Joining Christ’s Worldwide ‘Insane Asylum,’ 2nd Saturday in Ordinary Time (I), January 23, 2021

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Saturday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Memorial of St. Marianne Cope
January 23, 2021
Heb 9:2-3.11-14, Ps 47, Mk 3:20-21

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today Jesus’ relatives — likely his cousins from the Nazareth area — came to seize him in Capernaum because they said, “He is out of his mind.” They thought he was crazy. After all, according to worldly standards, he certainly seemed to be. He had given up a good job as a carpenter in his hometown to adopt a lifestyle in which he, by his own admission, didn’t even have a place to lay his head. Rather than being respected, he was preaching in a way that got even Pharisees and Herodians — two groups of people who were inimical to each other — to conspire together to kill him, homicidal provocations that Jesus would incite even in his hometown when his neighbors for most of his life would as a mob try to throw him off the cliff on which Nazareth had been built. And he had surrounded himself by a curious group of followers — fishermen, a loathsome tax collector, even a zealot who wanted to kick out the Romans at all costs. He had turned his back on worldly security, on personal safety, on the wisdom of most in society. His cousins thought that they needed to come to rescue him from himself.
• Jesus is clearly crazy according to worldly standards. The world proclaims that to be happy you need to be rich; Jesus says you need to be poor in spirit. The world says you need to be strong and finish fights others begin; Jesus says you need to be meek and a peacemaker. The world says you need to be sexy and sexually active lest you shrivel up and die; Jesus says you need to be pure of heart. The world dictates you need to be the life of the party; Jesus says you need to mourn. The world says you can’t have a care in the world; Jesus says you need to be starving for holiness. The world says you need to be popular, liked and admired; Jesus says you need to be reviled and persecuted. Jesus clearly is crazy. He’ll go on to say that we need to turn the other cheek, to pray for our persecutors, to love even our enemies, to deny ourselves, pick up our Cross each day to Crucifixion, and to follow him. We should be clear that by worldly standards, Christ is crazy. What he asks of us is crazy. And those who follow him are called to be “fools for Christ” (1 Cor 4:10). Real Catholics, according to worldly standards, are part of a world-wide insane asylum. We believe, after all, that here at Mass we consume not bread and wine but God himself under the appearance of bread and wine. We believe that if we have faith the size of a mustard seed, we can move mountains. We believe that we’re more related to each other by baptism than identical twins are by genes.
• What’s the source of Jesus’ insanity? It’s contained in the Greek expression that is translated “out of his mind.” It means “out of himself,” out of “his wits.” It means that Jesus wasn’t concerned fundamentally with self-preservation. He was concerned fundamentally with his Father’s glory and our salvation. He lived, he thought, he acted for the Father and for others. He lived outside of himself. The Letter to the Hebrews, focusing on Jesus’ high priesthood, makes this point today, saying, “through the eternal [Holy] Spirit he offered himself unblemished to God.” His whole existence was this unblemished self-offering, giving his life to save ours and to please his Father. And that Jesus who lived that way turns to each of us and says, “Follow me!”
