Living Faith Working through Cruciform Love, 6th Friday (II), February 21, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Friday of the Sixth Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of St. Peter Damian, Bishop and Doctor of the Church
February 21, 2020
James 2:14-24.26, Ps 112, Mk 8:34-9:1

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today St. James gets our attention with a highly provocative vocative, asking, “Do you want proof, you ignoramus, that faith without works is useless?” His whole point is to stress that living faith leads to charity. There was an idea at the time, popular among gnostics, that all one needed to have was special knowledge of salvation, to know the right things, and to hold them; our deeds didn’t really matter. In later centuries, some Christians tried to make the case that that’s what St. Paul said in his Letter to the Romans, “We are saved by faith apart from works of the law” (Rom 3:28), which is true, that we’re saved by God’s grace received in faith and not by our own actions. But while we’re saved by God’s gratuitous love, we need to receive that gift, open it up and live by it. St. Paul would call it “faith working through love” (Gal 5:6). St. John the Baptist would describe it to the Pharisees, “Produce good fruit as evidence of your repentance” (Matt 3:8). Jesus himself would say clearly that we’re judged by our acts in his depiction of the Last Judgment, saying that to be saved, we must care for the poor and needy, the hungry and thirsty, the ill and imprisoned, the naked and the stranger (Mt 25:31-46). That’s precisely what St. James was describing in his letter, that we can’t say we have faith, that we grasp the presence of the Lord in our world, within us, within our neighbor, if we don’t lift a goner to help those we see in need. Our faith, as St. James says, must be demonstrated through our works, it must be active in our works, like Abraham’s was in his willingness to sacrifice Isaac. If our faith is living, it will show in the way it impacts our life.
• Popes Benedict and Francis have a beautiful section in the encyclical by four hands, Lumen Fidei, in which they underline how the truth of faith must overflow into charity. “Faith transforms the whole person precisely to the extent that he or she becomes open to love. Through this blending of faith and love we come to see the kind of knowledge that faith entails, its power to convince and its ability to illumine our steps. Faith knows because it is tied to love, because love itself brings enlightenment” (LF 26).
• In the Gospel today, Jesus describes some of the most important acts of living faith. Faith is meant to bring us alive and Jesus shows us the way to save our lives. He tells us, “Whoever wishes to come after me,” in other words, whoever believes in me and wants to be my disciple, “must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the Gospel will save it.” These are very difficult works that require faith because they go against worldly ways. We live in a self-affirming age and Jesus calls us to self-denial so that we might have self-mastery and be capable of self-gift. We live in a hedonistic age that is addicted to pleasure and phobic about pain and Jesus calls us to take up or seize (rather than reluctantly accept) the Cross, the instrument on which we will die to ourselves, so that he in turn may live. Then he calls us to follow him as he sets the example of washing others’ feet, of becoming the servant of all, of giving his life as a ransom for others’. These are the works that flow from true faith in Jesus. Without these works, our faith is dead and we will lose our life, he states. Yet this is the living faith that defines the martyrs, that marks the saints.
• Today the Church celebrates one of the greatest saints of the 11th Century, a Doctor of the Church, who reveals to us the connection between faith and works, particularly the work of denying ourselves, picking up our Cross and following Jesus. He experienced the Cross from his earliest days. He was neglected as a baby because his older brothers told his mother the family couldn’t have another mouth to feed, so they found another woman in the neighborhood to suckle him. Soon thereafter he was orphaned and was placed in the care of an older brother who neglected him badly. Eventually he was rescued by another brother who was a priest, who provided for his education and set him on the trajectory one day to be a doctor of the Church. Though his early life was a crucible, at the same time he learned the power and wisdom of the Cross. When Pope Benedict gave a catechesis on him in 2009, he spoke about the Cross in his life, beginning with the Hermitage in which he entered to give glory to God: “One detail should be immediately emphasized,” Pope Benedict said: “the Hermitage at Fonte Avellana was dedicated to the Holy Cross and the Cross was the Christian mystery that was to fascinate Peter Damian more than all the others. ‘Those who do not love the Cross of Christ do not love Christ,’ he said; and he described himself as ‘Petrus crucis Christi servorum famulus Peter, servant of the servants of the Cross of Christ’ (Ep, 9, 1). Peter Damian addressed the most beautiful prayers to the Cross in which he reveals a vision of this mystery which has cosmic dimensions for it embraces the entire history of salvation: ‘O Blessed Cross,’ he exclaimed, ‘You are venerated, preached and honoured by the faith of the Patriarchs, the predictions of the Prophets, the senate that judges the Apostles, the victorious army of Martyrs and the throngs of all the Saints’ (Sermo XLVII, 14, p. 304).” Pope Benedict drew a lesson for all of us: “May the example of St Peter Damian spur us too always to look to the Cross as to the supreme act God’s love for humankind of God, who has given us salvation.” St. Peter also shows us how faith in the power of the Cross translates into deeds, into a way of life. Early in life, he would offer hospitality to the poor as a way of serving Christ and voluntarily embraced poverty to be close to them. This was a way of life he brought to the monastery with him and in which he formed so many others. He used to call himself Petrus ultimus monachorum servus, “Peter, the least servant of the monks,” All servants of God are servants of others and the Cross and he sought to become the least of all and the servant of all. As a doctor of the Church, by his words and example, he is meant to teach us all. St. Peter in particular was put to work by the Church to help root out the corruption of faith that would lead to great moral hypocrisy. Pope Benedict said in 2009, “The ideal image of ‘Holy Church’ illustrated by Peter Damian [did] not correspond as he knew well to the reality of his time. For this reason he did not fear to denounce the state of corruption that existed in the monasteries and among the clergy, because, above all, of the practice of the conferral by the lay authorities of ecclesiastical offices; various Bishops and Abbots were behaving as the rulers of their subjects rather than as pastors of souls. Their moral life frequently left much to be desired. For this reason, in 1057 Peter Damian left his monastery with great reluctance and sorrow and accepted, if unwillingly, his appointment as Cardinal Bishop of Ostia. So it was that he entered fully into collaboration with the Popes in the difficult task of Church reform. He saw that to make his own contribution of helping in the work of the Church’s renewal contemplation did not suffice. He thus relinquished the beauty of the hermitage and courageously undertook numerous journeys and missions.” One of the biggest corruptions he needed to root out was sexual license, especially homosexual activity, in monasteries and diocesan clergy, which is one of the reasons why so many today look to him as a patron to help root out all sins of unchastity in the Church, not just the terrible abuse of minors, but also priests cheating on their vocations with men, women, and via pornography.
• Today we ponder his faith working through love, he wants to help us pass from “ignoramuses” to doctors of the Church, those who have “learned” Christ’s way and become teachers of others through action. We deny ourselves, pick up our cross and learn how to follow Christ precisely through the Mass where we enter the Last Supper, receive his body and blood from Calvary, and enter into his risen life. It’s through the Mass that we become capable of “doing this” in his memory, giving our body and blood out of love for others.

The readings for today’s Mass were: