Longing for Others with the Compassionate and Affectionate Love of Christ, 30th Friday (II), October 30, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Friday of the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
October 30, 2020
Phil 1:1-11, Ps 111, Lk 14:1-6

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today we begin in the first reading St. Paul’s most friendly, positive, warm and joyful letter, which he sent from a Roman jail to the Church in Philippi. We’ll continue with this Letter for seven days at daily Mass, through a week from tomorrow. Paul had planted the Gospel for the first time in Europe in Philippi, where he and Silas met Lydia and women down by the river, where he was unjustly imprisoned because he put someone manipulating a possessed girl out of business, but was freed by an earthquake leading to the baptism of the jailer and his whole family. Philippi was a Church that never gave Paul heartache. They received what he proclaimed with faith and always responded with generosity, as we’ll see in Chapter 4 of the letter. And so St. Paul’s purpose and tone in this letter were to strengthen them in the faith, presenting in depth the truths of the faith, without any need for fraternal correction. When Epaphroditus was leaving him in Rome to return to Philippi, Paul was able to send the letter with him.
• St. Paul’s love for the Christians in Philippi is palpable. “I hold you in my heart,” he writes, and “long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.” Think about that for a minute. He yearns for them with the splagchna of Jesus. The term splagchna refers to the bowels, everything from the liver and upper intestines to the heart and the lungs. It was considered the real center of a person. The synoptic evangelists use it in a very to signify Jesus’ merciful love, writing that Jesus’ “heart was moved with pity.” The New American Bible in the lectionary translates it “affection,” which is complementary. Just as Jesus loves them with mercy and affection so does Paul. And so we likewise are called to love with affection and mercy. I think sometimes it’s easier for some faithful people to love with mercy than affection. We don’t treat most others with affection. Those of us who have spent a lot of time in community life can sometimes have affection stripped out of us, but that would be a defect of chaste love. Chastity, among other things, involves the integration of our emotions with our reason and will and we would not be loving with affective maturity if that were not expressed with warmth, with joy, with the heart. Jesus loved with affection, Paul loved with affection and we’re similarly called to love others as Christ has loved us first.
• We see that merciful affection of Jesus in today’s Gospel. He went for dinner to the house of a Pharisee where everyone was watching him. Someone with an edema — or swelling caused by fluid retention — was there, probably as a plant, to test whether Jesus would cure him on the Sabbath. Jesus didn’t hesitate. After asking whether it was lawful to cure on the Sabbath or not — whether it was possible to do good deeds on the Lord’s day! — he healed the man. The principle Jesus gave was no one would ever allow one of their children or even animals who fell into a cistern to remain in there on the Sabbath but would work on the Sabbath to rescue him. Jesus, therefore, with merciful affection, wouldn’t all this man one more day to remain with dropsy. Jesus’ analogy highlights that we always do something with urgency for someone or something we really care about, who matters to us, whom we love, and we would see that such authentic love for that person would not be a violation of God’s will or law. The problem for the Pharisees was that they just didn’t really care about the man with dropsy. They didn’t love him at all, not to mention with affection or mercy. Jesus did.
• St. Paul says that his prayer was that the Philippians’ “love may increase ever more and more” so that they “may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ.” He wanted them to increase in affectionate and merciful love for everyone, including those who were most in need. This is the “good work” God had begun in them that St. Paul was praying God “complete.” That was the means by which they would bear the “fruit of righteousness,” or holiness, because holiness is the perfection of charity and charity isn’t perfected without mercy and affection.
• Today at Mass the same Jesus who visited the house of one of the leading Pharisees visits this house, where he wants to heal each of us of whatever bloats us spiritually, whatever difficulties we’re retaining and can excrete away. He loves us with affection and mercy and shows it by giving us his body and blood, to begin to complete the good work he began in us at our creation and at our new creation in baptism. How great are the works of the Lord, as we prayed in the Psalm; this is the greatest of all expressions of his love. As Jesus enters our splagchna, we ask him to transform it, so that our “love may increase ever more and more” and we, too, may learn with St. Paul how to love others with the splagchna of Christ Jesus.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Gospel LK 14:1-6

On a sabbath Jesus went to dine
at the home of one of the leading Pharisees,
and the people there were observing him carefully.
In front of him there was a man suffering from dropsy.
Jesus spoke to the scholars of the law and Pharisees in reply, asking,
“Is it lawful to cure on the sabbath or not?”
But they kept silent; so he took the man and,
after he had healed him, dismissed him.
Then he said to them
“Who among you, if your son or ox falls into a cistern,
would not immediately pull him out on the sabbath day?”
But they were unable to answer his question.

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