Luxuriant Vines Called to Bear Fruit in Divine Spousal Love, 14th Wednesday (II), July 11, 2018

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Wednesday of the 14th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of St. Benedict
July 11, 2018
Hos 10:1-3.7-8.12, Ps 105, Mt 10:1-7

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today God through the Prophet Hosea reminds Israel that it is a “luxuriant vine,” meant to bear fruit not just earthly, literal fruit but abundant spiritual fruit in response to God’s spousal love. But God says through Hosea that the more physical fruit they bore, the richer they become, the more pagan altars and fertility poles they built to Ba’al. Rather than sowing justice and reaping the fruit of piety, they were sowing thorns and thistles. But rather than being consumed with righteous indignation, God is consumed with mercy: “it is the time to seek the Lord,” he says, “till he come and rain down justice upon you.” God rained that justice down in his Son, Jesus, who came to help the world, beginning with Israel, to sow justice, reap piety, and bear fruit worthy of the luxuriance with which God had created them.
• The harvest of the fruit fitting for the vineyard is what today’s Gospel is about. Yesterday, as you remember, Jesus had the apostles pray to the Harvest Master, his Father, to send laborers for his harvest. Today, after they prayed and after Jesus prayed all night, God the Father responded by calling the very ones Jesus asked to pray, and he sent them out to collect the harvest that is ever white and ripe. It points to the central truth that the Lord wants all of us to pray and the Lord wants all of us to recognize that the Father is calling us, in different ways, to be those very laborers strengthened by that prayer, the divine calling, and the divine commissioning. We see various elements of that harvesting that Jesus sends us out to accomplish.
  • The first is to proclaim that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. The Kingdom is at hand because the King is present. The Kingdom of God is, in short, God. It’s where he reigns. To proclaim the Kingdom at hand is to say, “God is here” and “We need to let him reign in our lives.” Jesus sent out the 12 and he sends out us to proclaim, not merely with our words but with the way we live, that we’re not alone, that God is alive, that is he is with us, and that letting him reign in our lives has made all the difference in saving us and joyfully transforming us. The kingdom of God is one of fruitful spousal love.
  • As part of the proclamation that God is among us, Jesus sends the 12 and us out with his authority to expel demons and heal every disease and illness. We need to be signs of that exorcism, no longer letting the prince of this world, the father of lies, have any dominion over us and bring people to Jesus to experience that same liberation. Likewise we need to be the nurses of the Divine Physician and, as Pope Francis never ceases of saying, healing the wounds of those today. The Church is a field hospital in battle, it’s a trauma unit, and so many are wounded physically, emotionally, relationally, spiritually. We’re sent out as Good Samaritans to try to care for people in their illnesses and to let Jesus and his healing into their lives, remembering that Jesus never healed just for healing sake, but to bring people to the deepest type of healing of all, spiritual healing by faith.
  • And we’re sent out first not to the furthest ends of the world to strangers, but to the “lost sheep” of the “house of Israel.” The “house of Israel” were those that the apostles might have taken for granted, because they should have known about the kingdom but they were lost even when it was among them at hand. Similarly, we’re sent out first to those who are lost among us — to those we know are lost and even to those who we would presume would not be lost but maybe are going through a crisis of faith, even if priests, religious, or lifelong fervent Catholics. Everyone at some point needs a reminder of the Lord’s presence, of his dominion over the evil one, of his healing power. Eventually, after his Resurrection, the apostles would be sent out to the whole world, to proclaim the Gospel to every creature, but they needed to begin with those around them, which, in some ways, is harder, because as we heard on Sunday, prophets are accepted except in their native place, among their own kin.
• Among the most fruitful apostles in history are St. Benedict and the Benedictine monks and nuns he founded. They were the ones who have born not only so much material fruit from their monasteries — that at times have saved people in famine — but abundant spiritual fruit through cooperation with God. Just as much as the apostles were called individually in today’s Gospel, so St. Benedict and each of his monks were given a vocation. They lived out the reality of the kingdom of God among them, choosing the kingdom and seeking always the Lord’s face. He founded the Benedictine Order, as he said in his famous Rule, as a “school of the Lord’s service,” as a true academy of the kingdom of God. St. Benedict and his Benedictine sons and daughters seek to serve the Lord and live in the kingdom in their prayer, especially their common liturgical prayer that he called the “opus Dei,” the work of God. They seek to serve the Lord and live in the kingdom in their work. Prior to St. Benedict’s revolution, manual work, like working the fields, being in shops, even copying manuscripts, were considered things done by slaves. They also sought to serve the Lord and live in the kingdom in their study, zealously learning from the Master in such a way that they could not only live it but pass on as of the first important what they themselves received. Ora et labora et studium: They served the Lord and lived in the kingdom in the three-fold united service  of prayer, work, and study. Those remain the three principle courses in the life of every Christian.
• The center of Benedictine life, to which all of their work and study and liturgical prayers were directed, and the summit of Christian life was the culmination of the “opus Dei,” or liturgy of the Mass and the encounter with the Lord in the Holy Eucharist. It’s here that the Lord calls each of us by name.  and bless us with himself so that we can become a blessing for the world. St. Benedict would instruct his monks, “Christo omnimo nihil præponant,” “Prefer nothing whatsoever to Christ,” and to center our whole existence on our Eucharistic Lord is the first consequences of that preference. It’s here that St. Benedict’s example leads us, to the heart of the kingdom, as we prayed  at the beginning of Mass today: “O God, who made the Abbot Saint Benedict an outstanding master in the school of divine service, grant, we pray, that, putting nothing before love of you, we may hasten with a loving heart in the way of your commands.” Amen!

The readings for today’s Mass were: