Learning From Mary How to Pray through Hearing and Observing God’s Word, 27th Saturday (II), October 8, 2022

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Immaculate Conception Seminary, Huntington, NY
Retreat for Columbia University Students
Saturday of the 27th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
October 8, 2022
Gal 3:22-29, Ps 105, Lk 11:27-28

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• In today’s Gospel, the conversation between Jesus and an anonymous woman from the crowd who sought to praise his mother Mary is very helpful to us as we seek on this retreat to go into the deep in prayer. “Blessed is the womb that carried you and the breasts at which you nursed!,” the unnamed woman called out. If any womb was blessed, it was the immaculate womb of Mary of Nazareth that tabernacled for nine months the Creator and Savior of the world. If any breasts were blessed, it would have been those that nursed and fed the one who gives us each day our daily bread. But Jesus wasn’t going to limit the praise of the mother whom he daily honored to her inimitable physical bonds to him as the Son of God made man. He replied to the woman by highlighting a far greater source of Mary’s blessing, something that each and every one of us not only can emulate but is called to emulate: “Rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it.” Prayer is the attentive listening to the word of God. In Hebrew, there is no distinction between the verb “to hear” and “to obey.” If we hear the Word of God as it’s supposed to be heard, we hear it as a word to be done. A similar distinction is found in Latin. The word to hear is “audire” and the word to obey is “ob-audire,” an intensified listening, almost like eavesdropping. Prayer is ultimately not just to permit us to enter into conversation with God, but as we seek him, find him, hear him, we’re also called to say, like Mary, “let it be done to me according to your word,” to love him and love his will such that we, like Mary, want to do it. The profoundest source of Mary’s beatitude was her faithful listening and response to God in her life. St. Athanasius described that before Mary had ever conceived the Word of God in her womb, she had already conceived Him in her heart through faith. So many medieval depictions of the Annunciation and the miraculous virginal conception of Jesus in the Incarnation show the Holy Spirit entering through Mary’s ears, to highlight this form of faithful listening. In a parallel scene, when Mary had come to see him together with many of his cousins from Nazareth, they told Jesus inside a crowded house where he was teaching and healing that his mother and relatives were outside waiting for him. Taking advantage of the teaching moment, he replied, “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?” And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my heavenly Father is my brother, and sister, and mother” (Mt 12:46-50). Mary is the paradigm of all those who do the will of God the Father, who hear what he asks and who act on it. To be a true brother or sister of Jesus in the family he came from heaven to earth to found, it’s not really enough just to be baptized, although that’s an essential start. We also have to listen to him as he describes for us the will of God and then, just as he did, say, mean and lovingly do the words “Thy will be done!” This is an essential aspect of going into the deep in prayer.
• In the first reading, we see how Saint Paul describes that the entire Old Testament, the Covenant God made with the Jews, was meant to train them to hear and observe the Word of God. “The law was our disciplinarian for Christ,” he says, “that we might be justified by faith.” The word “disciplinarian” in English is the word “pedagogos” in Greek. A pedagogue was a tutor who generally lived with the family of the student, supervised his homework and lessons, and took him to class with the master. The law prepared us, he was suggesting, to meet Jesus the Master, to hear what he was saying and to put it into practice. So many times throughout the Hebrew Bible we hear God say to the Jews through Moses or the Prophets, “If you hear my voice and observe the commandments I am giving you today.” All of God’s revelation was to prepare us to hear and obey, knowing that to hear and to obey are the same word in Hebrew. One area in which we’re called to hear and obey the Master is with regard to communion with each other based on communion with God. At daily Mass earlier this week, we pondered the Our Father and how God’s will for us is to be one family in prayer. Yesterday at daily Mass, there was a chance again to focus on it in Jesus’ words about how the devil seeks to divide and he comes to gather into one. But many Catholics, just like the Galatians in St. Paul’s day, do not hear and obey the will of God with regard to communion. St. Paul confronts it. He tells the Galatians and through them us, “Through faith you are all children of God in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” The reality of baptism is meant to become the strongest bond in our life, to see that we are all equally beloved sons and daughters of God the Father, and that this reality is meant to be stronger than our ethnicity, stronger than our cultural upbringing, stronger than sex, stronger than any and all other social distinctions. But that’s frankly not what happened in the building of the Church in so many other major U.S. cities that were populated by Catholics 100-150 years ago. We didn’t hear the Word of God as announced by St. Paul and we didn’t observe it. Even though in Christ there is no Jew or Greek, we thought that there was Irish, French-Canadian, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Lithuanian and more. Even though Mass was celebrated in Latin, we wouldn’t worship together. So many thought that their ethnic differences were more important than their baptismal identity and similarities. That’s one of the reasons why we’re having to close so many Churches today, because we have had a surplus of Churches tailoring to individual ethnic groups rather than tailoring to all the Catholics in a particular geographical area. This system of “national,” “personal” or “ethnic” parishes didn’t happen because poor immigrants came and just wanted to do something themselves. It happened mostly because they didn’t find the welcome from the Catholic groups that were already here, such that they needed to fend for themselves. The Church didn’t work together, but rather in many cases competed against each other. It happened because they were not truly hearing the word of God and acting on it, especially his word about the importance of the Christian unity for which he prayed during the Last Supper, and about how in him, the distinctions among us are far smaller than what unites us. The whole Old Covenant was a tutor to prepare the Jews to remain a people, but we know that when Christ came, three was divided against two, even within one’s household. Despite the fact that the Christian community was to live like we see in the Acts of the Apostles, praying together, going to the Temple together, eating together and having all things in common, in Galatia, as Paul will tell us later in his letter, “The whole law is fulfilled in one statement, namely, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ But if you go on biting and devouring one another, beware that you are not consumed by one another.” That’s sadly what was happening.
• This connection between hearing the word of God and observing it was driven home to me 24 years ago today when I was ordained a deacon with my classmates from the Pontifical North American College at St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. At our ordination, Cardinal Edmund Szoka placed the Book of the Gospel in our hands, and said to us, “Receive the Word of God whose herald you have become. Believe what you read, teach what you believe, and practice what you teach.” Those four verbs are so important not just for deacons but for all Christians. We need to receive this Word of God as a tremendous treasure. We then need to believe the words it contains. Next we need to pass it on through preaching and teaching it as the words of everlasting life. And we need to put it into practice, for our sake and for the sake of others. That’s what Mary did. That’s what she wants to help all of us to do.
• Today as we approach the altar, Mary is praying for us to echo her, “Let it be done to me according to your word!” We seek with Mary to act on the Word that has been announced to us, by lovingly obeying it and allowing it to lead us to true communion in this world and forever. If Mary’s wombs and breasts were lauded because of their physical connection with Jesus, what will people say about our hands and mouths, our whole being! Jesus wants to help make us like Him and Mary’s life shows us what happens when we cooperate fully, as we prepare to hear Jesus say to us, “This is my Body!,” “This is the chalice of my Blood,” and “Do this in memory of me,” and observe them!

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download