Not Afraid to Be Like the Master and Acknowledge God Before Others, 14th Saturday (II), July 9, 2022

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Monastery of Saint Anne, Swieta Anna, Poland
Tertio Millennio Seminar
Saturday of the 14th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Votive Mass of Our Lady
July 9, 2022
Is 6:1-8, Ps 93, Mt: 10:24-33

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

The following points were attempted in the homily:

• Today we finish five days of instructions that the Lord Jesus gave to the apostles before sending them out for the first time to announce and demonstrate that the Kingdom of Heaven had drawn near. In the section we had yesterday, Jesus had spoken humanly ominous words that they would all suffer in the proclamation, be betrayed by family members, religious leaders and civil officials, hated by all, be persecuted and even killed. But today Jesus tells them three times not to be afraid. He indicates to them that just as he’ll be treated, they’ll be treated, but through that suffering they’ll become like him their teacher and master, and, like him and together with him, introduce people to how the kingdom will triumph even over sin, persecution and death. He encouraged them to speak in light and proclaim on the housetops the truths he has confided in them, confident that, rather than fearing the opinions of others, they should only care about what God thinks, reminding them that God loves them, has numbered every follicle and accounts them far more valuable than many sparrows whom he likewise never forgets. He promises them that whoever acknowledges him before men he himself will acknowledge eternally before the Father.
• Regardless the mission to which he entrusts them can be humanly intimidating. That’s why the first reading from the vocation story of the prophet Isaiah is so important. After Isaiah saw the theophany of God, he recognized his unworthiness to be in God’s presence. He was a man of “unclean” (profane) lips and considered himself objectively unworthy of speaking of what he had seen. But God cured him through the seraphim with a burning charcoal, much like God wants to purify each of us by sending us the fire of the Holy Spirit. Once purified, when God asks for a volunteer to send, Isaiah steps forward: “Here I am. Send me!” That is a witness to us. Before a priest proclaims the Gospel in the Extraordinary Form, he prays for God to purify his lips and heart like God purified Isaiah’s lips with a burning charcoal. God wants to make us worthy to speak to him and about him, so that we can in fact give witness in every age, like Isaiah to his contemporaries before the exile, like the apostles before their martyrdoms.
• Today we have four different examples of those who acknowledge God before others.
• The first is the Chinese martyrs, St. Augustine Zhao Rong and his 119 companions, who testified to the presence of God despite numerous waves of anti-Christian persecutions, hatred and death.
• The second is the 19 Martyrs of Gorkum, who gave their lives in witness to the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist against Calvinists in Holland 450 years ago today.
• The third is the Dominican nuns of this monastery, who are full-fledged members of the Order of Preachers, giving witness to Christ like they just did for an hour behind the grill, and as they do by their whole life, showing not only that God exists but he is the pearl of great price worth selling all they have to obtain.
• Finally, we have our Lady on this Saturday, who let her whole life develop in testimony to the blessed Fruit of her womb, the Word made flesh.
• We ask all of their intercession that we, too, having been purified may step forward to be sent by the Lord to give witness to him, like Christ our Teacher. As we prepare to say the same words Isaiah heard proclaimed in his vision — Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord God of hosts — in fulfillment of that theophany, we ask the Lord who numbers all our hair and loves us more than all creatures to make us one with our master, so like the witnesses we remember today, we may not be afraid to testify to him and his love in this world and forever.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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