second necessary ingredient for this miracle and the Christian life. “This kind can only come out through prayer.” Jesus implied that it was not just his divine power that was necessary, a power he had already given when he sent them out to proclaim the Gospel, to heal the sick, cast out demons and even raise the dead. Persevering prayer was also needed. They needed to be truly close to God, united with him through the dialogue of life that is prayer. In some of the ancient manuscripts of St. Mark’s Gospel it said, we read, “This kind can only be expunged by prayer and fasting.” Regardless of which Jesus said, the point is clear: the prayer needed is not just one of the lips, but of the heart and body. That’s something Jesus was regularly doing. And it’s something that he was calling the disciples to do if we were going to be capable of casting out the most entrenched demons. Persevering prayer in the disciples would be a sign of our faith, which seems also to be a prerequisite for such a miracle. Prayer is faith in action. Sometimes those in the Church — the apostles and their successors, priests and religious, lay people with stellar reputations — do not have the type of prayer life, the faith, the fasting that can be the means by which Jesus can continue his saving work. But even should that happen, God forbid, even if our faith might be weak, we shouldn’t give up, but should go to the Lord with the faith we have and ask him to increase it in us and in the Church. In the work of exorcizing possessed persons today, there’s a need for that type of persevering prayer and fasting. Exorcisms aren’t like magic formulas said once and easily, but often the work of repeated prayers and a lot of fasting on the part of the priest exorcist. That’s why you’ll almost never find an obese exorcist or one who doesn’t have a deep and constant prayer life.
• But what does this miracle have to do with us? None of us here today seems afflicted with a mute and deaf spirit. None of us is regularly being led to throw ourselves into lit fireplaces or into bodies of water. Is there an immediate application calling on our faith and persevering prayer and fasting? St. James points to it in today’s first reading. In contrast to the wisdom that comes from God, which is humble, pure, peaceable, gentle, compliant, full of mercy and good fruits, constant and sincere, he describes the false wisdom of the world, which features “bitter jealousy and selfish ambition,” telling us that this wisdom doesn’t come from God but is “earthly, unspiritual and demonic” and leads to “disorder and every foul practice.” There are many today caught up in this demonic “bitter jealousy and selfish ambition,” who put themselves in the center, who rather than rejoicing when another is blessed, throw themselves into a fiery rage about it; who rather than seeking God’s kingdom and the good of others, selfishly seek to do whatever it takes to get ahead and throw others into the cold water. This is a cancer that affects politics, many businesses, many schools, sports, families and other. We grow bitter when others do well. And we’re ambitious not for serving others and washing their feet— the type of holy ambition God wants us to have! — but to have others serve as stepping stones. All of this comes from the evil one. And Jesus today wants to exorcize these demonic attitudes from us. How does he do that? There’s something very significant in how he worked the miracle in the Gospel. After he did the prayer of exorcism and said, “Mute and deaf spirit, I command you: come out of him and never enter him again!,” St. Mark tells us that after the boy was thrown into convulsions he collapsed motionless on the ground, leading many to say, “He is dead!” Then Jesus went over, “took him by the hand, raised him, and he stood up.” Many of the early saints of the Church said that Jesus was symbolizing how he seeks to raise all of us from the dead. He takes us individually by the hand, he raises us up, and wants us to stand with him. He carries out that resurrection first in baptism, but recapitulates it every time we go to the Sacrament of Confession. It’s in those sacraments that he helps us to give up bitter jealousy and selfish ambition not to mention every other “disorder” and “foul practice” that comes from below. Jesus also takes us by the hand and seeks to raise us up in prayer and in the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist in which he lifts up our hearts in the Liturgy of the Word and allows us to share in his Risen life in Holy Communion. But this type of resurrection isn’t a one-time thing. It’s a perpetual action on the part of the Lord to which he wants us to respond to persevering faith, persevering prayer, and persevering docility.
• Today the Church celebrates one of the greatest saints of the 11th Century, a Doctor of the Church, who shows us the type of persevering faith, prayer, holy ambition and zeal to rid the Church of demonic influence that today’s readings highlight. St. Peter Damian was neglected as a baby because his older brothers told his mother the family couldn’t have another mouth to feed, so they found another woman in the neighborhood to suckle him. Soon thereafter he was orphaned and placed in the care of an older brother who neglected him badly. Eventually he was rescued by another brother who was a priest, who provided for his education and set him on the trajectory one day to be a doctor of the Church. His difficult childhood was the setting in which he learned how to unite himself to Christ in the school of the Cross. It’s where he learned how to turn deprivation into a blessing, fasting and mortification into powerful spiritual weapons. When Pope Benedict gave a catechesis on him in 2009, he spoke about the Cross in his life, beginning with the Hermitage in which he entered to serve God: “One detail should be immediately emphasized,” Pope Benedict said: “the Hermitage at Fonte Avellana was dedicated to the Holy Cross and the Cross was the Christian mystery that was to fascinate Peter Damian more than all the others. ‘Those who do not love the Cross of Christ do not love Christ,’ he said; and he described himself as ‘Petrus crucis Christi servorum famulus,’ ‘Peter, servant of the servants of the Cross of Christ’” (Ep, 9, 1). Pope Benedict drew a lesson for all of us: “May the example of St Peter Damian spur us too always to look to the Cross as to the supreme act God’s love for humankind of God, who has given us salvation.” St. Peter also shows us how faith in the power of the Cross translates into deeds, into a way of life. It helps us to pray and fast. It helps us to have compassion on those who are suffering. Early in life, he would offer hospitality to the poor as a way of serving Christ and he embraced poverty voluntarily to be close to them. This was a way of life he brought to the monastery with him and in which he formed so many others. But what is he most well-known for today is his work to root out corruption in the Church and in the life of faith, the “bitter jealousy and selfish ambition,” boasting, lying, “disorder and every foul practice” that “does not come down from above but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic.” Pope Benedict said in 2009, “He did not fear to denounce the state of corruption that existed in the monasteries and among the clergy, because, above all, of the practice of the conferral by the lay authorities of ecclesiastical offices; various Bishops and Abbots were behaving as the rulers of their subjects rather than as pastors of souls. Their moral life frequently left much to be desired. For this reason, in 1057 Peter Damian left his monastery with great reluctance and sorrow and accepted, if unwillingly, his appointment as Cardinal Bishop of Ostia. So it was that he entered fully into collaboration with the Popes in the difficult task of Church reform. He saw that to make his own contribution of helping in the work of the Church’s renewal contemplation did not suffice. He thus relinquished the beauty of the hermitage and courageously undertook numerous journeys and missions.” Beyond selfish ambition, one of the biggest corruptions he needed to root out was sexual license, especially homosexual activity, in monasteries and diocesan clergy, which is one of the reasons why so many today look to him as a patron to help root out all sins of unchastity in the Church.
• At the end of today’s first reading, St. James says, “The fruit of righteousness is sown in peace for those who cultivate peace.” As we prepare to meet the Peacemaker, who says to us again today what he said during the Last Supper, “My peace I leave you, my peace I give you,” we ask him to sow that peace with God and others within us through the forgiveness of our sins so that we, like St. Peter Damian, might be his prayerful, fasting seeds sown in the world to help others receive the fruits of the definitive peace treaty won by Christ’s triumph on Calvary!

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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