Participation in Christ with Mary, Holy Name of Mary, September 12, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Saturday of the 23rd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
The Holy Name of Mary
September 12, 2020
1 Cor 10:14-22, Ps 116, Lk 6:43-49

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily (only partial, because the battery ran out half-way through), please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today Jesus concludes the Sermon on the Plain in St. Luke’s Gospel in the same way he brought the Sermon on the Mount to a close, with powerful agricultural and architectural images describing the relationship we’re supposed to have with him and the consequences that will have in our life. He wants us, first, to be united with him as branches on the vine, promising that when we become with him a “good tree” we will bear “good fruit” through “the store of goodness in [our] heart.” Likewise, when we build our life on him like a wise master builder (as Jesus and Joseph were in Nazareth), then we will be able together with him to resist the storms of life. The danger, he says, is that we will call upon him — “Lord, Lord!” — but not innest ourselves in him, but not build our existence on him. That’s not the right foundation, it won’t resist the trials, tribulations and temptations of life, and will most often lead to our bearing bad fruit.
• St. Paul picks up on these images in his First Letter to the Corinthians. He speaks about the type of participation God willed us to have with him, saying that Holy Communion is meant to make us participation Body and Blood of Christ. We are supposed to share Christ’s life, to ground our existence in him. But such an ingestion must be not only with the body but with the soul. We can’t just cry out “My Lord and My God” with the lips but not truly seek full participation in Christ and the fruit and the strength that participation effects. That’s why St. Paul says that when we are participating in Christ as branches on the vine, as a house build on him the Rock, we will be participating in the life of all those who similarly participate in Christ, as one Body. To receive Holy Communion with Christ and not desire, and work for, and live communion with the other members of his Mystical Body is not to receive him well. It also means that we will not will any participation with sin or things that are not worthy of Christ and his Church. St. Paul says, “I do not want you to become participants with demons,” for you cannot drink the cup of the Lord, you cannot partake of the table of the Lord, and drink and partake of the table of demons. The particular application he gives is with regard to eating meat sacrificed to idols, which not only scandalized many with sensitive consciences (as we heard on Thursday) but also could in some circumstances give rise to idolatry, since eating such meat was understood at the time as participating in the sacrifice to the pagan gods to whom the oblation of meat was made. But it can certainly be extended beyond the food we eat, to everything we consume. To participate in Christ means to participate in his holiness, and that must include a sincere will not to participate in anything incompatible with it.
• Someone who is a model for us in how to participate in Christ, someone who bears the greatest Fruit of All, and who not only built her house on Christ but became a house for him, is the Blessed Virgin Mary, the feast of whose holy name the Church celebrates today with joy. Mary’s whole life, from the first moment of her conception, was a participation in the life of God. She was “full of grace,” which means “full of God.” There was no participation of the cup and at the table of demons. In fact, there was enmity between her and those demonic offerings and temptations. Her whole life was so constructed on Christ that when the storms came — as we mark in her seven sorrows, for example — she remained faithful, standing at the foot of the Cross, uniting herself to her Son even in those storms and participating in his saving work. She fully participated in the self-offering of his Body and Blood on Calvary and then with joy intensified her participation through receiving her Son within during the Masses celebrated by St. John and likely other apostles as well. She shows us all how not just to bear good fruit, but how to bear Blessed Fruit, how to bear Christ, to bear witness to him, to bring him to others in our deeds. The feast of the Holy Name of Mary, a name we invoke every day when we cry out, “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners!,” originated in Spain in 1513, but it was extended to the whole Church in 1683 by Pope Innocent XI to mark the great victory of King Jan Sobieski of Poland in the Battle of Vienna on September 11 of that year, a victory that most historians believed kept Europe Christian against the invading Muslim Turks. When we turn to Mary and invoke her holy name in the battles we’re fighting, in the storms we’re facing, we recall the fact that God wants us to be able to have an I-Thou relationship with her, so that she can help us fully participate in the life of her Son, to build ourselves on him and to live in communion with him as branches on the vine. She seeks to help us the same way she helped the Church in Vienna, in Lepanto, in Cana and so many other places.
• The prayers for this Mass in the Compendium of Masses of the Blessed Virgin Mary emphasize the confidence we should have in praying to her and the impact that should have in helping us to go beyond superficial invocation of her Son’s name but truly remain united to him no matter the external circumstances. In the Opening Prayer, we ask, “O God, whose Son, dying on the altar of the Cross, willed that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, who he had chosen as his Mother, should be our Mother also, graciously grant, we pray, that we, who fly to her protection, may find comfort by invoking our Mother’s name.” In the Prayer over the Gifts, we ask, “that in imitation of Blessed Mary, ever Virgin, we may seek to be faithful to Christ, … to please him in all that we do, and to live only for him,” which is what today’s Gospel and the whole Gospel instruct. And in the beautiful Preface, after asking God the Father to help us place our salvation in no other name than his Son’s — and the name signifies the person in whose life we try to participate both as foundation and life-giving principle — the Church says, “But by your loving providence the name of the Virgin Mary also should echo and re-echo on the lips of your faithful people who turn to her with confidence as their star of hope, call on her as their mother in time of danger, and seek her protection in their hour of need.” In all of this we see that the Church, through the principle of lex orandi lex vivendi is seeking to get us to relate to Mary’s “name” as the way we treat her as a “person,” since in the Biblical understanding the name signifies the person. Mary’s name is maternal. Mary’s name is one that is responsive to our means. Mary’s name is holy and honorable. And so we cry out to her regularly, “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now,” at every moment of our life, “and at the hour of our death.”
• Today Mary is doubtless praying for us to celebrate Mass as it deserves to be celebrated, as the means by which we build ourselves firmly on Christ her Son, participate in his Body and Blood, and bear not just good fruit but bear Him as the Blessed Fruit. We pray in today’s Psalm (116), “How shall I make a return to the Lord for all the good he has done for me?” And we reply, “The cup of salvation I will take up and I will call upon the name of the Lord.” As we take up the chalice of salvation, through, with and in Christ, together with Mary, all the saints, and all those who participate in Jesus, we “offer sacrifice of thanksgiving… and call upon the name of the Lord.” Since 1681, the Church has been offering Thanksgiving explicitly for the Holy Name of Mary and how Mary is attentive as a Mother to our needs and prayers. Since the Last Supper, the Church has been participating in this eucaristein, this literal sacrifice of Thanksgiving with Christ. Let us ask Him through Mary’s intercession to give us the strength not to participate at all in the cup or at the table of demons, but instead live our whole life giving glory, like Mary did, to the name of Jesus.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Gospel
lk 6:43-49

Jesus said to his disciples:
“A good tree does not bear rotten fruit,
nor does a rotten tree bear good fruit.
For every tree is known by its own fruit.
For people do not pick figs from thornbushes,
nor do they gather grapes from brambles.
A good person out of the store of goodness in his heart produces good,
but an evil person out of a store of evil produces evil;
for from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks.
“Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ but not do what I command?
I will show you what someone is like who comes to me,
listens to my words, and acts on them.
That one is like a man building a house,
who dug deeply and laid the foundation on rock;
when the flood came, the river burst against that house
but could not shake it because it had been well built.
But the one who listens and does not act
is like a person who built a house on the ground
without a foundation.
When the river burst against it,
it collapsed at once and was completely destroyed.”

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