Fr. Roger J. Landry
Carmelite Monastery of Our Mother of Mercy and Saint Joseph
Alexandria, South Dakota
Tuesday of the First Week of Lent, Extraordinary Form
March 8, 2022
Is 55:6-11, Mt 21:10-17
To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
The following text guided the homily:
- In today’s first reading from the Prophet Isaiah, we hear a powerful Lenten summons: “Seek the Lord while he may be found, call him while he is near.” The Lord has not only drawn near waiting for us to discover him, he’s not just listening waiting for us to call, but’s himself very active. He who is generous in forgiving wants us to turn to him for mercy. He whose thoughts are not our thoughts and ways are not our ways wanted to help us lift our thoughts and improve our ways. That’s what he says in the second half of today’s reading. Just as rain and snow come down from heaven to irrigate the earth and make it fertile and fruitful, so does God word, which accomplishes God’s will and achieves the end God intends. God through his word will help us to purify our thoughts by his thoughts and align our ways to his. His word shows us the way and his promise gives us hope.
- We see this truth at work in the Gospel, when Jesus, the Word made flesh, cleanses the Temple area of moneychangers and animal sellers. He reminds us of the purpose of the temple. God wants it to be a “house of prayer.” It had not only become a commercial setting where people were paying the temple tax in temple currency for which every other currency needed to be exchanged, and where people were buying the animals they needed to sacrifice rather than trying to bring them unblemished from wherever their home was, but where, because of the demand in that particular spot, the sellers had the buyers right where they wanted them and were charging exorbitant exchange rates and prices, a greed that was particularly injurious to the poor. Jesus was outraged that instead of the Temple being the place where people’s thoughts became more and more like God’s and where their ways were strengthened to follow the divine, they were neck deep in the morass of worldly corruption. So Jesus helped the scoundrel forsake his way and the wicked man his thoughts. He cleansed the temple of the den of thieves. It was the anticipation of the way that he would seek to cleanse each of us from our worldly desires and practices to align them to his will and ways. We see in St. John’s Gospel that when he was asked by what authority he was cleansing this temple and what sign he could give for that authority, he said, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up,” talking about the temple of his body. He was the definitive meeting place of God and humanity, the true house of prayer for all peoples. When he would be raised up, he would make it possible for all of us to become temples, too, through the mystery of the Holy Eucharist, by which he comes to abide in us and make it possible for us to be true houses of prayer, filled with his thoughts, who serve him in all our ways. But each Lent he comes to cleanse us, like he cleansed the Temple in Jerusalem, of the times in which we don’t seek him while he may be found, we don’t call him when he is near, we’re not soil thirsting for the rain and snow of the word coming from his mouth to make us fertile and fruitful. We turn to him for mercy, as Isaiah beckons us, because he is generous in forgiving.
- We see in the Gospel those who were seeking him when he could be found. As soon as he was done cleansing the temple, the blind and lame approached him, and he cured them. Likewise the children came to him, shouting out, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” echoing what they had just heard on Palm Sunday. All three groups show us that the way to become the temple of his presence, a house of prayer, we need to be childlike, seeking to see all things in his light, and begging for his help to be healed of paralysis so that we might follow him everywhere he leads.
- Someone who lived this type of life, who converted from his worldly ways of thinking and acting, who turned to the Lord in his mercy, and was cleansed of everything unworthy of God in his temple such that he sought to imitate the Lord in caring for the lame, the blind and all of those in need is the saint the Church remembers today. John of God was born in Portugal in 1495 and at 27, 500 years ago this year, became a soldier in Castile. Like many in the military, he sadly surrendered himself to vice, became thoroughly licentious and gave up the practice of the faith. Eventually the army was disbanded and he worked as a shepherd. At the age of about 40, stung with remorse for his past sins, he resolved to be healed and to give himself over to God’s service. He tried first to make amends by becoming a martyr among the Christian slaves in Morocco, but that plan didn’t work. Then he began to care for the poor and eventually for the sick. He heard a sermon by St. John of Avila and was so affected by it that he filled the Church with his sobs, beating his breast and imploring God’s mercy. St. John of Avila gave him God’s mercy and set him straight. From that point forward, until he would die at 55, he immersed himself in the care for others out of love for God. He founded a hospital and allowed himself to be surrounded by those who would eventually be called the “Brothers Hospitallers,” or, as the Italians call them, the “Fatebenefratelli,” the “Do Good Brothers.” In a letter he wrote that the Church presents to us in the Office of Readings this morning, he describes how deeds of charity done with faith have eternal consequences. He wrote, “If we look forward to receiving God’s mercy,” and each of us in this season is precisely trying to the Lord who is generous in forgiving for mercy, “we can never fail to do good so long as we have the strength. For if we share with the poor, out of love for God, whatever he has given to us, we shall receive according to his promise a hundredfold in eternal happiness. What a fine profit, what a blessed reward! Who would not entrust his possessions to this best of merchants, who handles our affairs so well? With outstretched arms he begs us to turn toward him, to weep for our sins, and to become the servants of love, first for ourselves, then for our neighbors. Just as water extinguishes a fire, so love wipes away sin.” A homeless man once asked him for alms and as he was trying to pull something from his habit, he noticed the man’s bare feet, that they had stigmata. He understood that the one who was asking him was ultimately the Lord. And he sought to care for the temple of God in every poor and sick person he met. His thoughts and ways became so much like God’s that his contemporaries began simply to call him “John of God.”
- Today on his feast we come here to this temple, dedicated as a house of prayer. We come to seek this best of merchants and call upon him, to turn to him for mercy, to ask him to cure our sight to see all things in his light, to fill our minds with his thoughts to be able to share them with others, to ask for his grace to heal our lameness so that we might follow him in his ways, and to become more childlike so that with joy we may cry out to him, in just a few minutes, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!”
The readings for today’s Mass were:
A reading from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah
Seek the LORD while he may be found, call him while he is near. Let the scoundrel forsake his way, and the wicked man his thoughts; Let him turn to the LORD for mercy; to our God, who is generous in forgiving. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD. As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts. For just as from the heavens the rain and snow come down And do not return there till they have watered the earth, making it fertile and fruitful, Giving seed to him who sows and bread to him who eats, So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; It shall not return to me void, but shall do my will, achieving the end for which I sent it.
Gradual
Let my prayer be incense before you, O Lord, my uplifted hands an evening sacrifice.
The continuation of the Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew
When he entered Jerusalem the whole city was shaken and asked, “Who is this?” And the crowds replied, “This is Jesus the prophet, from Nazareth in Galilee.” Jesus entered the temple area and drove out all those engaged in selling and buying there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who were selling doves. And he said to them, “It is written: ‘My house shall be a house of prayer,’ but you are making it a den of thieves.” The blind and the lame approached him in the temple area, and he cured them. When the chief priests and the scribes saw the wondrous things he was doing, and the children crying out in the temple area, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” they were indignant and said to him, “Do you hear what they are saying?” Jesus said to them, “Yes; and have you never read the text, ‘Out of the mouths of infants and nurslings you have brought forth praise’?” And leaving them, he went out of the city to Bethany, and there he spent the night.
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