Fr. Roger J. Landry
Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Friday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Day of Prayer for the Legal Protection of Unborn Children
January 22, 2021
Heb 8:6-13, Ps 85, Mk 3:13-19
To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
The following points were attempted in the homily:
- Today in the Gospel, we see the calling of the twelve apostles and the reason behind it: so that they might “be with” Jesus and so that he might “send them out” with his authority to preach, teach, exorcise, heal and help others enter into his kingdom. On this day on which we mark the horrible 48th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton decisions that permitted the legal killing of children in the womb, and the Church in the US has a Day of Prayer for the Legal Protection of Unborn Children, it is an opportunity for each of us to remember and give thanks to God for our vocation to be heralds of the Gospel of Life, to be with Jesus not only in prayer but in special solidarity with him in his image in the womb, and to be sent out by him to help expunge the diabolical practice of the slaughter of innocents in the womb and to help people, especially vulnerable mothers and fathers to choose the path of life and love. Just as Jesus called Simon Peter; James, John, Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James, Thaddeus, and Simon the Cananean by name to announce his Gospel 2,000 years ago, so the Lord has called each of us by name for the vocation of love in the heart of the world.
- The Letter to the Hebrews cites the Prophet Jeremiah in describing the “new and improved” Covenant that Jesus, the eternal High Priest, would inaugurate. We remember Jeremiah’s call, “The word of the Lord came to me: ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I dedicated you, a prophet to the nations I appointed you'” (Jer 1:4-5). So, too, we have been formed in the womb for our Christian vocation, a central part of which is to help everyone learn how to reverence other human beings made in God’s image and likeness similarly being formed, dedicated and appointed in utero to God’s glory through the love of God and others.
- The Letter to the Hebrews quotes God’s words through the Prophet Jeremiah in order to drive home the point of the Covenant Jesus himself would make, one not indicated by a rainbow like Noah, or sealed through circumcision like Abraham, or written on stone like the Decalogue, but sealed in his blood and written on our minds and hearts. This new Covenant would be the means by which we — from the least to the greatest — would “know the Lord.” The reason that this covenant would be “better” would be because in it God through the incarnation would help all of us keep our end of the covenant with him. He would keep it for and with us on behalf of the human race. He would literally enter into us, bringing his “kindness and truth, … justice and peace” to meet within us. He would set up himself, with his law of love, in our interior so that we could align our entire existence to him whispering to us in the inner organ of sensitivity we call the conscience.
- Every Covenant is a covenant of life. St. John Paul II in Evangelium Vitae wrote extensively about how the Covenant is in its core a Covenant of life and love. The Covenant made with Abraham, he said, is a covenant of life in which Abraham’s children would numbered like the starts in the heavens (EV 44). The Decalogue, he added, focuses on “the inviolability of human life reverberates at the heart of the ‘ten words’ in the covenant of Sinai (cf. Ex 34:28). In the first place that commandment prohibits murder: ‘You shall not kill’ (Ex 20:13); ‘do not slay the innocent and righteous’ (Ex 23:7). … The overall message, which the New Testament will bring to perfection, is a forceful appeal for respect for the inviolability of physical life and the integrity of the person. It culminates in the positive commandment which obliges us to be responsible for our neighbor as for ourselves: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’ (Lev 19:18)” (EV 40). When God through Joshua reminds his people of the Covenant, he frames it in terms of life, John Paul II recalls: “God’s commandment is offered as the path of life: ‘I have set before you this day life and good, death and evil. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you this day, by loving the Lord your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his ordinances, then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land which you are entering to take possession of’ (Dt 30:15-16). What is at stake,” Saint John Paul II insists, “is not only the land of Canaan and the existence of the people of Israel, but also the world of today and of the future, and the existence of all humanity. In fact, it is altogether impossible for life to remain authentic and complete once it is detached from the good; and the good, in its turn, is essentially bound to the commandments of the Lord, that is, to the ‘law of life’ (Sir 17:11)” (EV 48). John Paul II mentions, “The history of Israel shows how difficult it is to remain faithful to the Law of life which God has inscribed in human hearts and which he gave on Sinai to the people of the Covenant” (EV 49), but then he shows us Christ, in the covenant he sealed on Calvary through the shedding of his blood, takes away the sins against life we have committed so that we might indeed have life to the full (EV 51). And he made our care for each other — our love for our neighbor, however small, however vulnerable — the index of our keeping our covenant to God (EV 76).
- Today we renew that “new and eternal Covenant in Jesus’ blood” and beg for God’s grace to be faithful to it. We thank the Lord Jesus through his own incarnation for identifying with everyone in the womb. And as we prepare to “be with him” so that he may “send us out,” we ask him to renew us in our vocation of “proclaiming, celebrating and serving the Gospel of life” (EV 28) and of helping him cast out the demons seeking to cajole vulnerable parents to destroying the blessed fruit of the womb.
The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 HEB 8:6-13
Brothers and sisters:
Now our high priest has obtained so much more excellent a ministry
as he is mediator of a better covenant,
enacted on better promises.
For if that first covenant had been faultless,
no place would have been sought for a second one.
But he finds fault with them and says:
Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord,
when I will conclude a new covenant with the house of
Israel and the house of Judah.
It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers
the day I took them by the hand to lead
them forth from the land of Egypt;
for they did not stand by my covenant
and I ignored them, says the Lord.
But this is the covenant I will establish with the house of Israel
after those days, says the Lord:
I will put my laws in their minds
and I will write them upon their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they shall be my people.
And they shall not teach, each one his fellow citizen and kin, saying,
“Know the Lord,”
for all shall know me, from least to greatest.
For I will forgive their evildoing
and remember their sins no more.
When he speaks of a “new” covenant,
he declares the first one obsolete.
And what has become obsolete
and has grown old is close to disappearing.
Responsorial Psalm PS 85:8 AND 10, 11-12, 13-14
R. (11a) Kindness and truth shall meet.
Show us, O LORD, your mercy,
and grant us your salvation.
Near indeed is his salvation to those who fear him,
glory dwelling in our land.
R. Kindness and truth shall meet.
Kindness and truth shall meet;
justice and peace shall kiss.
Truth shall spring out of the earth,
and justice shall look down from heaven.
R. Kindness and truth shall meet.
The LORD himself will give his benefits;
our land shall yield its increase.
Justice shall walk before him,
and salvation, along the way of his steps.
R. Kindness and truth shall meet.
Alleluia
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ,
and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel MK 3:13-19
Jesus went up the mountain and summoned those whom he wanted
and they came to him.
He appointed Twelve, whom he also named Apostles,
that they might be with him
and he might send them forth to preach
and to have authority to drive out demons:
He appointed the Twelve:
Simon, whom he named Peter;
James, son of Zebedee,
and John the brother of James, whom he named Boanerges,
that is, sons of thunder;
Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew,
Matthew, Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus;
Thaddeus, Simon the Cananean,
and Judas Iscariot who betrayed him.
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