Leaders with Integrity, in the Image of the Triune God, Thirty-First Sunday (A), November 5, 2023

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan, NY
Thirty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A
November 5, 2023
Mal 1:14-2:2.8-10, Ps 131, 1 Thess 2:7-9.13, Mt 23:1-12

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

The following text guided the homily: 

• At Columbia, students are expected to be leaders. Most were leaders in their schools and extracurriculars in order to be admitted. Many seize leadership opportunities among campus organizations while here. There’s a certain pressure for them to be leaders after graduation, eventually occupying C-suites in profit and non-profit companies, in politics, education and government, in various industries, across the gamut. At the same time, there’s a lot of disenchantment with present examples of leaders, from cowardly administrators, to corrupt politicians, to uninspiring religious leaders, to clueless coaches. That’s why what Jesus teaches today in the Gospel is not only key for us to grasp as Catholic disciples, but also as those called to be genuinely Christian leaders on campus, within our present and future families, within the Church and throughout all of society.
• The context of Jesus’ teaching is always important to understand it fully. Last week, as you remember, the Pharisees had sent a young scholar of the law to question Jesus about the greatest and most important commandment in the law, and Jesus had replied not just with the greatest — to love God with all their heart, soul and mind — but by volunteering a second, which he said was “like” or “similar” to the greatest, to love our neighbor as ourselves, saying that the two together summarize all that God had revealed to us morally in the law and the prophets. Jesus offered the second, it seems, because he wanted the Pharisees and everyone else to see that one great test of sincerity in loving God would be how we love others whom God loves and whom he has made in his image and likeness. He would underline all of this because at that very instant the Scribes and Pharisees were co-conspiring not just to entrap him, the neighbor in front of them, but to try to have him killed.
• This is all part of the essential context to understand the drama of today’s Gospel, when Jesus in front of the crowds undermines the authority of the Scribes’ and Pharisees’ example. Earlier, when he was alone with the apostles in a boat on the Sea of Galilee, he had warned the apostles, “Beware of the leaven — that is, the hypocrisy — of the Pharisees” (Lk 12:1; Mt 16:8). Now he was trying to help everyone to be on similar guard, as he was with tough love attempting to convert the Pharisees and Scribes from their pretensions. He denounced their lack of love of neighbor, their propensity to “tie up heavy burdens hard to carry and lay them on people’s shoulders,” to perform their words to be seen, to “widen their phylacteries,” “lengthen their tassles,” to seek places and titles of honor and to exalt themselves. Yet, Jesus was saying that their bad behavior nevertheless could not be used by others as an excuse not to follow the Word of God that the Scribes and Pharisees were attempting to teach. The scandalous example of these pompous messengers, Jesus declared, did not invalidate the message God was giving us. In so doing, Jesus was giving the crowds, those he had chosen to be the leaders of his Church, and us today some crucial lessons about how to relate to God, to his revelation, to those who proclaim it, as well as teaching us the type of integrity he expects of us as we seek to proclaim the Gospel to all creatures and about the qualities of a true Christian leader in any context.
• The most important lesson Jesus makes clear in this scene is that we have only one Father, one Teacher and one Spiritual Guide — God himself. God is our Father, and any human parenthood (whether biological or spiritual) is derivative and vicarious of the Eternal Father’s paternity. Jesus is our one Teacher or Master and any other teaching must point to Him who is the Truth. The Holy Spirit is our one spiritual Guide, or Rabbi (“great one”), and any other guide must cooperate with the Holy Spirit to point the person along the straight path to true life and love. Intentionally using hyperbole, Jesus tells us to call no one on earth our father, or teacher, or rabbi, because he wants us first and foremost to be sons and daughters of the Father, faithful students of Jesus the Teacher, and docile followers of the Holy Spirit’s guidance. I say that Jesus was using hyperbole, because elsewhere, for example, Jesus himself refers to Abraham as the father of the Jews and tells us to honor our father and mother. So he’s clearly not saying that we can’t ever call anyone on earth father, teacher, or rabbi; rather, he was underlining what we can often forget: that all authority, truth and guidance, that all leadership, comes ultimately from God. The sad reality is that often human parents and father and mother figures, instructors, and guides, rather than leading us to God, to the truth and to goodness, sometimes can seem to want to take God’s place and lead them down literally dead ends. Jesus’ concern is not really one of vocabulary, but of mentality. As he says at the end of the passage, “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.” He wants us to become great, to become leaders, through loving service rather than through arrogance and raw ambition. He wants us to know that no one can take God’s place as the giver of life, as our teacher of the truth and our guide through life — and to the extent that any parent, teacher, guide or any other leader is worthy of the name, they must first be a good child, student and follower of the one Father, Teacher and Guide.
• That said, Jesus also stresses, paradoxically, that the triune God doesn’t work alone. Throughout salvation history, he has used many others as his instruments to bless us with the gifts of leadership, of parenthood, truth and direction. He illustrates this by what he says about the scribes and Pharisees. It’s not shocking that he tells us not to follow the Pharisees’ example, because, as he reiterates today and mentions many other times in the Gospel, they were hypocrites. What is surprising is that he nevertheless tells us to follow these hypocrites’ teaching. He says that they sit on “Moses’ seat.” We know that God had raised up Moses to pass on to the chosen people God’s own words and direction, leading them from slavery into the promised land. The scribes were those people who, after the Babylonian exile, spent their entire life learning the law of the Covenant God gave through Moses lest through infidelity the Jewish people ever suffer exile again. The Pharisees were the group of people who publicly dedicated themselves full-time to trying to live by the Scribes’ interpretation of the law. Jesus said that since they sit on Moses’ seat, “Do whatever they teach you and follow it,” because it is not essentially their words that we’re following, but God’s words through them. Their hypocrisy doesn’t invalidate God’s word. And we can’t use their failure to live it as a reason for us to ignore it or not live it either.
• At the same time, Jesus also gave a stern warning, which must have pained him to say: “But do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach.” They were indeed hypocrites, the Greek word for actors, who were not acting on the words of God but just pretending to be faithful. They used their sitting on Moses’ seat to put burdens on others but had no love for those to whom they were preaching; they didn’t “lift a finger,” they didn’t make the least effort, to help others understand how — as we discussed last week — every one of God’s commands is given out of love and meant to help us to learn how to love God and love others, something that would make those burdens “light and sweet.” Their knowledge of God’s word, rather than making them holier, humbler, and more loving of others with whom they were attempting to share God’s word, had made them proud. While God’s word was not annulled, their personal failure to live it invalidated the authority of their example.
• What does this mean for us? If Jesus, who said that we have only one Father, Teacher and Guide, told us that God works vicariously to pass on to us his words and guidance though those sit on Moses’ seat, how much more would he say the same thing about those who sit not on Moses’ seat but on Christ’s own cathedra! The Pope is Christ’s own earthly vicar. Each bishop is a successor of the apostles. The priest is ordained by Christ through a bishop to be his collaborators. All of them, to varying degrees, sit on Christ’s own chair and are called to transmit not just the law of Moses, given by God to the Jewish people, but the law of Jesus Christ, given by God to the whole human race. So much did Jesus identify with them as his messengers that, before he sent them out to preach, he said, “Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me” (Lk 10:16). Thus, Jesus is clearly saying to everyone in the Church relative to the Pope, our bishops and our priests, “Insofar as they sit on my chair or stand in my pulpit, ‘Do whatever they teach you and follow it,’ for it is not they speaking, but I speaking through them.” He wants all of us to receive the word just like the Thessalonians did, as St. Paul mentions in the second reading. The apostle praises them, stating, “[I] constantly give thanks to God, that when you received the word of God that you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word but as what it really is, God’s word, which is also at work in you who believe.” So, too, the Gospel that our Holy Father or our bishop or our priests proclaim is not to be accepted as merely a “human word,” but at it really is, a divine word. The same for catechists and other teachers of the faith. The same for parents and Godparents passing on the faith. To the extent that they truthfully pass on God’s word, we must heed the message regardless of the qualities of the messenger.
• That’s the first powerful truth Jesus wants us to grasp. But there’s another. Just as Jesus 2,000 years ago didn’t stop with a simple affirmation of the divine provenance of his preachers’ words, so today, too, Jesus, with great pain, likely would say about some of the clergy he has called and ordained, some of the religious superiors who have been chosen, some of the parents he has blessed with children, some of those to whom he has given the vocation to teach the faith as religious educators, and some of those he has blessed with prominent positions in life: “But do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach.” There have certainly been popes, bishops, priests, superiors, catechists, parents and other leaders who, like the scribes and Pharisees, have failed in conspicuous ways to live the word they preach to others. There are certainly those who burden others with the word, without showing them how it leads them to love God and others. There are those whose knowledge of the word has made them proud rather than holy. There are those who vainly seek for status, rather than humbly hunger to serve. While the example of hypocritical clergy obviously comes to mind as especially egregious, we can similarly deplore the un-Christian behavior of various prominent Catholic politicians, celebrities, judges, teachers, and unfaithful parents.
• But there’s even a greater evil that those in positions of spiritual authority can commit. Jesus didn’t even mention it in Sunday’s Gospel, because, despite all their defects and hypocrisy, the scribes and the Pharisees reverenced the word of God so much that they would never have succumbed to this temptation. They may have misunderstood God’s word, but they would never have tried to change it, or ignore it, or lie about it. But that’s not what was happening after the exile when the book of Malachi was written. The priests then were teaching contrary to the Law. As we heard in our first reading, God said through the prophet: “And now, O priests, this command is for you. … You have turned aside from the way; you have caused many to stumble by your instructions; you have corrupted the covenant of Levi, … inasmuch as you have not kept my ways but have shown partiality in your instruction.” Their teaching was erroneous. Their instruction was forcing others to stumble. It was not based on the inerrant word of God, but on their own opinions or half-truths (“partiality”). This all occurred, God said through Malachi, because “they had not laid it to heart,” they did not act on the Word and their immoral behavior started to alter their preaching so that they began to preach the same untruths they practiced.
• That ancient problem, we have to say with sadness, has returned. Some prominent Catholics, clergy, theologians, and Catholics in public life and within many families today, while sitting on Moses’ and Christ’s seat, rather than passing on God’s teaching, substitute their own. I could cite hundreds of examples of these false instructions, but here are some of the most common ones: “Jesus didn’t really work miracles;” “Scripture really isn’t inerrant but passes on the prejudices of its historical setting;” “The Eucharist is not really Jesus’ body and blood, just a symbol;” “It’s not necessary to go to confession;” “Catholics no longer believe in Hell, because no God who loved us could possibly allow us to go to Hell;” “There’s really no such thing any more as a mortal sin;” “The Church’s teachings on marriage are homophobic and immoral, discriminating against those of the same-sex who just want to love each other and have their loved sanctioned;” “It’s not a mortal sin to miss Mass on Sunday;” “The Church has no good reason not to ordain women as priests;” “You don’t have to follow the teachings of the Pope and the bishops; you just have to follow your conscience;” “It’s possible to be a faithful Catholic and support abortion, as long as you wouldn’t have an abortion yourself.” We could go on with these falsehoods — I’m sure we’ve all heard others — but the point is clear enough. This type of teaching malpractice and theological abuse may be the worst and most harmful damage a priest or catechism or parent or Christian in the public square can cause to the souls of others. Of course, we need to pray for the conversion of these false prophets, but we also need to be on-guard against such falsehoods, even from those in authority; and the greatest defense we could have is to know our faith well, so that we would never be gullible to such lies masquerading as truths.
• What does the Lord want from all of us who are called to pass on the faith to others? It’s obvious that Jesus wants us to have integrity, to preach His words — all of them, including the more challenging messages — and to practice what he expects us to preach. Twenty-five years ago last month, I was ordained a deacon at St. Peter’s in the Vatican. In the rite of ordination, there’s a beautiful moment when the freshly ordained deacon kneels before the bishop in front of the altar. The prelate takes the Book of the Gospel and places it in the candidates’ hands, saying, “Receive the Gospel of Christ whose herald you have become. Believe what you read. Teach what you believe. Practice what you teach.” Each of us, like the deacon, is called to become one with the word, to believe it, teach it and live it. The greatest way we proclaim the Gospel is by humbly putting it into practice. Our example is worth a thousand homilies or books or treatises.
• Paul was one who lived, preached and practiced in this way. He says in today’s second reading that his intention was to treat the Christians in Thessalonika with the love of a “nurse tenderly caring for her own children.” And the only way he knew to do that was to share with them “not only the Gospel of God, but also our very selves.” Paul was giving them not only the words of eternal life, but his whole being as well, which had become one with that word. In this, he achieved greatness; he became truly holy. At the end of today’s Gospel, Jesus said that the greatest leader would be the humble servant of the rest, and that’s what St. Paul sought to be. He was so humble he even worked his old job as a tentmaker so that he wouldn’t be even a minimal burden among them. His greatest reward was that they received the Gospel well — as God’s word at work within them, seeking to unite them through it to God himself.
• Paul’s example shows all of us who are called to be leaders in passing on our faith important lessons. The true parent, teacher and guide always seeks to give himself along with the Lord out of love for the people he’s called to serve. The true parent’s, teacher’s and guide’s greatest prayer is that others receive the word not as his own, but as the Word of God working in its faithful hearers and doers. That is the way his or her listeners will be transformed — like Paul, like the other apostles, like so many of their early Christian communities — to become one with that word. That’s the way, we ponder in this month of November, we will become saints. Then the student will be able to become a teacher, the son or daughter a spiritual parent, the disciple a spiritual guide, enfleshing that word and bringing it to others. The same Jesus who told us that only one is our Father, Teacher and spiritual Guide wants to enable us to become his instruments to bring his teaching, fatherly care and direction to others, in our chaplaincies, campuses, classrooms, dorm rooms, homes, work, and everywhere we are and go. Jesus’ last words before ascending to heaven were, “Go and teach all nations, baptizing them and reminding them of everything I have taught you, knowing that I am with you always until the end of the world.” And he wants us, through transformation by his saving word every Mass, to become true servant leaders in carrying out those marching orders.
• Each Mass is meant to help us live the lessons Jesus gives in the Gospel. We come to meet God our Father, Jesus our Teacher, the Holy Spirit our Guide. We come to listen to the Word of God as words to be done. We come to believe what we read, teach what we believe and practice what we teach. And that integration takes its model from Jesus in the Eucharist, the Word made flesh, as he seeks to take up his teaching chair within our own body and soul as he sends us out with him to proclaim and live the truth. From within, he wants to help us become sons and daughters of the Father from whom all biological and spiritual parenthood derives. From within, he desires to assist us to become ever greater students of Jesus the Master. From within, he wants to help us become ever more fired up and faithful followers of the Holy Spirit’s guidance. In sum, from within, he wishes us to become true leaders by helping us humble ourselves so that he himself, the Savior of the human race, can fully work within us. Jesus wants to make us truly Christian leaders about whom he will be able to say: Observe and do all things whatsoever they tell you and follow their example. These are the leaders the Church and the world need today. These are the leaders whom, by our Baptism and Confirmation, he has summoned us to be.

The readings for today’s Mass were:

And for this reason we too give thanks to God unceasingly,
that, in receiving the word of God from hearing us,
you received not a human word but, as it truly is, the word of God,
which is now at work in you who believe.

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