Our Advent Yoking to Christ, Second Wednesday of Advent, December 9, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Wednesday of the Second Week of Advent
Memorial of St. Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin
41st Anniversary of the Death of the Venerable Fulton J. Sheen
December 9, 2020
Is 40:25-31, Ps 103, Mt 11:28-30

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

The following points were attempted in this homily: 

• As we have been discussing, in Advent there is a triple dynamism: Christ comes to us in history, mystery and majesty; we run out to embrace him; and then, having encountered him, we go out united with him to complete the work he wants to do in us and through us for the salvation for the world. We ponder this triple reality in today’s readings. As Jesus is coming to us, he says, “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened and I will give you rest.” Jesus calls us in the midst of our work, he calls us in the context of all our struggles and difficulties, to come to him to find the rest our bodies and souls need. But the rest Jesus offers is not what normally we would anticipate. For most of us we would anticipate that rest would mean a vacation from our labors or the elimination or a respite from our burdens. Jesus offers something else. It’s a yoke: “Take my yoke upon you,” he says, “and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart, and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy and my burden light.” The yoke Jesus offers is something that will harness us to him, so that, just as a yoke binds two oxen to work together, we will do everything together with him. That yoke is his Cross, which is not so much a sign of pain but of the love that makes even the pain of crucifixion somehow bearable. To be united with the Lord who comes and calls us to come to him is to be united to that love that makes even the yoke of the Cross easy-fitting and light — and whatever burdens and labors we carry to the yoke easier and lighter.
• Jesus calls us to yoke ourselves to him in such a way that we will learn meekness and humility directly from him. God’s great strength is not exercised in the way the strong of the world often flex their muscles. We see the way Jesus himself exercises his strength in the Gospel. Meekness is not weakness. The Greek word for “meek” means the self-discipline and power of a martial arts expert or tremendously agile athlete, or of a well-trained, docile horse, capable of action and reaction at a simple bump. Real strength is not shown in pummeling any and all adversaries, but often in resisting doing so even though one could. That’s why St. Paul will say that Christ crucified is the power and the wisdom of God. Yoking ourselves to Jesus allows us to learn this meekness from him, so that in the midst of our labors and burdens we’re not beaten down but, like a black belt in the martial arts, use what is thrown at us to help us achieve what we want to rather than to obstruct that goal. When we are yoked to Jesus, our sufferings and work help purify us and help sanctify the world. Likewise yoked to Jesus we learn how to grow in humility through offering our work and burdens for the service of others. The Season of Advent helps us to focus on humility as we prepare for Christmas and the unbelievable humility that God showed not only in taking on our human nature, but taking on great poverty, being born in a borrowed cave, placed in an animal trough, wrapped in swaddling clothes rather than regal garments, eventually working himself as a carpenter, and experiencing the normal burdens of life. In all of these humbling circumstances, Jesus was carrying out his work of salvation, which is something each of us can and ought to learn from him, because we, too, united to him, can convert all the ordinary, humble circumstances of our day into opportunities to glorify God, love others, and grow in God’s image and likeness.
• The consequences of being yoked to Jesus are beautifully expressed by God through the prophet Isaiah in today’s first reading. The Israelites are questioning whether they are “disregarded” by their God as they languish in exile. God first speaks about “his great might and the strength of his power” and then reminds them, “The Lord is the eternal God, creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint nor grow weary.” When that God took on our nature to be yoked to us in an eternal communion, those divine properties can be gradually assimilated by us. Isaiah tells us that God “gives strength to the fainting; for the weak he makes vigor abound. Though young men faint and grow weary, and youths stagger and fall, they that hope in the Lord will renew their strength, they will soar as with eagles’ wings; They will run and not grow weary, walk and not grow faint.” When we are united to the Lord, when we learn from him humility and meekness, when we yoke ourselves to God’s love, then our burdens and labors don’t weary us the way they weary others. We get a holy stamina to keep running without tiring, to keep walking without fainting, to keep giving and serving without counting the cost, just as Jesus did with regard to us. This doesn’t mean that a deep spiritual life takes away the physical necessities of sleep, rest, eating and normal care, but it does give us an energy, a motivation that can keep us going. The fundamental reason is because we start to do things for God and for others rather than for ourselves. We start focusing on God’s glory and others’ good more than our own comfort, and we find within not just a deeper human reserve than we were aware of, but a vastly greater spiritual reserve given by God. When we do things motivated by love, those burdens are not only lighter but sweeter. This is the source of the energy of the great saints, what made St. John Paul II vigorous and willing to continue flying across the Globe with Parkinson’s season. This is what led St. Mother Teresa to keep serving until her late 80s. This is what allows Pope Francis to keep the schedule he does, eight days from his 84th birthday. This is what allows you to keep going, late into the day, caring for women in need. This is what helps so many priests and religious, lay leaders of St. Vincent de Paul conferences and many other disciples to continue teaching and caring and serving well past closing time or retirement age with an infectious joy that constantly rejuvenates. That happens because they’re yoked to Jesus in prayer, in the sacraments, in the Word, in charity and that’s where they get their energy.
