Keeping Our Eyes on Jesus Yesterday, Today and Forever, 4th Friday (I), February 3, 2017

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Friday of the Fourth Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Memorial of St. Blaise
February 3, 2017
Heb 13:1-8, Ps 27, Mk 6:14-29

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today, as we come to the conclusion of the Letter to the Hebrews on which we’ve been pondering for the last four weeks, the author reminds us that Jesus Christ on whom we are to keep our eyes firmly fixed is the “same yesterday, today and forever.” This is an important truth that we must make ever more practical. Many times people think that what Jesus said and did has an expiration date, that it may have been valid once but no more. One context in which this is true today is with regard to sexual morality in general and his teaching about marriage in particular. There are some, including bishops within the Church, that want to claim that Jesus’ words about how someone who divorces one and marries another commits adultery is too demanding, heroic for the age, and that therefore people should not be expected to follow it. But Jesus the Bridegroom, on whose faithful, fruitful and indissoluble bond with his Bride the Church is the ground for the sacrament of marriage, is the same today as he was 2,000 years ago. We may find the teaching hard — just like those two millennia ago did — but Jesus sometimes summons us to something difficult, but we’ll find the strength for it provided that, as we heard a few days ago, we keep our eyes firmly fixed on him and let go of every sin and persevere in running in his footsteps.
• In the dramatic account of the martyrdom of St. John the Baptist, we can ponder both how he was a martyr for marriage and how he was a precursor of Christ in this martyrdom for marriage. He communicated that it was not right for Herod to marry Herodias, who was his sister-in-law and niece. Because of this witness to the truth, he was put to death. By this fidelity, he foretold in his body language the martyrdom of Christ in witness to the spousal covenant God made with his people. In today’s first reading, the Letter to the Hebrews remarks on both of these points. First, about marriage, it says, “Let marriage be honored among all and the marriage bed be kept undefiled, for God will judge the immoral and adulterers.” In an age in which marriage is so dishonored — both conceptually in trying to change its meaning to make it a husbandless or wifeless institution as well as morally through cohabitation, pre- and extra-marital sex, through sins within marriage, through divorce and “remarriage” — we are all called to honor marriage, even when modern Herodiases will accuse us of everything as a result. That leads us to the second point. Hebrews tells us, “Remember your leaders who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.” The author was referring to, for example, Saints Peter and Paul and the vast multitude of Christians who had already given the supreme proclamation of the word of God in the bloody “outcome” of their lives. We’re called to imitate their faith, the faith that Jesus is worth living for and worth dying for. Keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus as they did help us to remember that his teaching on marriage is merciful and, even if it requires a type of martyrdom on earth, is worth it. Keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus also helps us to live out all of the other moral exhortations given to us today in the Letter to the Hebrews, to love our brothers and sisters because we see Christ in them, not to neglect hospitality because when we receive them we receive Christ, to remember prisoners because Christ was imprisoned, to detach ourselves from the love of money and be content with what we have because Christ is our treasure. All of those likewise pertain to marriage, as we must truly love those to whom we’re attracted and care for the good of their soul even at our personal loss, to welcome people as we would Christ and not relate to them selfishly according to our own desires, to remember Christ’s sufferings in order to help make our living aright possible, and to be content with what we have rather than looking for something else that is contrary to God’s law.
• Today the Church celebrates the feast of St. Blaise, Bishop and Martyr, who spoke the word of God to us and whose example of fidelity to Christ until the end should inspire us to heroism in the things of our life and to remember his eternally happy outcome after the childbirth of martyrdom. He was distinguished by the individual care he gave the people of his Diocese of Sebastea in ancient Armenia (now part of modern-day Turkey), his charity, his hospitality, his care for prisoners, his spiritual poverty, his love for marriage and for married couples, his keeping his eyes fixed on Christ. After Mass today there will be a special blessing through St. Blaise’s intercession of all people so that God may free them of illnesses of the throat and all other maladies. This goes back to the care St. Blaise gave to a boy who was choking because of a fish bone. After all human means had failed, St. Blaise prayed that God would free the boy and God did. The boy survived. And people have been turning to St. Blaise ever since. Today as we ask this blessing, we especially beg God through his intercession that we may use the health of our throats and overall to praise God and to give witness of him to others, just like St. John the Baptist did until his last breath.
• We come now to the source that strengthened St. Blaise, that has strengthened the saints and martyrs throughout the centuries. It’s the consummation of the spousal union that Christ the Bridegroom has entered into with the Church his Bride, which takes place on the altar, as the Bride takes within the Body and Blood of the Bridegroom and becomes one body, one flesh with him. John the Baptist points out to us anew the Lamb of God, the one who is the same yesterday, today and forever, who is about to strengthen us with the courage that made St. John and St. Blaise martyrs.

The readings for today’s Mass were: