Learning From Saints Philip and James, May 3, 2024

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

The following text guided the homily: 

• Today we celebrate the feast of two apostles together, Saints Philip and James the Lesser, at the beginning of our retreat on Manly Love for the Eucharistic Jesus. These two Galileans had a manly love for Jesus in life. They were willing to leave everything behind to follow him for three years in his public ministry. They were with Jesus in the Upper Room when he startled them by taking bread and wine into his hands and totally transforming it into himself, saying, “Take and eat. This is my Body,” and “Take and drink. This chalice is the new covenant in my blood.” After their betrayal later on Holy Thursday, they valiantly came back and were together with the other eight apostles — minus Thomas — when Jesus appeared to them in the Upper Room on Easter Sunday. They were present in the same Upper Room 50 days later when the Holy Spirit came down upon them as a strong driving wind and as tongues of fire, so that the Holy Spirit could with strong gusts send them across the then known world to proclaim the Gospel with ardor. And they were those who not only were the living echoes of the words or works of Christ in the first decades of Christianity, but they were the ones who celebrated the Eucharist in Christ’s memory and ordained the first generations of priests and bishops to nourish the Church and bring it into holy communion. They were men whose love for Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, in his public ministry and his passion, death and resurrection translated into their love for the same Jesus, the Word made flesh, under the sacramental appearances of bread and wine in the Holy Eucharist. We have much to learn from them, but I’d like tonight to focus on three lessons we can learn from them about the Eucharistic reality of our life.
• The first is about the way the Holy Eucharist is both an expression and cause of the Church’s communion that is at the source of the Church’s being and mission. Many have asked over the course of time why we celebrate the apostles Philip and James together. The primary reason is historical, because their relics were brought to the Church of the Holy Apostles (Dodici Apostoli) and buried there together in the ninth century. Since we have prayed for them together at Mass on the anniversary of their translation. This is similar to the reason why, for example, we celebrate on October 28 the feast of Saint Simon and Jude, because their relics are interred together in the Basilica of St. Peter under the tabernacle at the altar of St. Joseph in the southern transept. While it would certainly be fitting for us to celebrate Saints Philip and James individually, as we do the other eight apostles (including St. Matthias who took Judas’ place), there is a certain fittingness to fête them jointly, since when Jesus initially sent out the twelve to proclaim his kingdom by words and deeds, he sent them out in pairs. It’s quite possible that Philip and James were at one time explicit partners in the proclamation of the Gospel and hence their feast is an opportunity for us to examine something that perhaps we as Christians don’t ponder enough: who are our partners in the proclamation of the Gospel? If it’s important for police officers to have partners on whom they can depend, how much more important is it for those called to proclaim the Gospel, not only so that we can have each other’s back, but so that we can more easily put into practice the Gospel we proclaim to others. St. Gregory the Great once commented that the reason why Jesus sent out the apostles to proclaim the Gospel two-by-two even, though they could have theoretically covered twice as much ground if he had sent them out individually, was so that as they proclaimed the Gospel, they would be able to learn and show how to love one another, how to forgive one another, how to live in communion. Tonight, at the beginning of this retreat, we can examine how we can proclaim the Gospel better in tandem with others and who are those whom the Lord has put into our lives with whom we can preach. Certainly, Christian married couples are sent out two-by-two, which is one of the reasons why choosing a Christian spouse is so important for one to live a fully Christian life. But for those who are married, marriage is not the only way they are to proclaim the Gospel. Every faithful Catholic man needs to look around and see who can be a partner in the proclamation of the faith. What friendships can be nourished, what bonds we can form, who can we mentor or who can mentor us, so that we can more effectively proclaim the Gospel through collaboration? We see that St. Paul never proclaimed the Gospel alone. He preached it first with Barnabas, then with Silas, then with Timothy, and from prison did so with St. Luke. Despite his brilliance and individual capacity, he always united himself to others, including married couples like Priscilla and Aquila. Jesus in the Holy Eucharist seeks to unite us and strengthen us for that common mission, just like he strengthened Philip, James and the other apostles.
• The second thing we learn tonight on this feast of SS. Philip and James is the priority that should be given to the proclamation of the faith. In the first reading, St. Paul, the great collaborator, tells the Corinthians, “I handed on to you as of first importance what I also received,” and then he describes for us Jesus’ death, burial, resurrection and appearances. To pass on the Gospel was “of first importance,” in other words, the most important thing he could do and the Corinthians in turn could do. Why? He told them right before, because, he said, it is the Gospel that “you indeed received and in which you also stand [and through which] you are also being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you.” When we receive the Gospel with faith and hold fast to it, our lives our made secure — we stand in it firmly — and we are being saved through it, always in the present tense. The Gospel places our life on the most solid foundation of all and leads to salvation. How could we not want to share that gift with others? The celebration of the Mass is the place par excellence in which we pass on to others as of the first importance the awesome gift we receive, not just of the words of God, but God himself. And every time we come to Mass, not just on Sundays but, when we can, during the week, we are testifying to the fact that Jesus is of “first importance” not just in our life but in anyone’s.
• But the Gospel we share is not fundamentally a group of teachings or facts. That’s the third point we learn from tonight’s readings. The kerygma — what St. Paul preached about Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection — is not just a bunch of facts and teachings that we communicate. It is ultimately a relationship, an intimate covenantal bond with Jesus through the Holy Spirit and in him with the Father. Jesus reveals this in his dialogue with the apostles during the Last Supper, which we have as tonight’s Gospel. Jesus says, “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life,” words that would have startled Jews, who always prayed in the Psalms for God to show them his paths so that they might know and walk in his truth, who always begged him to show them the path of life. Jesus was saying, “I am that Path, I am that Truth, I am that Life.” To pass on the Gospel is to help one enter into the life-changing relationship with Jesus, so that they will know where they are supposed to head, what they are supposed to believe, and how they are to live and experience life to the full. Jesus says that it is through the way, truth and life he is and reveals that one comes to see and know the Father. When St. Philip asks Jesus to show them the Father, Jesus reveals that anyone who has seen him — the perfect image of the invisible God — has seen the Father because he abides in the Father and the Father in him, because the Father speaks through him and the Father dwells in him doing his works. What’s startling is that Jesus tells us that if we abide in him, if we follow him who is the Way, believe in Him who is the Truth, and enter into Him who is the Life, God the Father through Jesus will be able to work in us and those works will be even greater than the works Jesus himself has done in life: “Amen, amen, I say to you,” he tells us, “whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father. And whatever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” It was one thing for the eternal Son of God to do the works of the Father in the ancient Holy Land. It will be something even greater for his Mystical Body to do works throughout the world. Jesus himself raised the dead, cured lepers, made the blind see, exorcised demons, fed multitudes with paltry starting material and rose from the dead. What Philip and James were able to do, and what we will be able to do in Jesus’ name, is bring him from heaven to earth under the appearance of bread and wine, forgive sins in God’s name, and love others far more extensively than he has loved us. And in so doing, we will be able to bring many others to receive the life, know the truth and follow the path who is Jesus and to which he calls us all — bring many others to communion with God and with us. This is the work we do in communion with Christ in the Holy Eucharist.
• That brings us to the fourth and last point. Because the proclamation of the Gospel is fundamentally about announcing that Jesus Christ, Lord, Savior, King, Shepherd, Way, Truth, Resurrection and Life is still very much with us, always, just as he promised, until the end of time in the Holy Eucharist, the most important thing we can do is to help people enter into a personal relationship with Jesus, the Good News incarnate. St. Philip was one who was always bringing others to Jesus. Right after Jesus called him, he brought his friend Nathanael, aka Bartholomew, to Jesus. Little did Philip know that Nathanael would likewise become a partner in the Gospel. It was also Philip who helped find the boy with five loaves and two fish which was the raw material for Jesus’ multiplication of the loaves and fish. He was obviously someone who knew how to work the crowd, to make friends, to get them to be willing to come with him or to make a sacrifice of a meal or more. It was also Philip whom the Greeks asked to introduce them to Jesus before the Passion, the very Greeks whom, when Jesus found out from Philip and Andrew they were looking for him, exclaimed that it was now the hour for the Son of Man to be glorified through his suffering, death and resurrection. Philip was, in short, a bridge for others to come to Jesus. St. James the Lesser likewise prioritized facilitating people coming to Jesus. Many scholars believer he was the first leader of the Church in Jerusalem, the James we have encountered the last two days at daily Mass in Acts 15 at the Council of Jerusalem. When SS. Paul and Barnabas brought them the case of the Gentiles in Antioch and whether they needed to accept all of the Jewish law and practices — including circumcision — before becoming Christians, St. James, together with St. Peter and the other members of the Church, said that they did not, making much smoother their entry into the Church and their growth in the fulfillment of the new law. James knew that Jesus was the way, not the isolated works of the Jewish midrash of the Mosaic law, something that Jesus himself spoke about in his dialogues with the Scribes and Pharisees. Philip and James both showed us that of first importance was bringing people to Jesus and making possible for people to follow him. They had no idea what would happen after that first encounter, but Philip’s work led to apostles, to miracles, and to the culmination of Christ’s work and James’ labors led to its flourishing. For us, we’re called to be as amiable as Philip, as wise and respected as James, so that we might be able like them to bring people to the Lord, conscious that from them, the Lord can and wants to do amazing things. The Eucharistic Jesus — in prayerful encounter in adoration, by entering into his hour with our own five loaves and two fish at the altar — awaits the men, women, kids and seniors, he hopes that we will introduce to him or help enter into a much deeper bond.
• Even though SS. Philip and James were already united in the college of the twelve apostles, they entered into a far more profound communion with each other and with Jesus when the Lord made them one body through the reception of Holy Communion during the Last Supper. And from that same Upper Room 53 days later, filled with the Holy Spirit, they were sent out to bring others into that same communion. Today, at the beginning of our retreat, the Lord invites us into a much greater familiarity with him, so that, like he did with SS. Philip and James, he might send us out by two, or by a dozen, or by 35 or 72 or more, to announce to the whole world, with tongues of fire, as of the first importance the Gospel incarnate in which we now stand and by which we are being saved, Jesus himself, truly present among us, ready to feed us, and to bring us into communion with each other. May we be as faithful to our joint mission as Philip and James were to theirs, both on earth and now in heaven!

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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