• The ones who show us most profoundly the type of life-changing Advent yoking to which we’re called are the saints. Today we can focus on two holy men. The first is St. Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin. This 57-year-old man was chosen by Mary 489 years ago today to participate in a special way, together with her, in facilitating the encounter with God and bringing many others to do so. He shows us that the best way to yoke ourselves to Christ is through Our Lady, as his tilma is a sign of his having entered into her yoking herself to Christ in meekness and humility. When the Blessed Mother appeared to St. Juan Diego on Tepeyac Hill on December 9, 1531, he was a simple, humble, 57 year-widower known for walking with his head down and shuffling his feet. He had been baptized only seven years before by the Franciscan missionaries through whom he had first encountered the true God. He soon became a fervent believer. Every Saturday and Sunday he would walk 15 miles each way to Mass. He would run and not grow weary, and walk and not grow faint! As he was journeying one cold Saturday morning, he heard a voice calling from the top of a hill, “Juanito,” “Dieguito,” “Come here!” He scaled the rocky slope, where at the top he saw the Blessed Virgin Mary arrayed in splendor. Our Lady announced she had come on a mission as our Mother of Mercy and wanted him to be her emissary to Bishop Juan de Zumárraga of Mexico City to have him build a church on Tepeyac Hill where the encounter with God could continue. Obeying simply and immediately, he headed in his simple peasant’s outfit to the episcopal residence, where he was forced to wait for hours in a cold outdoor courtyard. Eventually the bishop received him, treated him with kindness, but basically, despite Juan Diego’s obvious sincerity, as a little deluded. Juan Diego left feeling like a complete failure. Returning at once to Our Lady on Tepeyac Hill, he said that he had struck out. “I beg you, Noble Lady,” he implored, “to entrust this message to someone of importance, someone well-known and respected, so that your wish will be accomplished. For I am only a lowly peasant and you, my Lady, have sent me to a place where I have no standing. Forgive me if I have disappointed you for having failed in my mission.” But Our Lady smiled tenderly on him and said, “Listen to me, my dearest son, and understand that I have many servants and messengers whom I could charge with the delivery of my message. But it is altogether necessary that you should be the one to undertake this mission and that it be through your mediation and assistance that my wish should be accomplished. I urge you to go to the Bishop again tomorrow. Tell him in my name and make him fully understand my disposition, that he should undertake the erection of the teocalli (temple) for which I ask. And repeat to him that it is I in person, the ever Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, who send you.” Mary didn’t strictly speaking need Juan Diego. She could have appeared to the Bishop himself. But she wanted to incorporate him in this saving mission, in this great harvest that would take place in the Americas. Likewise she wants to involve each of us, no matter how unqualified we feel or may in fact be. So after that second meeting with our Lady, Juan Diego went with trepidation to see the bishop again. He feared what the bishop’s overprotective servants might do to him. They greeted him with ill-concealed exasperation. He was told the bishop was busy with more important matters. He told them he was willing to wait — and did, for several hours in the frigid outdoor courtyard. When he finally met the bishop again, he repeated, with fervor and tears, the message of Our Lady entrusted to him. The bishop asked some questions. Though moved by Juan Diego’s sincerity, he wasn’t going to build a church in a desolate spot on the basis of one native’s unsubstantiated word. To test the message, the bishop asked him for a special secret sign from Our Lady. Juan Diego left at once to ask for the sign. Arriving back at Tepeyac, the Virgin told him to return the following day to receive the sign to bring the bishop. That sign turned out to be Castillian roses, which had not yet been introduced to Mexico, growing on the top of a stony hill in frigid December temperatures. Juan Diego was instructed to bring them back to the bishop in his tilma, or outer parka. When he returned to the bishop, as he opened up his tilma, the bishop saw the roses from his native Castille, which was the sign he was seeking. He and everyone else also saw something even more miraculous: some of the roses had melted into the tilma and produced the miraculous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe: our Lady, dressed like a pregnant Aztec princess, was giving witness that she was ready to give birth to Christ among the Mexican people, that in her the Gospel and the Mexican people were harmoniously yoked to the coming of Christ. St. Juan Diego’s tilma is now the most famous piece of clothing of all time. His outer garment became part of the message Our Lady had given him. His clothing became part of the mission and message he had been chosen as a laborer by the Master of the Harvest and by the mother of the Son of that Master.
• Today we also mark the 41st anniversary of the death of the Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, the greatest Catholic preacher in the history of the United States, whom we pray will soon be beatified. He was one who had yoked himself to Christ in the priesthood, who battled virtuously to become humble and meek, who labored without growing weary or faint, crisscrossing the globe for the Missions, or recording yet another television or radio program, writing another book, preaching another retreat. He shows us how to yoke ourselves to Christ in the Holy Eucharist. The reason for his enormous spiritual fruitfulness, he openly admitted, was because he began each morning with a Eucharistic Holy Hour and Mass. Jesus told us that if we abided in Him the Vine, we would bear much fruit (Jn 15:5), and Sheen did both. Every morning he abided in Christ’s real presence and then welcomed Him within. That was the fuel for the supersonic engine that powered his whole priestly life and he proposed it as the fuel for every Christian life. In one of his retreat talks to priests and lay people, he told a story about celebrating in Africa when he was the head of the Propagation of the Faith. He was brought over to give a leper Holy Communion. Her arms were lost below the elbow and her legs below the knees. After Mass, Archbishop Sheen asked her where she lived and she said about four miles away in the bush. He asked her how she had gotten to Mass and she described that she had used her limbs to crawl to Mass the four miles. Sheen was touched. He said that the following day he and the local priest would take bicycles to bring her Holy Communion in the bush after Mass. But when he came out to celebrate Mass she was there. After Mass he asked her whether she remembered that he had promised to bring her Holy Communion so that she wouldn’t have to crawl again for the eight mile round trip. She thanked him for his willingness but said, “I couldn’t wait!” On the day of his priestly ordination, Sheen committed himself to make a Holy Hour every day in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament. Sixty years later, he thanked God for giving him the grace to keep that promise, and confessed that “the hour that made my day” in which he yoked himself to the Lord Jesus was the source of his fidelity and his fruitfulness. “It is impossible for me to explain how helpful the Holy Hour has been in preserving my vocation,” Sheen wrote in his autobiography. “Scripture gives considerable evidence to prove that a priest begins to fail his priesthood when he fails in his love of the Eucharist. … The beginning of the fall of Judas and the end of Judas both revolved around the Eucharist. The first mention that Our Lord knew who it was who would betray Him is at the end of the sixth chapter of John, which is the announcement of the Eucharist. The fall of Judas came the night Our Lord gave the Eucharist, the night of the Last Supper.” “The Holy Hour, quite apart from all its positive spiritual benefits, kept my feet from wandering too far. Being tethered to a tabernacle, one’s rope for finding other pastures is not so long.” He added that the Holy Hour “became like an oxygen tank to revive the breath of the Holy Spirit in the midst of the foul and fetid atmosphere of the world. Even when it seemed so unprofitable and lacking in spiritual intimacy, I still had the sensation of being at least like a dog at the master’s door, ready in case he called me.” It was in this daily holy hour that Sheen’s booming voice was silent as he listened to gentle whisper of his Master. It was here that he discussed with Jesus his homilies, difficulties, hopes, projects, and potential converts. It was here that his heart was set on fire.  So convinced was he of the connection between the Eucharist and fruitful fidelity that he judged the success or failure of every retreat he preached on how many retreatants he could convince to make a Eucharistic holy hour every day for the rest of their life.
• Today Christ invites us to yoke ourselves to him through Mary in the Holy Eucharist so that we might bear abundant fruit. Every Mass Christ yokes himself to us on the inside just as he yoked himself to Mary in the Annunciation. The word in Latin for yoke is jugum and the expression to be yoked with someone is conjugum. That’s where we get our term “conjugal,” or “spousal,” because husbands and wives are yoked together for the rest of their life in one flesh. It’s here at Mass, in the consummation of Jesus the Bridegroom’s spousal union with us, his Bride, that we are yoked to him with all our labors and burdens. It’s here he gives us repose. It’s here that we ponder in a special way his incredible humility hiding under the appearances of bread and wine and his meekness in adapting his care to us just as we are today. It’s from here that he wishes to send us out — like he sent out St. Juan Diego and the Venerable Fulton Sheen — yoked to him to do our work, to run without growing weary and to walk without fainting, all the way home to heaven!

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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