• The saints are the ones who have, and they have likewise often been considered crazy. We can think of St. Francis of Assisi, whose father thought he had lost his mind seeking to live wedded to Lady Poverty, Chastity and Obedience, to take the Gospel literally, to sell fabrics in order to rebuild a dilapidated Church, to kiss lepers. When his father accused him before Bishop Guido of selling the father’s rich fabrics for the Church, Francis copped to doing so but then admitted that the very clothes he was wearing came likewise from his father’s generosity, and so he stripped naked, returned the clothes to his father, and said he was now able to depend fully on the providence of “Our Father, who art in heaven.” We can think, too, of St. Francis de Sales, whose feast day is tomorrow but which won’t be celebrated because it falls on Sunday. He was made vicar general upon his ordination and was at the bishop’s side, having quickly become his right hand. But there was a need for a priest to take on what many thought was a suicide-assignment trying to reevangelize the area of the Chablais, which had run the priests out of town and even run the Bishop himself out of Geneva. The first priest who had been sent to try to re-evangelize the area had failed miserably, was regularly attacked and came back scarred. In a meeting with all his clergy, the Bishop asked for a volunteer. Francis, 9 months after his ordination, and against the wishes of his father who had only permitted him to be ordained because he thought he would be in safe and prestigious positions of leadership, said, “Monseigneur, if you think I am capable of undertaking the mission, tell me to go. I am ready to obey and should be happy to be chosen.” It was crazy! The assignment was so dangerous that he had to sleep in a garrison just so that he wasn’t killed at night. Sometimes along his journeys he would be attacked by animals and spend frigid nights in trees. On other occasions he would be hunted by assassins only to escape somewhat miraculously. Within the span of five years, however, the holy “Apostle of the Chablais” had re-evangelized and reconciled almost the entire region. He was totally crazy, but that craziness was what brought people to Christ.
• Today we celebrate the life of someone who similarly was crazy, St. Marianne Cope, one of our fellow New Yorkers. She was born in Germany but when she was one emigrated to Utica, NY, with her parents, who would have in the states nine younger children. She felt the strong yearnings of a vocation to religious life, but left school after eighth grade to work in a factory to support the family, which was reeling because her father was suffering dementia. After her father was called home by God and the younger siblings were old enough to be cared for by their mother, she was able to enter religious life, as a late vocation to the Sisters of St. Francis at age 24. She made up for the education she had missed, went to college and eventually became both a teacher and a principal. Her talent as an administrator became known and she helped to build two hospitals in the Syracuse area, serving as both a nurse and as an administrator. She was often criticized for her craziness in caring for “outcast” patients, like alcoholics, that no other hospitals would take. When she was 45 and Provincial Mother/Superior General, she received a letter from a Catholic priest asking for help managing hospitals and schools in Hawaii, and to help out with leprosy patients. The letter touched her heart. And, crazily, she herself wanted to be the first to go. “I am hungry for the work,” she said, “and I wish with all my heart to be one of the chosen ones, whose privilege it will be to sacrifice themselves for the salvation of the souls of the poor Islanders…. I am not afraid of any disease, hence, it would be my greatest delight even to minister to the abandoned ‘lepers.’” She would prove to be a good daughter of St. Francis whose own care for a leper had led to his conversion. She and six other sisters went to Honolulu, receiving those diagnosed with leprosy. Four years after her arrival, when Fr. Damien was approaching death on the island of Molokai, she responded to the plea for help, saying she “cheerfully” would accept the responsibility of the continuation of his work, which she did for 35 years until she died in 1918. There she showed that every person, including the greatest outcasts, had immeasurable dignity. We prayed to God at the beginning of Mass that through the “intercession of the Virgin Saint Marianne Cope, we may burn with love for you and for those who suffer.” That burning love leads us to do things that those who are lukewarm always label crazy but for us become our logike latreia (Rom 12:1), the only behavior that makes sense.
• The summit of Christian “insanity” is the Cross. St. Paul pointed it out to the early Church when he said, “Has not God made the wisdom of the world foolish?  For since in the wisdom of God the world did not come to know God through wisdom, it was the will of God through the foolishness of the proclamation to save those who have faith. For Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called, Jews and Greeks alike, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor 1:19-24). The Cross is the greatest contradiction of worldly wisdom and the greatest manifestation of divine wisdom of love. As we prepare now to receive the Fruit of the new Tree of Life which is that Cross of wisdom — in the most “insane” act of all, believing that what seems to be mere bread and wine will be totally changed into the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of the Son of God, through whom everything was made, who was born of the Virgin, Died on Calvary, and walked out of the Empty Tomb on the Third Day — we ask that Eucharistic Lord for the grace to enter into a communion with his holy craziness so that, like St. Marianne and all the saints, we might live “out of our minds,” out of ourselves, just as he did, for the Father’s glory and for the salvation of the world.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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