Learning from Jesus How to Be ‘Out of Our Mind,’ Memorial of SS. Timothy and Titus, January 26, 2019

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Saturday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Memorial of SS. Timothy and Titus
January 26, 2019
2 Tim 1:1-8, Ps 96, 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 everything Jesus teaches. 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. 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.” Like St. Francis of Assisi, many of us will also suffer from family members and others thinking we’re crazy. They’ll think we’re crazy for taking our faith more seriously than their lukewarm standards. They’ll think we’re crazy for giving our whole life, rather than just a small part of it, to God. They think daily Mass is crazy, going to confession is crazy, praying every day is crazy, prioritizing other’s needs over our own is crazy. They’ll think we’re crazy for still belonging to the Church at all after the scandals. They’ll think we’re crazy for believing and living by the Church’s teachings on abortion, on extramarital sex, on forgiving 70 times 7 times. So many men who enter the seminary are immediately dubbed “Father What-a-Waste,” because they leave behind what could be lucrative careers and big families in the world to serve God and the Church. So many young women who enter the convent are told, not just by secularists but so-called Catholic family members that they’re “throwing their life away.” Those who make their faith a priority are often called by family members a “fanatic.” But we need to be ready for this. Just as Jesus was thought to be out of his mind, so every disciple will be likewise maligned. But we have to realize that the wisdom of this world is not God’s wisdom and we seek to live in the real, real world. Those who do are the true sane ones. And those who don’t live in God’s world, who don’t see things the way they really are, are going to be the ones who forever will recognize that they were the insane ones.
• Today on the Feast of SS. Timothy and Titus, two great collaborators of St. Paul who assisted him in crisscrossing the ancient world to “proclaim God’s marvelous deeds to all the nations” and who were installed by him as important bishops among the first Christian communities. Proclaiming the Gospel, in season and out of season, in the midst of acceptance and rejection, is meant to be a description and an imperative for all Christians. It means to “sing to the Lord a new song,” to “bless his name,” to “announce his salvation day after day,” to “tell his glory among the nations, [and] among all peoples his wondrous deeds,” it means to “give to the Lord glory and praise, … the glory due his name!,” and to declare “The Lord is king [and] governs the peoples with justice,” even when others think the Gospel is insanity. Saints Timothy and Titus took seriously and acted on the Christian calling to proclaim God’s wondrous deeds to all the nations, to go to the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature. Saints Timothy and Titus learned how to proclaim the Gospel in this way from St. Paul himself.
• But in order to proclaim it, we first have to hear and believe it and allow God to water the seeds he’s planted within us. That’s what St. Paul tells St. Timothy at the end of today’s part of his second letter, ““Stir into a flame the gift of God you have received.” The fire that was ignited that day in us is meant to grow, and it grows by our “stirring” the flame God has placed within us. For us to do that, St. Paul warns of us three things that rather than growing the flame can extinguish it. He said first that we need to have courage and confidence in what the flame contains: “For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather of power and love and self-control.” Second we need to proud of it, even if we should suffer for it: “So do not be ashamed of your testimony to our Lord, nor of me, a prisoner for his sake.” Third, we need to be ready to suffer for it, because that’s a means by which the flame of faith grows: “Bear your share of hardship for the Gospel with the strength that comes from God.” St. Paul could preach this because for him it was clear that 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 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. This was the source of SS. Timothy’s and Titus’ strength. They were present with St. Paul as he celebrated the Lord’s Supper for the first Christians. They were ordained to lead the first generations of followers in grounding their whole existence not just on the words of God, but the Word of God made flesh. The Eucharist, well prayed, is what helps us to stir into a flame the grace we received in baptism. And it’s from the Eucharist, from Jesus who speaks here and then feeds us here, that we go out to proclaim these most marvelous gifts of all to the whole world!

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Reading I 2 TM 1:1-8

Paul, an Apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God
for the promise of life in Christ Jesus,
to Timothy, my dear child:
grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father
and Christ Jesus our Lord.

I am grateful to God,
whom I worship with a clear conscience as my ancestors did,
as I remember you constantly in my prayers, night and day.
I yearn to see you again, recalling your tears,
so that I may be filled with joy,
as I recall your sincere faith
that first lived in your grandmother Lois
and in your mother Eunice
and that I am confident lives also in you.

For this reason, I remind you to stir into flame
the gift of God that you have through the imposition of my hands.
For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice
but rather of power and love and self-control.
So do not be ashamed of your testimony to our Lord,
nor of me, a prisoner for his sake;
but bear your share of hardship for the Gospel
with the strength that comes from God.

Responsorial Psalm PS 96:1-2A, 2B-3, 7-8A, 10

R. (3) Proclaim God’s marvelous deeds to all the nations.
Sing to the LORD a new song;
sing to the LORD, all you lands.
Sing to the LORD; bless his name.
R. Proclaim God’s marvelous deeds to all the nations.
Announce his salvation, day after day.
Tell his glory among the nations;
among all peoples, his wondrous deeds.
R. Proclaim God’s marvelous deeds to all the nations.
Give to the LORD, you families of nations,
give to the LORD glory and praise;
give to the LORD the glory due his name!
R. Proclaim God’s marvelous deeds to all the nations.
Say among the nations: The LORD is king.
He has made the world firm, not to be moved;
he governs the peoples with equity.
R. Proclaim God’s marvelous deeds to all the nations.

Alleluia PS 119:105

R. Alleluia, alleluia.
A lamp to my feet is your word,
a light to my path.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.