Knowing the Scriptures and the Power of God, 9th Wednesday (II), June 6, 2018

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Wednesday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of St. Norbert
June 6, 2018
2 Tim 1:1-3.6-12, Ps 123, Mk 12:18-27

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today in the Gospel, as we ponder St. Mark’s account prior to Jesus’ passion, people continue to try to interrogate Jesus in the temple area before they would conspire to have him murdered. Today’s question was from the Sadducees, who didn’t believe in the Resurrection. They based their theology only on the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, and claimed that the Pentateuch didn’t say anything about the Resurrection. They present the situation of a woman married to seven brothers consecutively as part of the Levirate custom of the Jews, something that seemed to correspond a little bit to the situation of Sarah in the Book of Tobit. Because she, according to the Book of Genesis, had become “one flesh” with seven different men, they queried, to which of the seven husbands’ bodies would she be one flesh in the afterlife, after the Resurrection of the Body. It was absurd to them that she would be one flesh with seven different brothers simultaneously, because that would imply they would be one flesh with each other. Jesus’ reply was that they didn’t know either the Scriptures or the power of God. If they knew even the Pentateuch they claimed to believe, they would know from God’s appearing to Moses in the burning bush, that God is — not was — the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, that he is the God of the living, and that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, though long dead on earth, are somehow alive. The second thing he mentioned is the “power of God.” Jesus was implying that the Sadducees didn’t believe God had the power to raise the dead. God had in fact manifested that eternally-life-giving power in the lives of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and would obviously in Jesus’ resurrection of the body. The biggest upshot of the passage is about eternal life. Jesus engaged the question — unlike the question about his authority, or the question of taxes to Caesar — because of the importance of eternal life, which he came to reveal and make happen. He described the reality of heaven as a place where there is no marriage or giving in marriage, because there’s one marriage, the wedding feast of the Lamb and his Bride. The purpose of marriage is the sanctification of the spouses and the generation and education of children, and in heaven the spouses would be already saints and there would be no children born from their union. But while there will be no human marriage in heaven, the love of spouses remains.
• St. Paul was someone who knew the Scriptures and the power of God. He was one whose sights were on the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. And he sought to have Timothy know that power. He encouraged Timothy to let his faith be stirred into a flame and live “not with a spirit of cowardice but rather of love and power and self-control.” That’s the power of God, the power that could make one courageous like Paul: he said that he wasn’t afraid of his many sufferings for the Gospel because “I know in whom I have believed and am confident that he is able to guard what has been entrusted to me until that day,” the day that will know no end, the day of the “appearance of our Savior Christ Jesus who destroyed death and brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel.” He knew the Scriptures and the power of God. He had allowed his faith to be stirred into a flame by the holy Spirit and that filled him with a spirit of courage, power, love and self-mastery, and he was confident that the one in whom he believed, Jesus himself, would guard him all his days and bring him to life and immorality through his living and dying for the Gospel. And he wanted St. Timothy to have the same gift, to let our faith — about heaven, about the God of the living not of the dead, about eternal life, about God’s power and wisdom — become a bonfire capable of lighting the world ablaze.
• Another person who allowed the gift of faith to be stirred, who knew the Scriptures and the power of God, was St. Norbert (1080-1134). He became a priest out of an impure desire to get ahead in the German court. But he was converted post ordination. He was injured in a terrible fall from a horse during a storm — his conversion, unlike St. Paul’s, actually involved a horse! — the Lord spoke to him saying “Turn from evil and do good. Seek peace and pursue it.” That’s what he did. After his conversion, and precisely learning from his formerly worldly ways, he would call others to “live according to the norms of the Scriptures with Christ as their model.” He did this as a priest, the founder of a reformed religious order called the Premonstratensians (Norbertines), and eventually as a bishop. He wanted them to know the Scriptures and the One the Scriptures were about. Living according to the Scriptures with Christ as the model is a fitting summary of his life. That’s a fitting summary of the Christian life. That’s a key to understand today’s readings.
• The Lord wants to work a similar transformation in us that took place in Paul, Norbert, Timothy and so many others. The place where this transformation begins is here at Mass, where we meet the God who spoke in the burning bush, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of Peter, James and John, the God of Mary, Mary Magdalene and Mary of Bethany, the God of Paul, Timothy, Norbert and all the saints. It’s here that, as St. Ephrem the Deacon wrote in Syria in the fourth century, we “consume fire.” The greater the wood we bring the more God’s fire can do it’s thing. That fire can burn away the dead wood within us and help us to come fully alive. And when we begin to burn with that life, when we’re dead to worldly things and set our hearts on the things above, then not even the threat of death can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. So we come to the Lord today, the Lord to whom we lift up our eyes, the Lord who came into this world to light a fire on earth and longed for it to be kindled, and beg him to enkindle, to stir within us, the fire of his love so that through us he can renew the face of the Lord.

The readings for today’s Mass were: