Perseverance as ‘Useless Servants,’ 32nd Tuesday (II), November 13, 2018

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Tuesday of the 32nd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini
November 13, 2018
Ti 2:1-8.11-14, Ps 37, Lk 17:7-10

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today, Jesus teaches us about a fundamental Christian attitude. Yesterday we pondered his words about setting good example rather than scandal and of forgiving continuously when someone repents, which led his apostles, because of the difficulty they foresaw, to say, “Lord, increase our faith!” Jesus described for them the power of faith the size of a mustard seed, that that amount of faith is enough to translocate mountain ranges, and so persevering if good example and forgiveness ought to be easy in comparison even with a little faith. That leads him today to talk about the perseverance, humility and gratitude that flow from faith, describing the situation of a servant who has just come in from the fields. Such would never expect his boss to have him sit down at table and serve him as some type of reward for doing what he was supposed to do; rather he would expect him to continue serving. “So should it be with you,” Jesus draws the lesson. “When you have done all you have been commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do.’” Jesus wants us to go on continuing to work in his vineyard, to set good Christian example, to be merciful like he is merciful, to live by faith. There’s no point at which we should say, “I’ve forgiven enough, now I can stop.” There’s no time when we should say, “I set a good example earlier. Now I can do my own thing.” Jesus wants us to persevere with gratitude for the gift of faith and like him continue serving others with love as he loved and served us to the end.
• In today’s first reading, St. Paul continues describing the traits that we should have in order to set that good Christian example. He talks about various classes of people — senior men, senior women, young people, even Titus himself — but while, at certain times of life certain virtues may be more important, no matter how young we are, all of these virtues are Christian virtues to which we should aspire “so that the word of God may not be discredited” and so that critics “will be put to shame without anything bad to say about us.”
  • Say what is consistent with sound doctrine — We all have a duty to speak in a way that’s consistent with the truth that God has revealed. If we teach contrary to the truth — whether we consciously or unconsciously know that it contradicts what God has taught through revelation and through the Church — we can draw people to follow us down a wrong path. We need to know sound doctrine and have the love for God and for others to pass it on.
  • Temperate — This means “sober” in terms of food and drink. With the passing of time, we should learn what our limits are, what are true pleasures, and how not to over-indulge. Drunks and gluttons are a sad scandal.
  • Dignified — This means that one is “serious” about one’s origin and destiny in God, about one’s divine filiation, and lives accordingly.
  • Self-controlled — The word means “prudent,” someone that has things under control, who doesn’t give in to flights of anger or passion.
  • Sound in faith, love and endurance — We must be “healthy” in our total self-entrustment to God and what he teaches, in sacrificing ourselves for God and others, and for perseverance until the end.
  • Reverent — We must learn how to revere God and the things of God, especially others. To be reverent means to be conscious that one is dealing with sacred things.
  • Not slanderers — Gossip is a truly ugly scandal. Pope Francis says that it is slaying our brother Abel with our tongue.
  • Not addicted to drink — How sad it is to see someone who is addicted to anyone or anything other than God! An elderly lady addicted to drink is a sign that not even with the passage of years has one learned basic human lessons.
  • Teaching what is good — We can’t keep goodness to ourselves. Bonum diffusivum sui, the good spreads itself. We need to teach what is good.
  • Chaste — We must be capable of white hot, unselfish love, which chastity makes possible.
  • Good homemakers — Women in particular must know the art of filling a house with the warmth and love so as to make a home..
  • Control themselves — If one has no self-discipline, then one can’t discipline — or make disciples of — others.
  • Model of good deeds — To know what they should do, others should be able to copy our actions, which is the most powerful teaching of all.
  • Integrity in teaching, dignity and sound speech — We need to have an integrity to follow what we teach on behalf of Christ, to carry ourselves as a Christian and to speak as a Christian ought.
  • Reject godless ways and earthly desires — We have to make a choice for Christ which means that we likewise have to make a firm choice to separate ourselves from the things that are not of God and from spiritual worldliness. To believe in God we have to reject Satan, all his evil works and all his empty promises.
  • Justly — We need to give God and others what they deserve, which is whole-hearted loving service until the end.
  • Devoutly — Devout means de voto, or from an vow or commitment that we’ve made to God and to others. It points to something that comes from the heart with love.
• These are the standard Christian virtues that set a good, rather than a scandalous, example for others. It might sound like a long list, as if St. Paul is proposing to us an unmeetable standard. But after summoning us to that style of life, he reminds us of God’s help to meet it, saying, “the grace of God has appeared, saving all and training us to reject godless ways and worldly desires and to live temperately, justly and devoutly in this age.” God gives us what we need.
• Someone who was an indefatigably faithful servant of the Lord, who lived rightly in her age by featuring these and so many other virtues is the saint we celebrate today: St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, who lived and worked for part of her life here in New York and is buried here in New York. She was born in 1850 near the Italian city of Lodi. From her earliest days, she had a deep love for the faith and a deep desire to spread it as a missionary. The youngest of 13 children, her family would read each night from the Annals of the Propagation of the Faith and her young heart became inflamed. She used to make paper boats, fill them with flowers symbolizing the flourishing life of missionaries, and float them down the river, hoping that they would reach China. After the death of both of her parents when she was 18, she applied to enter various religious communities —including those who ran the school from which she graduated — but was refused because her health was poor. What an irony that she would work so much harder than likely many of those communities combined in spreading the faith! Eventually her parish priest, who appreciated her piety, zeal and organizational ability, asked her to help save a mismanaged orphanage. She assented and did all she could, forming around her a community of women to assist in the work of loving these orphans into the kingdom, but after three years of hard work the charitable institution was not able to be resuscitated. But it was through that grain of wheat’s falling to the ground that Frances’ life-long aspiration was able to be fulfilled. Her bishop summoned her and said, “I know you want to be a missionary. Now is the time. I don’t know any institute of missionary sisters, so found one yourself.” And with the group of seven women who had collaborated with her at the orphanage, she did: the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart, erected to seek the Christian education of girls. It was suggested to her by many that her new community should head to the United States to work among the Italian immigrants. In the 1880s, there were 50,000 Italians in New York City alone, but fewer the 1,200 had ever been to a Mass or learned the elements of Christian doctrine. They didn’t know how to make the Sign of the Cross, not to mention how to go from created things to the Kingdom. Ten of the 12 priests working among them had been kicked out of their Italian dioceses for problems; they had similar issues in seeing God even among the sacred! Archbishop Corrigan of New York wrote her a formal letter asking her assistance, but at first she wouldn’t hear of it. She had set her heart on evangelizing China. But one night she had a powerful dream that induced her to consult Pope Leo XIII himself. The holy and wise pontiff, after hearing of the dream and her discernment, told her, in words that would change the history of Catholicism in America, “Not to the East, but to the West.” With six of her sisters, she set off for New York in 1889. When they arrived, a poor and humbling reception awaited them. They had been asked initially to organize an Italian orphanage and elementary school, but during their voyage, the benefactress underwriting the institutions had reneged on her commitments. There was no place for them or the orphans to live and no building for them to hold classes. Archbishop Corrigan told Mother Cabrini it was probably best for her and her sisters to return to Italy. Despite her disappointment at the chaos she found in New York, this tiny, strongly-accented Lombardian replied with a determination that ever after impressed the prelate, “No. The pope sent me here, and here I must stay.” From that point forward, Mother took some matters into her own hands. She went to see the benefactress to persuade her to change her mind, brought about her reconciliation with the archbishop, founded a house for the sisters and successfully began the orphanage. She began to receive vocations to her community almost immediately and that allowed her community’s apostolate to spread far and wide. She soon opened up a hospital in New York and several institutions in New Orleans, where the integration of Italians was going particularly poorly. Requests for her help were coming from all over the world, and she traveled with sisters to open up homes, schools, hospitals and orphanages in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, France and England. She also founded institutions in most American cities where there was a heavy concentration of Italian immigrants. By 1907, when the constitutions of her community were finally approved, there were more than a thousand sisters working in over fifty institutions in eight countries. She died ten years later at the age of 67 while visiting her community in Chicago and in 1946, she became the first American citizen to be canonized a saint. Her future canonization had been foretold by Pope Leo XIII fifty years before when, asked about her, he replied, “Mother Cabrini is a woman of fine understanding and great holiness. She is a saint.” Mother Cabrini’s zeal for the faith and her sanctity were seen in her willingness to put out into the deep waters and lower her nets for a catch for Christ all over the globe. As a little girl, she had fallen into a river and almost drowned. Despite her fear of water from that point forward, she spent much of her adult life aboard ship sailing across rough seas — 30 cross Atlantic trips — or over rivers to open schools for the fish she and her community would catch in those nets. She models for us the courage and creativity needed to see and spread the faith and to help others along the everlasting way. She never stopped being the Lord’s servant, loving and serving him even after long days in the vineyard.
• In the first reading today, St. Paul also describes the truly Christian motivation for continuing to serve God and others with the virtues he describes. It’s something important to grasp during this month of November as we continue to ponder the last things. Jesus had said that the prudent and faithful steward is the one who acts in the supposed absence of the Master as he would in the Master’s presence rather than thinking that the Master is long delayed in returning and beginning to get drunk, abuse and take advantage of others. St. Paul says that God gives us the grace to “await the blessed hope, the appearance of the glory of the great God and of our savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to deliver us from all lawlessness and to cleanse for himself a people as his own, eager to do what is good.” We use those words in every Mass after the Our Father as we prepare to receive that Blessed Hope, Jesus, on the altar, who gives himself to us to free us from living contrary to his law, cleanses us to live purely as his dwelling place, and makes us eager to do good together with him. Even though we’re useless servants and even though we should have no expectation whatsoever to be served, that’s in fact what Jesus does at every Mass, cleansing and feeding us with himself as he did the apostles in the Upper Room, and preparing us for the eternal banquet where he seeks to serve and feed us out of love forever. Through St. Frances Xavier Cabrini’s intercession, may we after a long life’s work come to experience not what we deserve but what God desires to give us out of love.

The readings for today’s Mass were: