Our Calling To Heal Wounds, Not Cause Them, 23rd Tuesday (II), September 11, 2018

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Tuesday of the 23rd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Votive Mass for the Preservation of Justice and Peace
17th Anniversary of 9/11
September 11, 2018
1 Cor 6:1-11, Ps 149, Lk 6:12-19

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• As we mark today the 17th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, we have a chance to ponder how so many responded and how we’re called to respond in ordinary and extraordinary circumstances. In today’s readings we see several important elements for us to grasp about the deepest realities of our vocation and mission to live in and spread Christ’s kingdom. We also see how some don’t. Let’s begin with Sacred Scripture and then turn to 9/11.
• The first lesson is that our vocation, our life, is a direct result of the prayer of the Lord Jesus. We see him at the beginning of the Gospel go up a mountain and spend all night in prayer to his Father. He who is the second Person of the Blessed Trinity was praying all night. What an example about the importance of prayer for us who are not God! Jesus seems to have been praying in discernment about whom he should choose as his apostles and praying in intercession for those whom he was about to choose. We should never forget that Jesus likewise prays for us. He’s ascended into heaven in order to intercede for us. For that reason, we should never really be afraid of living up to the vocation that God has given us, because just as much as Jesus prayed for the apostles, prayed for Peter that his faith may not fail but that after his conversion he would strengthen his brothers (Lk 22), he prayed to the Father for all those who would hear the Gospel through the work of the Apostles (Jn 17), and prays for us still.
• The second thing we see in this Gospel episode is what he did at dawn. From among his disciples, he selected twelve apostles. It says he “called [them] to himself” and “named [them] Apostles,” another way of saying what St. Mark describes: “he called them to be with him and so that they might be sent out” (Mk 3:14). We come here face-to-face with the mystery of divine election. God calls us all to him, but among all of us he chooses some for more intensely intimate cooperation with him. Out of all people he chose the Jews; out of all the Jews, some became his disciples; out of all those disciples, 12 became apostles; out of all 12, he chose three (Peter, James and John) to be with him in many of the most pivotal moments of his public life (healing the daughter of Jairus, the Transfiguration, the Agony in the Garden); and out of the three, he chose one, Peter, on whom to build his Church. Likewise we can say that Jesus calls all 7 billion alive today to come to the knowledge of the truth, but only 2 out of 7 is Christian and only half of them are Catholic. Out of that, only a few are called to be priests and religious. These facts don’t make us better than anyone else, but we are certainly fortunate. And just as the apostles responded to Jesus’ invitation and left other things to be with him and made themselves available to be sent out on mission, so have we, something that is a response to Jesus’ prayer and doubtless something that gives him great joy.
• The third thing we see in the Gospel is the way Jesus trained the twelve to carry on his mission. We see that he taught the crowds, he healed them of their diseases and cured them of demonic possession. Everyone, St. Luke tells us, wanted to touch him “because power came forth from him and healed them all.” The mission of the Church is to continue to teach as Jesus’ mystical body, to continue to heal through the sacraments and through charity, and to continue to make it possible for people to touch Jesus and be touched by him. For this to occur, we need to “be with Jesus,” by praying in union with him, by teaching in union with him, and by acting in union with him.
• We see in today’s first reading how many of the Christians in Corinth had ceased doing this, as Paul reminds them forcefully. We can see that even among the 12 Jesus called after intense prayer, and after an initially positive response, there was Judas Iscariot, who would betray him in many small ways before betraying him unto death. We need to be aware that the same thing can happen to us and it was happening to the recently baptized in Corinth. St. Paul castigates them for one thing they were doing that he said was totally antithetical to their Christian identity: bringing suits against each other before civil tribunals. He asks, “How can any one of you with a case against another dare to bring it to the unjust for judgment instead of to the holy ones?” We’ve recently seen the ugly case of the fight over the remains of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen when the Diocese of Peoria has sued the Archdiocese of New York in the New York Supreme Court trying to get the body of Archbishop Sheen to be translated to the Cathedral in Peoria. It’s as if no one in Peoria has read 1 Cor 6 or takes it seriously. Can’t we find one person in the whole Church who can fairly adjudicate this situation? But we’ve also seen in the United States many cases in which mothers sue their sons, daughters sue their parents, brothers and sisters dragging each other into civil court. All of us instinctively know that the love of God isn’t present in such familial disputes, that the family members aren’t truly living in Christ’s kingdom, when they’re putting, for example, financial concerns or inheritances above their familial bonds and often above God. St. Paul says that it’s supposed to be even stronger among us as spiritual brothers and sisters in the Church and any time Christians were suing each other in civil courts it was a scandal to others since Christ prayed that we would all be one like the members of the Trinity and seek first his kingdom. St. Paul makes two objections. The first is that when there are inevitable disagreements, he wants us to bring it to a mutually agreed upon arbiter with good judgment who can help settle the dispute consistent with Christian faith. “Can it be that there is not one among you wise enough to be able to settle a case between brothers?,” St. Paul asks. The second is that it’s better for us to lose a suit than to lose a spiritual sibling and lose the kingdom. “Why not rather put up with injustice?,” he continues. “Why not rather let yourselves be cheated? Instead, you inflict injustice and cheat, and this to brothers.” Even if we win the lawsuit, he is saying, we lose. Then he immediately goes out to remind them that the “unjust will not inherit the Kingdom of God” and he describes what they were doing as akin to the sins of fornication, idolatry, adultery, prostitution, sodomy, theft, greed, drunkenness and robbery, saying all will exclude us from the kingdom. We can’t be seeking to live in God’s kingdom, St. Paul insists, and at the same time suing each other in civil court as if we were combatants instead of spiritual siblings. We should be filled with shame over such behavior — first embarrassed, but then mindful of why we should be embarrassed, because we’re called to something greater and better by God. These words are just as relevant today as they ever more. St. Paul calls us to a higher standard, the standard of the kingdom, saying that we were once sinners, excluded from the kingdom, but we have been “washed,” “sanctified,” and “justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.” But we’ve got to live and act in the name of the Lord and in accordance with the Spirit.
• We saw a different response on 9/11, one that continues to move me. In response to terrible evil, so many responded heroically. They ran into burning buildings. They waited for hours to give blood. They ran to Church to pray. They opened their homes and hearts to so many acts of charity. They are models of how servants of the Gospel are always meant to behave in response to the terrorism of the evil one, to the destruction caused by sin, to the countless deaths every day, to ensure that these deaths be in the Lord rather than outside of him.
• This leads to good news we see in the Responsorial Psalm, which at daily Masses “responds” to what we heard in the first reading. Today it easily could have been, for example, Psalm 51, “Have mercy on us, O Lord, for we have sinned!” Instead, it’s “The Lord takes delight in his people.” It shows us the lesson of today’s Gospel, that not only despite our sins but even through them, God has called us, forgiven us, sanctified us, and sent us out to try to bring others to conversion. He calls us to be with him in his mercy and sends us out with his mercy so that others can learn about it, touch it, and have the demons that want them to reject or take that mercy for granted expelled. The Lord takes delight in us. Today as we come forward to pray this Mass, we recognize that Jesus is teaching us in the Gospel and through his apostle Paul, that he seeks to heal, wash, sanctify and justify us, that he calls us to himself, that he wants us to touch him on the inside through Holy Communion, and then he wants to send us out not to live a litigious but a liturgical life, transforming our whole existence into the praise of God and the consistent proclamation of his kingdom in “deeds and in truth” so that others may learn from us, as we have heard from the heroes of 9/11, how to seek the things of Jesus Christ, to love others as Good Samaritans, and to live in accordance with our vocation to the kingdom.

The readings for today’s Mass were: