Living with the Light of Life, Fourth Wednesday of Easter, April 28, 2021

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Wednesday of the Fourth Week of Easter
Memorial of St. Louis de Montfort, St. Peter Chanel, and St. Gianna Beretta Molla
April 28, 2021
Acts 12:24-13:5, Ps 67, Jn 12:44-50

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today we reach the midpoint of the Easter season and as we prepare to make the transition tomorrow to Jesus’ words from Holy Thursday, interpreted anew in the light of his Resurrection. In the Alleluia versicle today, we ponder Jesus’ words, “I am the Light of the World. Whoever follows me will have the light of life.” Jesus wants us all to have the light of life, to live with with him risen from the dead. That’s why today, on the 25th day of the 50- day Easter season, we have a shift in our Easter Mystagogical Catechesis as we take stock of all that we have experienced over the last three and a half weeks and examine our response to the reality of his resurrection and appearances, the gift of Baptism, the awesome truth of his Real Presence and of his Shepherdly care.
• Today’s passage is Jesus’ last public teaching prior to Holy Thursday. Jesus gives these words right after the crowds were challenging his’ Messianic credentials. John says, “Although he had performed so many signs in their presence, they did not believe in him… Nevertheless, many, even among the authorities, believed in him, but because of the Pharisees, they did not acknowledge it openly in order not to be expelled from the synagogue, for they preferred human praise to the glory of God” (Jn 12:37, 42-43). Some refused to believe; others believed but cared too much about human respect. Neither group received and walked in the light Jesus had brought into the world. The Church wants us to ponder those inadequate responses and then, positively, to believe with all our heart and to care above all about pleasing God by walking fully in is light.
• Let’s get more deeply into the choice the Church wants us to make. In the Gospel today, Jesus reveals that he has come as the image of the Father. The one who sees Him, he says, sees the Father. The One who hears him, hears what the Father commanded him to say and speak. The one who believes in Him, believes in the Father who sent him. The way we respond to Jesus and to what he says and does, in other words, is the way we respond to God the Father and his redemptive will. God the Father, Jesus tells us, sent Jesus into the world to save the world, not to condemn it, but in order to receive that gift, people need to respond freely and willingly and leave death row. They need to choose to leave the darkness and come into the light. Jesus has given us the Father’s commandment, which is “eternal life,” but we need to embrace and live by that commandment, otherwise God’s word, that commandment, will condemn us because we are ultimately rejecting the Father who through and in Jesus proclaimed that word. Jesus’ words are words-to-be-done, not just to hear. His call is something upon which to act with commitment, not something just to consider and remain where we are. The ultimate meaning of a human life depends on how we respond to Jesus’ light, his words, his person, his salvation, placing that gift above human respect and every other consideration.
• Today in the first reading, we see those who have responded to Jesus in this way. Saints Paul and Barnabas and the other members of the Church of Antioch were seeking to live by the light of the Lord, to act on his word, to become the living echoes of his voice, and images of the image of the invisible God, radiating his light to those who were still in darkness. They were seeking to respond to the Father’s command of love, his will for them to have eternal life by coming to know Him and the Son whom he had sent. The Church was growing because of all those drawn to the light they saw radiating in Christians, for in hearing them, they were hearing Christ who had sent them and hearing God the Father; in seeing them, they were seeing icons of Christ and the Father he reflected; in believing in them, they were believing in Christ and in the Father who loved the world so much to send his Son to rescue it. So docile were they to the Lord’s command that when the Holy Spirit revealed to them his will while they were praying and fasting, to set Saul and Barnabas apart for the work he had in mind for them, they immediately acted. Paul and Barnabas gave God a blank check. The whole community allowed them to go rather than selfishly try to keep them to themselves. They knew they were being sent out as a light to the nations and they rejoiced and supported this Mission. And we see what happened. After Paul and Barnabas were set apart, “They, sent forth by the Holy Spirit, went down to Seleucia and from there sailed to Cyprus. When they arrived in Salamis, they proclaimed the word of God in the Jewish synagogues.” That detail is important because Barnabas was from Cyprus. They were beginning at home. We prayed in the Entrance Antiphon today, “I will praise you, Lord, among the nations; I will tell of your name to my kin” (Ps 18), and Barnabas and Paul set out to do that. They had begun a mission so that, as we prayed in the Responsorial Psalm, all the peoples might praise him, his ways be known about earth and his salvation be embraced among the nations. They were passing on to others Christ’s words, his commandment, his life, his very life risen from the dead in them. And from there they would begin to light the whole world ablaze.
• Today we have three other witnesses who show us the light of life.
• The first is St. Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort (1673-1716), who was a great missionary preacher in France at the beginning of the 1700s, but he really wasn’t appreciated during his life time. He suffered so much from people who thought he was making a fool of himself, being a showman, in preaching missions and trying to bring people to conversion, to salvation, to hear God’s words and live by them rather than seek to please human beings. He suffered persecution not only from those who were resisting a basic conversion but also from those clerics and good people from whom he has asking total conversion. But he was able to persevere in the light of the Lord through his devotion to the one who showed him how to be a sign pointing to Christ: the Blessed Virgin Mary. He sought to help everyone become truly devout to our Lady. After he had died, his writings were discovered and since have become the greatest preparation for consecration to Our Lady. He would be urging us to find in Mary the illustration of all of the lessons of the Gospel, because it was in her God’s word became flesh. We are able to see in her the full reflection of divine refulgence. The secret to living the Christian life, to becoming an icon of Christ’s light, is to be found, St. Louis stressed, by reliving Mary’s mystery in Christ.
• The second witness is St. Peter Chanel (1803-1841), who became a Missionary in the newly formed Society of Mary (Marists) and was sent from his native France to New Hebrides in the South Pacific to bring the light of Christ to Oceania. At first, after a ten-month journey, he and his fellow missionaries were well received on the island of Futuna by the people and by King Niuliki, but the King’s fears and envy were aroused when they learned the local language and gained the people’s confidence, thinking that his prerogatives as sovereign and high priest might be abrogated. When his son asked for baptism, the King sent warriors to club him to death. But his witness of God’s love, traveling so far, immersing himself in their lives, wasn’t forgotten by the people. Within five months, the radiance of the light he gave, his willingness to suffer for Christ and for them, helped bring the entire island to conversion. His light remains still. I rejoiced to have a chance to celebrate Mass at his tomb in New Zealand a couple of years ago.
• The third great witness is St. Gianna Beretta Molla, who died on this day in 1962, who shows us the light of Christ’s saving will through her maternal love. Born 40 years earlier, she became a pediatrician and planned to dedicate her life to sick children, but at 33, she met and fell in love with a good Catholic engineer named Pietro Molla, whom she married after a year’s courtship. They sought to live the life of an ordinary Christian couple, combining their careers with their duties to their family. In the first five years of their marriage, God blessed them with three children. During the summer of 1961, they discovered that God had blessed them with a fourth. Two months into her pregnancy, however, Dr. Molla started to feel abdominal pain. She went to see her brother who was an obstetrician, who with his colleagues discovered she had large malignant fibroma in her uterus that was risking her life and the life of her child. One of her brother’s colleagues presented her the options: The first was a complete hysterectomy, which would save her own life but take the life of her child; the second was to abort the child and then try to excise the tumor while saving the uterus, so that she could have other children; the third was by far the riskiest: to try to extract the tumor alone, conscious that the post-surgical sutures could rupture the uterus later and lead to the death both of mother and child. Without hesitation, Gianna resolutely chose the third option, which was the only one that had any chance of saving her child’s life. While she was being prepared for surgery, she insisted with her surgeon to do whatever he needed to do to save the baby’s life, even at the loss of her own. The surgery was as successful as it could be. They got the tumor and the child didn’t miscarry, but both were still at risk. Gianna went on with her life joyfully trusting in the Lord. She kept repeating to worried family members, “Whatever God wants.” She wrote to a friend: “I have prayed so much in these days. With faith and hope I have entrusted myself to the Lord… I trust in God, yes; but now it is up to me to fulfill my duty as a mother. I renew to the Lord the offer of my life. I am ready for everything, to save my baby.” On Good Friday, April 20, 1962, she entered the hospital to deliver her fourth child. She told the medical team, many of whom knew and loved her as a colleague: “If you must choose between me and the baby, have no hesitation: choose — and I demand it — the baby, save him!” A healthy little girl was delivered, whom she and Pietro named Giannina, or “little Gianna.” Giannina was placed in her delighted mother’s arms. But very soon Gianna’s post-partum pains and temperature increased. She was diagnosed with septic peritonitis. The doctors did everything they could do — antibiotics, blood transfusions, injections — but nothing helped. Throughout her agony, she kept saying, “Jesus, I love you. Jesus I love you,” until she fell into a coma. A week later, on April 28th, she died. “No one has any greater love,” Jesus said during the first Mass, “than to lay down his life for his friends.” Dr. Gianna Molla became a luminous sign of that Christ-like love in human, very modern terms. When it came to saving her life or saving her child’s, she chose her child’s. She was willing to sacrifice everything — her career, her family, her very life — for the sake of the gift growing within her. She was able to find joy in suffering, even death, out of love. The light of her Christian love reminds us of how Christ said to the Father that if it were a choice between saving his life and ours, to choose us!
• The same Lord whom Paul and Barnabas knew and met and in whom they believed, the same Holy Spirit that set them apart for a special work, that same Spirit who suffused Saints Louis de Montfort, Peter Chanel and Gianna Molla, speaks to us at Mass, meets us in the Holy Eucharist, consecrates us for a special Mission and then sends us forth together with the Holy Spirit to bring his light, his word, his presence and his salvation. For us we’re not being sent to Cyprus, but like Barnabas, to our “kin,” here in the “capital of the world,” New York, empowered by the same gifts that strengthened them. The Church continues to pray for us. The Church continues to fast for us. The saints continue to intercede for us. And we, spurning human respect, seek to do it all for God’s glory. This requires great humility. In the Gospel Jesus spoke not of himself but of the Father. And we speak not of ourselves but of Christ, seeking the hallowing of God’s name not ours, the coming of his kingdom not ours, the doing of his will not ours. The more we do so the more we begin to share his attributes. We become united with him to such a degree that we decrease and he increases, that others in accepting us, or rejecting us, are accepting or rejecting him. We’ll see this reality played out in a special way in St. Paul’s life. He would eventually say, “I have been crucified with Christ and the life I now live I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me” (Gal 2:18-20). Today as we prepare to the Lord Jesus, the light and life of the world, he renews us in our calling to be set apart from ordinary things for the work to which he has called us, so that he might send us out to serve others in communion with the love flowing out from his heart. May we respond to this grace of our consecration, renewed each consecration of the Mass,  like St. Paul and St. Barnabas did, so that we might spread God’s glory, receive the gift of eternal life that comes from acting on Jesus’ word, and help many others to come to experience with us the eternal kingdom of light.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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