Living by Grace and Faith, Thursday of the 28th Week in Ordinary Time (I), October 17, 2013

Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Bernadette Parish, Fall River, MA
Thursday of the 28th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Memorial of St. Ignatius of Antioch, Martyr
October 17, 2013
Rom 3:21-30, Ps 130, Lk 11:47-54

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

The following points were attempted in the homily:

• Jesus ferociously condemns the religious externalism of the Scribes and Pharisees in today’s Gospel. They built monuments to honor the prophets, but their fathers had killed the prophets; like even though they were keeping all types of religious practices they were plotting to have Jesus himself murdered. They had thrown away the key of knowledge — the real, living relationship with God himself, a God who changes us — and had both failed to enter the kingdom themselves but were preventing others from entering. They had become, as Pope Francis said this morning in the Vatican, ideologues, those who were living by “moral principles” or by the “law” but were no longer truly living in a relationship with God.
• St. Paul was confronting a similar ideology among the Judaizing Christians in Rome. They thought that they were justified — made holy — fundamentally by their keeping the works of the Old Testament law. Paul stressed we’re justified first by grace (which means by God’s action, unmerited by us) and then by our response to God’s action, which is faith. It’s faith in God — not just a belief that he exists but a trust in Him to whom we commit our entire lives — that saves both Greek and Jew, uncircumcised and circumcised. Pope Francis says that they way we don’t allow our practice of religion to become an ideology by which we live is through living faith which always opens itself up in true prayer, not just “saying prayers” but actually opening ourselves up to a real, living relationship with God who speaks to us, and to whom we speak with praise, gratitude, contrition, intercession and petition.
• St. Ignatius of Antioch whom the Church celebrates today was a true Christian by faith. When he was being brought to Rome to be martyred, he wrote a letter to the Christians there whom he thought might try to intervene to save his life. He said he was afraid of their love, lest it should harm him. He was a Christian in name, but wanted to be proved under trial to be a Christian in deed. He wanted to be ground to death by the lions as wheat so that he could become “pure bread,” so that he could unite himself totally to Jesus’ sacrifice in the Eucharist. That’s when, he wrote, he would truly become a disciple, when he would be living totally by faith in God and knowing that after his martyrdom, he would be united with God forever. Likewise, we’re called to be Christians not just in name, but in deed, and the way we become true Christians is when we live by a faith that flourishes in deeds of faith, hope and love. Today we ask St. Ignatius to intercede for us that we may be faithful and courageous, so that we might not build monuments to slain prophets and martyrs after they’re dead, but ourselves become so united with Christ’s sacrifice that others may build altars with our relics within.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Reading 1
ROM 3:21-30