Living the Gospel in Truth and Spiritual Poverty, 25th Wednesday (II), September 23, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Wednesday of the 25th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of St. Pio of Pietrelcina
September 23, 2020
Prov 30:5-9, Ps 119, Lk 9:1-6

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 Jesus sends out the Apostles to “proclaim the Kingdom of God” by word and deed. In the first reading from the Book of Proverbs we see two essential elements for that proclamation in every age. The credibility of the messenger depend on them.
• The sage who prays turns to God and begs, “Two things I ask of you, deny them not to me.” The first is truthfulness: “Put falsehood and lying far from me.” This is echoed in the Psalm when we pray, “Remove from me the way of falsehood, and favor me with your law” and “Falsehood I hate and abhor.” Earlier in the passage we have an allusion to Eve, when Proverb says, “Add nothing to his words, lest he reprove you and you will be exposed as a deceiver.” That was at the root of Eve’s sin. She added to the word of God, who had instructed her and Adam not to eat the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good or Evil, but as we see in Genesis, when she told the Serpent what God had commanded, she added, “and neither shall you touch it.” That happened because either she wasn’t paying close attention or was an embellisher. In either case she failed to appreciate the importance of each word God had said. She failed to recognize that “every word of God is tested.” When Christ sends us out he sends us out to proclaim that the Kingdom of God is at hand, he sends us as disciples of the One who “came to give witness to the Truth,” of Him who ultimately is the Truth. His Kingdom is a kingdom of truth, of light, of saying “yes” when we mean “yes” and “no” when we mean “no.” Jesus praised Nathanael for being “an Israelite without guile,” and he wants us all to be without guile. The devil is the “father of lies,” who always wants to get us to add or subtract to God’s word, to do anything except live off of every word that comes from the Father’s mouth. The credibility of the proclamation of the Gospel is shot when people doubt the truthfulness of the messenger. How can anyone forget Archbishop Gregory’s sad but necessary words during his press conference announcing his appointment to Washington in April 2019 when he said, “I will always tell you the truth as I understand it?” He needed to say it because many had concluded that his two predecessors had lied to them. Those who announce the Kingdom of God must demonstrate total transparency and verifiable truthfulness. They must be icons of Christ the Truth incarnate. Otherwise no one may believe anything they say, including the Gospel. This is one of the reasons why the whole Church must pray, “Put falsehood and lying far from me.”
• The second thing that the sage asks is, “Give me neither poverty nor riches; provide me only the food I need, lest, being full, I deny you, saying, ‘Who is the Lord?,’ or, being in want, I steal and profane the name of my God.” The request is for a total trust in God’s providence, for we cannot serve both God and mammon. If we have more than we need, the trust we need to have in God’s care can disappear as we place our faith, hope and love in mammon and what mammon can obtain. But he’s also not asking for destitution, for nothing whatsoever. He’s asking us for what Jesus taught us to pray: “Give us today our daily bread.” Jesus is describing that trust in God’s providence necessary in those who proclaim God’s kingdom when he instructs the apostles in today’s Gospel, “Take nothing for the journey, neither walking stick, nor sack, nor food, nor money, and let no one take a second tunic.” They needed to proclaim by how they dressed, walked, ate and slept that they trusted in God who promised to care for them more than for the lilies and sparrows. Jesus himself didn’t even have a pillow to lay his head. Together with the apostles, they often didn’t have even meager supplies for meals before Jesus’ miracles. Over the course of time, however, one of the corruptions that can enter the Church is too much dependance on money. We focus more on all that’s needed to maintain what we have rather than relying on God’s riches and then going out to preach. We know that the Church requires some money, for we can’t be Good Samaritans if we can’t pay innkeepers. But sometimes, as Pope Francis says more generally about the economy, money can begin to rule. Similarly the wealth of the Church can sometimes scandalize people. It’s hard to proclaim the Gospel to the poor, as the aphorism says, when one arrives in a Rolls Royce. That’s why the Church as a whole, and each of us, must never ease to pray, “Give me neither poverty nor riches; provide me only the food I need.”
• Today the Church celebrates a poor truth teller who is one of the great saints of the last century, St. Pio of Pietrelcina. He was known to be a real servant of the truth in and outside the confessional, given a gift to read souls, and for that reason, many who were afraid of the truth, who were in darkness afraid of the light, were afraid of him. But he said the truth regardless and insistently urged others to do so. “Speak the truth, always the Truth,” he repeated. He referred to himself simply as a “poor friar who prays,” and poor and prayerful he was. He lived by the vow of poverty he made to an exemplary degree. His cell was small, dark, and had a simple writing table from which he penned so many letters. He once that it was a luxury for him even to have a picture of Our Lady in his cell and it was only in obedience to his superiors that he hung a small painting of her above his bed. Out of poverty, he refused a more comfortable chair in his confessional as well as a heater during the winter. He lived with his heart set on God. Jesus had said in the beatitudes, “Blessed are the poor in spirit. Theirs is the Kingdom of God.” And he was able to proclaim the kingdom so effectively — to show that the Christ the King was still present, the one born in a borrowed cave and buried in a borrowed grave — precisely because of that poverty. “Where your heart is, there will your treasure be,” Jesus said. And Padre Pio’s heart was fully in the Lord.
• When St. Paul VI went to San Giovanni Rotondo after St. Pio’s death, he praised him not for his inimitable qualities like bilocation, the working of miracles of healing, the prediction of the future and bearing the wounds of Christ, but for what all of us in our own circumstances can emulate. Pope Paul commented that “he said Mass humbly, … heard confessions from dawn to dusk … and was a man of prayer and suffering.” I finish just on his love for the Mass, where God “provides [us] only the food [we] need,” our daily super-substantial Bread. He really drew his life from Christ in the Eucharist. His daily Mass used to last a few hours, as he united himself to the Lord’s prayer from the Upper Room and from the Cross. Despite the crowds who attended each day, the local ecclesiastical authorities for a time banned him from celebrating the Mass publicly because they thought three hours was scandalously too long. But he knew he was hearing Christ preach in the Mass and welcoming him into his hands on the altar, and he wasn’t going to place anything else ahead of entering into that moment. And he proclaimed truthfully the presence of the King, the Pearl of Great Price, by his love for the Eucharistic Jesus. He showed by his reverence the words of our Gospel verse, “The Kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the Gospel.”
• Today as we celebrate this Mass, we turn as Pio did to God the Father who gives us neither poverty nor riches but the food we need, Who announces to us his tested word so that we can abide in truth far from falsehood and lying. And then he sends us out, fed by Christ his Son, to continue to announce proclaim his kingdom with the fidelity with which Francesco Forgione, St. Padre Pio, did.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Gospel LK 9:1-6

Jesus summoned the Twelve and gave them power and authority
over all demons and to cure diseases,
and he sent them to proclaim the Kingdom of God
and to heal the sick.
He said to them, “Take nothing for the journey,
neither walking stick, nor sack, nor food, nor money,
and let no one take a second tunic.
Whatever house you enter, stay there and leave from there.
And as for those who do not welcome you,
when you leave that town,
shake the dust from your feet in testimony against them.”
Then they set out and went from village to village
proclaiming the Good News and curing diseases everywhere.

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