Listening to and Acting on the Long Awaited One’s Words, First Thursday of Advent, December 3, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Thursday of the First Week of Advent
Memorial of St. Francis Xavier
December 3, 2020
Is 26:1-6, Ps 118, Mt 7:21.24-27

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

The following points were attempted in the homily:

• At the beginning of the Advent Season, as we pray, “Come, Lord Jesus,” “O Come, Divine Messiah!,” “O Come, O Come Emmanuel,” the Church selects Gospel passages to help us learn the proper dispositions to enter into the meaning of this season and get off to a good start in this new liturgical year. But it’s not enough to get us to cry out with hunger and longing to bid the Lord to come. In today’s Gospel, Jesus says to us very clearly, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the Kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.” We need to build our life on him as he comes. “The Lord is an eternal Rock,” Isaiah tells us today. The Psalm adds, “The Lord is God and he has given us light.” The Lord is the solid, stable, unchanging foundation for life, the God who not only is “Light from Light,” but shares that light with us so that we may walk as children of light. Isaiah will tell us on Christmas night that the “people walking in darkness have seen a great light,” and that light is the Lord. Our Advent construction project is to build our life on that rock who gives us that light.
• Jesus uses an image today, taken from his conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount, about how we’re supposed to live what he teaches. “Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.  The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house. But it did not collapse; it had been set solidly on rock.” That’s what our response is supposed to be to Jesus’ triple coming: to build our life on his taking on our humanity so that we may share in his divinity; to construct our existence on Him in the present, in his Word and in especially in the Word-made-flesh as the source and summit, the root and center of Christian life; and to ground our hopes, aspirations and daily choices in the guarantee of his second coming and to live, as we’re reminded to live each Advent, vigilant and alert each day for his return. Not everyone lives this way. Many are foolish: we hear his Word, we may even be able to cite chapter and verse, but we don’t act on it. Jesus says, “Everyone who listens to these words of mine but does not act on them will be like a fool who built his house on sand.  The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house. And it collapsed and was completely ruined.” The true Advent response is Mary’s, which, as we will hear on the Solemnity of her Immaculate Conception next Tuesday, in response to the Archangel Gabriel’s words, said, “Behold I am the Lord’s servant. Let it be done to me according to your Word!”
• To build our whole existence on Jesus requires great trust, because Jesus’ words are different than the world’s. It’s challenging to build our life on the word of forgiving seventy time seven times, to love our enemies, to love others as God infinitely loves us. It’s hard to build our life on the commandments, the corporal and spiritual works of mercy and especially the Beatitudes. But hard is not impossible. And God gives us himself to make the difficulty lighter and sweeter. God encourages us to do so today. “Trust in the Lord forever!,” God calls us through Isaiah. “A strong city have we; he sets up walls and ramparts to protect us.” The Psalm adds, “It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man. It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in princes.” Advent is a season for us to act on that trust and the reasons for it.
• For those of us in the priesthood and in religious life, there’s a special call for us to go more deeply into today’s passage. By the choice we have made in response to the Lord’s call, we have in fact determined to build our life on Christ. By our chastity, we build our life on his love; by our obedience, we build our life on his will; by our poverty, we build our existence on the treasure of his kingdom. Sometimes, however, we can build only partially on his command, “Follow me!” We can build on “most of his word,” or his “main message,” but occasionally not take advantage of the words of his that are too difficult or seem too good to be true. Today at the beginning of Advent, the Church wants us to turn to Jesus and ask him for the grace to build an even more solid foundation on him by grounding ourselves truly in those part of his Gospel that are perhaps easy for us to hear but not to live.
• Today we celebrate the feast of a saint who clearly built his life on the Lord as an eternal rock. St. Francis Xavier’s incredible missionary work can only be explained by having built his life on the solid foundation of the Lord and by his fiery enthusiasm to help others to do the same. Today the Church has us pray that we might have the same passion, raising up to God the petition in the Opening Prayer of the Mass that we might “burn with the same zeal” and in the Prayer after Communion that God will “enkindle in us that fire of charity with which St. Francis Xavier burned for the salvation of souls.”  St. Francis Xavier was the great 16th century Jesuit apostle of India and Japan who died on the shores of China trying to bring the Gospel there. He did this not because he felt impelled by obligation but out of love for God and others, to bring God the joy of so many sons and daughters and to bring those sons and daughters to the reality, love and joy of God Father, Son and Holy Spirit. He’s the patron saint of the Church’s mission work and considering that the Church is a mission, he’s one of the most important patrons and models that the Church has.
• His letters to St. Ignatius about his missionary adventures have not only moved tens of thousands to become missionaries, but give full evidence to the zeal Christ had for our salvation that he wants us to have for the salvation of others. Every year priests, religious and all those who pray the Liturgy of the Hours ponder this letter he sent in 1544 to his friend, former college roommate and religious superior, St. Ignatius of Loyola: “We have visited the villages of the new converts who accepted the Christian religion a few years ago. … The native Christians have no priests. They know only that they are Christians. There is nobody to say Mass for them; nobody to teach them the Creed, the Our Father, the Hail Mary and the Commandments of God’s Law. I have not stopped since the day I arrived. I conscientiously made the rounds of the villages. I bathed in the sacred waters all the children who had not yet been baptized. This means that I have purified a very large number of children so young that, as the saying goes, they could not tell their right hand from their left. The older children would not let me say my Office or eat or sleep until I taught them one prayer or another. Then I began to understand: ‘The kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.’ I could not refuse so devout a request without failing in devotion myself. I taught them, first the confession of faith in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, then the Apostles’ Creed, the Our Father and Hail Mary. I noticed among them persons of great intelligence. If only someone could educate them in the Christian way of life, I have no doubt that they would make excellent Christians. Many, many people hereabouts are not becoming Christians for one reason only: there is nobody to make them Christians. Again and again I have thought of going round the universities of Europe, especially Paris, and everywhere crying out like a madman, riveting the attention of those with more learning than charity: ‘What a tragedy: how many souls are being shut out of heaven and falling into hell, thanks to you!’ I wish they would work as hard at this as they do at their books, and so settle their account with God for their learning and the talents entrusted to them. This thought would certainly stir most of them to meditate on spiritual realities, to listen actively to what God is saying to them. They would forget their own desires, their human affairs, and give themselves over entirely to God’s will and his choice. They would cry out with all their heart: Lord, I am here! What do you want me to do? Send me anywhere you like – even to India.”
• Reading those words soon after they were published for the first time, the future St. Philip Neri went to his spiritual director and said that he thought the Lord was asking him to follow Francis to India. His wise director told him, “No. Rome will be your Indies!,” and St. Philip worked as hard bringing people back to the faith in Rome after the sack and so much debauchery as St. Francis Xavier had been doing in far away lands. Likewise, for us, Manhattan must be our Indies. There’s no reason why we can’t do here what St. Francis did in Goa, Malaysia and Japan. He had 46 chromosomes just like us. He needed to eat, sleep and go to the restroom just like us. But he burned with a hunger to share with others not only the joy of faith in the Christian life here on earth but the eternal joy that comes from those who receive God’s revelation like little children and conform their entire lives to it, not merely saying “Lord, Lord!” but doing what the Lord asks, building their entire life on him.
• God gives us a daily opportunity to build ourselves on him at the Mass. In the Liturgy of the Word, God wants us to ground ourselves anew on the rock of God’s word, provided that we try to live the word we hear rather than merely say in response to it “Thanks be to God” and “Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.” We’re called, like Mary, to respond, “Let it be done to me according to your word!” Then we come to the Liturgy of the Eucharist and have the chance to construct our life on this gift, on Christ himself, so that he can shine his light from the inside out of us. Then we have the chance, in communion with him, to build our life on the words of his great commission, to go in peace, glorifying the Lord with our life. Through the intercession of St. Francis Xavier, may we respond to this great privilege and build ourselves firmly on Christ with trust so that no matter what storms come, we will be set firmly on Christ so that we might come to experience eternal tranquility in the house that God has built in heaven for all his beloved children. And we also pray that, like St. Francis Xavier, we will spend our life on earth helping to bring all those beloved children home!

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