Increasing Faith through Prayer and Fasting, 7th Monday (II), February 24, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Monday of the Seventh Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Votive Mass of the Angels of God
February 24, 2020
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: 

• Today in the readings we learn two things that were necessary for Jesus’ miraculous healing of the boy afflicted with a demon who made him deaf, mute and it seems epileptic.
• The first requirement for the miracle was 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 brought him to come to Jesus in the first place, but he clearly needed more faith, and 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. “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 there was a need for this type of persevering prayer of the lips, the heart and the body. That’s something Jesus was regularly doing. And it’s something that he was calling the disciples to do if they were going to be capable of casting out the most entrenched demons. Persevering prayer  in the disciples would be a sign of their faith and that faith seems also to be a prerequisite for such a miracle. Prayer is faith in action. In the work of exorcizing possessed persons today, there’s a need for 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 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 not ambitious for serving others and washing their feet— the type of holy ambition God wants us to have! — but ambitious 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 reiterates 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 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.
• There’s also another application. In two days we begin the season of Lent, which is a season of persevering prayer, fasting that is meant not only to help Jesus expunge anything within us not fit for the kingdom but to help us increase in faith and believe more fully in the Gospel he announces and enfleshes. It’s similarly a season of almsgiving in which we pray for others, and do spiritual works of mercy, that they may turn away from sin, from selfish ambition, jealousy, boasting, and falsity, from every disorder and foul practice. It’s a season in which we enter into Jesus’ death and he takes us by the hand to lift us up by the power of his resurrection. But we know that sometimes people do not practice the faith because they’ve been hurt or scandalized by Catholics they know. Today’s Gospel reminds us that sometimes the Church can let us down, that the apostles and their successors, that priests and religious, that 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. Sometimes they can even be caught up with the “bitter jealousy and selfish ambition” St. James describes. But we see in the scene that even should that happen, God forbid, even if our faith might be weakened, we shouldn’t give up, but should go to the Lord with the faith we have and ask him to increase it. This is what the whole Church prays will happen in Lent for those who have wandered.
• 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 might be his prayerful, fasting seeds sown in the world to help them receive the fruits of the definitive peace treaty won by his triumph on Calvary!

The readings for today’s Mass were: