Living According to the Hope that Belongs to Our Call, 28th Saturday (II), October 20, 2018

Fr. Roger J. Landry
2018 Men’s Silent Retreat
“The Bravery to Live One’s Catholic Faith to the Full”
St. Damiano Retreat Center, White Post, VA
Saturday of the 28th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of St. Paul of the Cross
October 20, 2018
Eph 1:15-23, Ps 8, Lk 12:8-12

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today St. Paul in his letter to the Ephesians shows us the content of the prayer he prayed for the Christians there and always. These would be, I believe, his prayers for all of us as we are making this retreat to strengthen us in our Christian life.
• His prayer began with thanksgiving that they’re already living the two main aspects of the Christian faith — love for God and love for all the holy ones — before he turned to asking that God the Father may give them and us:
  • “A spirit of wisdom and revelation resulting in knowledge of him” — He wants us to see things as God sees, to see them with God’s eyes, to see God himself and understand all things in his light. This is a light not just of the mind or intellect but also of the whole being, especially the affections, as we see next. A retreat helps us to regain this perspective.
  • “May the eyes of your hearts be enlightened, that you may know what is the hope that belongs to his call, what are the riches of glory in his inheritance among the holy ones, and what is the surpassing greatness of his power for us who believe” — He is praying that our heart will know the hope that belongs to our vocation to sanctity so that we may trust in God, in his promises, in his power, even when we should have to suffer for our faith. We receive the pearl of great price. A retreat is a time for us to have our eyes on the prize.
  • “In accord with the exercise of his great might, which he worked in Christ, raising him from the dead and seating him at his right hand in the heavens, far above every principality, authority, power, and dominion, and every name that is named not only in this age but also in the one to come.” — If we need “proof” to ground the hope of our call, St. Paul points to Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, which shows us the full power of God over evil, sin and death, and the ultimate plan of God for our life and the love that God showed through the incarnation, passion, death and resurrection to fulfill that plan. Jesus is indeed at the right hand of the Father interceding for us right now.
  • “And he put all things beneath his feet and gave him as head over all things to the Church, which is his Body, the fullness of the one who fills all things in every way.” — As Christ said in his valedictory address on the mountain before ascending to heaven, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me,” and he entrusted that authority to the Church, to preach, to baptize, and to teach, knowing that he was always with him. And he gave this gift to us in the Church so that we may experience the fullness of God and help others to do the same. God wants us to have life to the full and that life happens in relationship with God. Jesus came that we might have life and have it to the full. He wants to become “all in all” in us. During these days we open ourselves up to living in accordance with that will.
• In the Gospel, we see the challenge of this type of life in Jesus’ concluding words to and about the Pharisees. He has been correcting the Pharisees for their externalism and hypocrisy and warning the disciples about the Pharisees’ leaven, about the way their religious approach can metastasize as a virulent cancer. He also recognized that many of the disciples were afraid of the Pharisees, afraid of what they might do, just as they were plotting to have Jesus murdered by the very Roman authorities they wanted booted from their country. And so Jesus yesterday and today is addressing that straight on, so that we may know the hope that belongs to our calling, so that we may know God’s revelation in his Son, so that the eyes of our hearts may be enlightened, so that we may trust in God’s power and become who we are called to be by faith.
• He talks to us about acknowledging him before others, despite our fears. This is the courage we need to proclaim him in a world that often marginalizes and rejects him. To do so, he talks to us about trusting in the power of the Holy Spirit, who will teach us what to say, rather than distrusting in God’s power and fearing more those on earth than having confidence in God’s power. He talks to us about the one unforgivable sin, which he calls “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit,” which basically means not trusting in the Holy Spirit’s power. This one unforgivable sin normally refers to impenitence, not seeing we need God’s help and forgiveness, or seeing it but not coming to receive it, or seeing it but thinking our sins are so bad that not even God can forgive us. Here we see it in a broader context as it means not trusting in the Spirit’s being able to transcend the circumstances of the challenges and fears we face. The Holy Spirit wants to infuse us with himself — with his wisdom, knowledge, prudence, understanding, reverence, awe and courage — precisely to help us to do this, even and especially when it’s hard.
• Today the Church celebrates a great saint who showed us what this cooperation with the Holy Spirit looks like, what correspondence to the hope of our calling means.  St. Paul of the Cross (1694-1775) learned how to live with an enlightened heart in response to his calling from his very devout parents, who had 16 kids, ten of whom died in infancy, and so they were very accustomed to real suffering. He suffered with physical pains throughout his life, but when he was young, his Mother would bring him a crucifix so that he would learn how to unite that suffering to Christ’s suffering for the salvation of the world. When he was 26, the Lord in a vision allowed him in a vision to see himself clothed in a black habit with the a Cross about a heart saying “Passion of Jesus Christ.” He heard these words spoken to him, “This is to show how pure the heart must be that bears the holy name of Jesus graven upon it.” St. Paul’s heart, our heart, is inscribed from our baptism with the Passion of Jesus, with his Cross, but we need to live that reality with integrity, not hypocrisy. It’s not enough for us to sing, on September 14 each year or in Lent, “Lift High the Cross!” but then murmur about the Crosses given to us. We can’t say we’re a disciple of Jesus — who says that to be his follower we must deny ourselves, pick up our Cross daily and follow him — unless we actually are denying ourselves, picking up our Cross each day and following Jesus’ footsteps. We can’t be the type of leaven Jesus wants us to become unless our heart is cruciform, unless we’re willing to pour ourselves out in love as Christ did for us. St. Paul of the Cross, like his apostolic namesake, glorified in the Cross of the Lord Jesus Christ by which the world was crucified to him and he to the world. He preached nothing but Christ crucified, often holding a large Crucifix when he would preach. He was able to say that the life he was living in the flesh he was living by faith in the Son of God because he had been crucified with Christ to make that type of life possible. And he loved and celebrated the Cross as a great gift.
• In the breviary lesson in the Office of Readings the Church ponders this morning, there’s a beautiful — and challenging! — passage in which he says, “When you become true lovers of the Crucified, you will always celebrate the feast of the cross in the inner temple of the soul, bearing all in silence and not relying on any creature. Since festivals ought to be celebrated joyfully, those who love the Crucified should honor the feast of the cross by enduring in silence with a serene and joyful countenance, so that their suffering remains hidden from men and is observed by God alone. For in this feast there is always a solemn banquet, and the food presented is the will of God, exemplified by the love of our crucified Christ.” He celebrated it because “by this sacred path we reach union with God. In this most holy school we learn true wisdom, for it was there that all the saints learned it.” And he urged all who listened to him not to be hypocrites when it came to the Cross but live with integrity: “Live in such a way that all may know that you bear outwardly as well as inwardly the image of Christ crucified, the model of all gentleness and mercy. For if a man is united inwardly with the Son of the living God, he also bears his likeness outwardly by his continual practice of heroic goodness, and especially through a patience reinforced by courage.” That’s what we prayed for today in the Collect, when we asked, “May the Priest Saint Paul, whose only love was the Cross, obtain for us your grace, O Lord, so that, urged on more strongly by his example, we may each embrace our own cross with courage.” 
• This is the type of witness that Christ is calling us to acknowledge before others, to preach Christ crucified, as the power and wisdom of God. The Cross is not a sign of ignominy ultimately but a sign of great hope, hope for salvation, hope for triumph, hope that God will bring great good out of everything we endure, just like he brought the greatest good out of the worst evil of all time on Calvary. The Holy Spirit will seek to help us, like he helped St. Paul, to proclaim this Gospel.
• The Mass is the great place that the Lord seeks to enlighten our hearts, to renew us in the hope that belongs to our call, and to introduce us to the riches of glory that are the inheritance of his holy ones. We hear his word and we become one with Him by the power of the Holy Spirit. Let us ask for the grace to respond to this gift like St. Paul of the Cross did every morning.

The readings for today’s Mass were: