Learning from God How To Handle Rejection, 13th Wednesday (I), July 5, 2023

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Chapel of the Vincentian Seminary, Krakow, POland
Tertio Millennio Seminar
Wednesday of the 13th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
July 5, 2023
Gen 21:5.8-10, Ps 34, Mt 8:28-34

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• One of the most important things we need to learn as Christians is how to handle rejection. Today’s readings teach us how God seeks to bring good even out of being spurned by those who should accept us.
• We find it first in the banishment of Hagar and Ishmael. Sarah, despite having been blessed miraculously by God with her first son in her nineties, rather than being filled with gratitude was consumed by envy. Seeing her servant Hagar, whom she had given to Abraham as a concubine when she had lost hope that God would fulfill his promise to make Abraham a dad and the father of many nations, and who had become with Abraham the parents of Ishmael, she demanded of Abraham: “Drive out that slave and her son!” Abraham was deeply distressed and we hope would have refused. But God said to him, “Do not be distressed about the boy or about your slave woman. Heed the demands of Sarah, no matter what she is asking of you; for it is through Isaac that descendants shall bear your name. As for the son of the slave woman, I will make a great nation of him also, since he too is your offspring.” God reiterated that promise to the exiled Hagar a little later, when she was afraid for their survival in the desert. God told her, “Don’t be afraid; God has heard the boy’s cry in this plight of his. Arise, lift up the boy and hold him by the hand; for I will make of him a great nation.” Much like God provided a well in the middle of the desert for their survival, so God, Genesis tells us, “was with the boy as he grew up.” Envy exiled the two of them, but God is the Lord of all the earth, and he brought good out of the evil they suffered.
• We see something similar in the Gospel. Jesus entered into the pagan region of the Decapolis on the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee and he is met in the territory of the Gadarenes by two savage demoniacs. They had been banished by their fellows to live among the tombs. The demons within them called Jesus “the Son of God” and asked, “What have you to do with us?” His very presence was tormenting them. Jesus was going to cure them to restore them not only to their self-possession but to the community. The demons, about to be exorcised, begged Jesus at least to allow them to inhabit the swine that was present, which Jesus then commanded. As soon as they invaded the swine, however, all of them were rushed into the Sea of Galilee and drowned, a sign of two things: first how many and how powerful the demons were that were dwelling within the men; and second how they were seeking, as they always do, to destroy the men. After the men were liberated, the whole town came out to meet Jesus, not rejoicing but upset at the loss of their pigs. Rather that ask the Holy One of God to free them from other manifestations of infernal power, rather than thank him for restoring two of their own, rather than inviting him in to get to know him and how he was able to do such a deed, they “begged him to leave their district.” They didn’t want the holiness of God around. They actually preferred their pigs. They preferred their life as it was. They were indeed under the sway of the evil one, though in less savage form than the two demoniacs. In response to the rejection of Jesus by the Gadarenes, Jesus wants us to unite ourselves to him, especially in our rejection. He is the stone rejected by the builders who has become the cornerstone. He warned us that when we lived the faith and proclaimed the Gospel that some would receive us and some wouldn’t, but in the latter case, he wanted us not to stew in the rejection, but let our peace return to us, wipe the dust off our feet, and move on to the next place proclaiming the Good News of the Kingdom. He permits the rejection sometimes so that we may in fact get on to the next place. He promised that if they hated him, they would hate us, too, and that one day those who did harm to us would think they were doing something pleasing to God. But he told us to rejoice and be glad when that would take place, because our reward would be great in heaven, where there would be eternal acceptance by the Triune God and all the saints.
• During this Tertio Millennio Seminar on this day in which we have studied St. John Paul II’s philosophical and theological anthropology and visited the sites in Krakow associated with him, it’s important for us to grasp how the many ways in which he experienced rejection never stopped him from fulfilling his vocation. There was such opposition to what he stood for by the Nazis and the Communists, even enduring an assassination attempt, but he grasped that the rejection wasn’t directed ultimately toward him but toward the Lord whom he represented. Even as Pope, when he and his message were rejected in various places because he didn’t bless what couldn’t be blessed, he didn’t sulk, but continued courageously to be a herald of the truth that sets us free. While his papal motto was “Totus Tuus,” a proclamation of his total consecration to Mary, the words for which he will always best be known were the ones that encapsulated his inaugural homily, life and pontificate: “Be not afraid!” He was bold not simply because Jesus commanded his disciples not to fear over and again in the Gospel. He was courageous not just because Jesus himself showed we ultimately have nothing to fear by rising from the dead. He was audacious because Jesus showed that just as he brought the greatest good out of the greatest evil on Good Friday, so he trusted that he would bring good out of evil he himself endured, that everything, including even the sufferings we endure, will work out for the good for those who love God. That’s why he didn’t fear rejection, but offered it all to the Lord. That’s what he’d encourage all of us to remember, that if we’re faithful, we like him, will experience some rejection, but that that rejection, just like acceptance, can be for God’s glory, our sanctification and the world’s salvation. So he would tell us, yet again, “Be not afraid.”
• So as we prepare to receive Jesus in Holy Communion, we ask him to strengthen us to remain united to him in adverse and propitious times, so that so that we, too, like Ishmael, may have God with us always as we grow up, and come, like St. John Paul II, to be with him forever in heaven.

The readings for today’s Mass were:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download