Paying Attention to What the Lord Tells Us, 25th Saturday (I), September 28, 2019

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Saturday of the 25th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Memorial of San Lorenzo Ruiz and Companions, Martyrs
September 28, 2019
Zech 2:5-9.14-15, Jer 31:10-13, Lk 9:43-45

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells us, “Pay attention to what I am telling you!” He said them precisely because he knew the apostles would struggle to pay attention to and heed what he was about to tell them about his upcoming Passion. While everyone was “amazed at Jesus’ every deed,” Jesus shockingly said, “The Son of Man is to be handed over to men.” Whenever Jesus foretold his Passion, the apostles did not want to hear it. On one occasion, Peter told him, “No such thing should ever happen to you.” On another, James and John with their mother immediately approached to ask him to award them the seats to his right and left when he entered into his kingdom. On a third, all of the disciples began arguing about which of them was the greatest. Think about this for a moment: Jesus, their friend, told them on multiple occasions that he was going to be betrayed, mocked, scourged, and killed and they never wanted to take what he said seriously. Today St. Luke says that they were “afraid to ask him about this saying,” and because they were too frightened to ask, they didn’t understand. We will see their lack of understanding all the way until Jesus appeared to them in the Upper Room risen from the dead.
• Today on this Saturday in which we remember the Blessed Virgin Mary in a particular way, we recall what her “last words” were — at least those recorded! — in the Gospel: She instructed the servants in Cana, before Jesus changed water into wine, “Do whatever he tells you.” Mary is constantly praying for each of us that we may pay close attention to everything he Son says and to act on what we hear. The family Jesus came from heaven to earth to found is comprised, as we heard earlier this week, of those who hear the Word of God and observe it, and Mary wants to help us to imitate her fiat and let our whole life develop in accordance with God’s word. She wants to help us to pay attention to, and do, whatever her Son says. Just like she gathered the apostles and the other disciples around her in the Upper Room before Pentecost, so the Mother of the Church seeks to bring us together in a new Pentecost. In today’s first reading, we have an image of Mary and Pentecost. Through the prophet Zechariah, the Lord cries out, “Sing and rejoice, O daughter Zion! See, I am coming to dwell among you.” This is a prophecy that points ultimately to the incarnation, how the Lord became flesh and dwelled among us within the immaculate womb of this virginal daughter of Zion. The Lord continues through the prophet, “I will be for her an encircling wall of fire and I will be the glory in her midst.” That fire is an image of the Holy Spirit, who overshadowed Mary at the Annunciation and continued to overshadow and encircle her through Calvary, Pentecost and beyond. And Mary constantly seeks to bring her sons and daughters within that encircling wall of the fire of the Holy Spirit so that we might behold the glory of God in her Son in our midst. What a great mystery this is!
• At the same time, it’s a mystery we cannot keep to ourselves! God tells us through Zechariah, pointing toward Pentecost, “Many nations shall join themselves to the Lord on that day, and they shall be his people and he will dwell among you.” The Lord ultimately wants all nations to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. And he is counting on each of us, just like he called the apostles to participate in that holy work of going and teaching all nations.
• And he seeks to do so by our paying such close attention to what he says that the words become our body language. When he first told the apostles about his upcoming passion, death and resurrection, after Peter remonstrated that no such thing would happen to him, Jesus said, rather, that such a thing would happen to his followers as well: that each of us would need to pick up our Cross daily and follow him. We, too, would need to give witness to the essence of our faith — God’s incarnation, God’s call for us to repent and believe, God’s forgiveness of sin and bringing resurrection out of execution, life out of death! — in our own lives. Today we celebrate someone who lived out this mystery. He’s the first Filipino saint, St. Lawrence Ruiz, and his companion martyrs. Married with three kids and a very good calligrapher, Lawrence may have murdered a man in the Philippines; regardless, he was accused of murder and was fleeing the charges and the death penalty that came with them. He got on a boat with Dominican priests, a Japanese priest and a leper, and landed in Japan. Soon thereafter he was arrested during the ferocious Tokugowa shogunate. The Japanese sadists went through their normal mind games with their prisoners trying to get them to apostatize and it seems that St. Lawrence asked the question whether his life would really be saved if he denied his faith. He didn’t. When they were about to torture him by hanging him upside down by his heels over a pit with a cut behind his ear so that he would bleed to death over three days, he said, famously, “I am a Catholic and wholeheartedly do accept death for God; Had I a thousand lives, all these to Him shall I offer.” Even though it seems that earlier in his life he had struggled to pay attention to what the Lord was saying, at the supreme hour, he did, with all of his mind, heart, soul and strength. His story gives all of us hope, that no matter our failings, as long as we’re alive, we still have a chance to give our life one-thousand times over for him who gave his for us.
• Today at Mass, in fulfillment of Zechariah’s prophecy, the Lord comes to dwell with us. His glory will fill our midst. The Good Shepherd has gathered us here to have us listen to him, as he teaches us about the cost of the disciple as well as the incredible reward. Mary, the Daughter of Zion, San Lorenzo and his companion martyrs, and all the angels and saints are praying that we pay attention to what he is telling us as he is about to say, “This is my body, this is the chalice of my blood, do this in memory of me.” San Lorenzo and his companions did and is beckoning us to do the same.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Gospel LK 9:43B-45

While they were all amazed at his every deed,
Jesus said to his disciples,
“Pay attention to what I am telling you.
The Son of Man is to be handed over to men.”
But they did not understand this saying;
its meaning was hidden from them
so that they should not understand it,
and they were afraid to ask him about this saying.