Praying Aright, First Tuesday of Lent, February 23, 2021

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of LIfe, Manhattan
Tuesday of the First Week of Lent
Memorial of St. Polycarp, Bishop and Martyr
February 23, 2021
Is 55:10-11, Ps 34, Mt 6:7-15

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• The whole purpose of Lent is for us to become fully Christian in identity and behavior and that involves rediscovering or deepening our relationship with God in the Father through Christ in the Holy Spirit. On Ash Wednesday, we saw how Jesus calls us to give alms, fast and pray differently from everyone else, doing each of these things in communion with our Father who sees in secret. We’re supposed to give alms recognizing that all that we are able to give to others we have first received from God the Father, and so our giving is an extension of his own loving Providence (as we would have pondered yesterday with the Gospel on the Last Judgment and the corporal works of mercy had we not had the proper Gospel for the Chair of St. Peter). We’re supposed to fast in order to hunger for God and for what he hungers, as he made very clear in our readings on Friday and Saturday last week. And we’re supposed to pray by meeting God the Father in our “inner room,” the locked “store room” in a Jewish house where all valuables were kept, indicating to us not only are we supposed to treasure God most but also to treasure his love in coming to meet us in the tiny “closet” of our interior life, whether we’re praying at home or in the middle of a multitude.
• Today in the Gospel Jesus continues somewhat literally his Ash Wednesday instructions on prayer. Today’s passage is an excision of the Ash Wednesday Gospel passage. After Jesus said the words about the “inner room,” he elaborated about prayer in the words of today’s Gospel. He reiterates that as Christians we’re supposed to pray differently than everyone else, not looking for show like certain Pharisees, but also not “babbling on” like the pagans who think that their prayer will be heard because of the multiplication of words. Because of pagan polytheism, in which gods were warring against each other, pagan prayer would often involve trying to lobby your gods against the gods that others were supposedly lobbying, recognizing that for these gods, people were no more than pawns in their games. Jesus said that not only should we not babble, but that we have to have a totally different conception and way of prayer altogether.
• For us as Christians, prayer is to be an intimate conversation with a Father who loves us and already knows what we need. The first word Jesus teaches us is “Abba!” We’re to pray to a loving “daddy.” Then we’re supposed to seek what that loving Father who already knows what we need seeks. The first petition is that his name be hallowed rather than ours, and the way is name is hallowed is not just in our prayer but particularly through the Christian life of Christ-like love when others “seeing [our] good deeds glorify [our] Father in heaven” (Mt 5:16). We beg that his kingdom come and his will be done, rather than our own. We begin by asking for everything related to God’s glory, kingdom and will.  A loving son or daughter wants what’s best for a parent — just like a parent wants what’s best for a child — and we begin praying not for ourselves and our needs but for God and his desires, knowing that God’s desires are for us to be holy by hallowing his name (the path to our own happiness!), for us to enter his kingdom fully as heirs, and for us to do his will on earth so that we may do it forever in heaven.
• From there we turn to our own needs. The first thing we ask the Father is each day to give us our “supersubstantial” (epiousios) bread. This refers not just to the material sustenance we need for the day but also for what goes beyond our material substance, a reference that many of the early saints interpreted as a clear reference to Jesus in the Eucharist, the true Manna whom God the Father rains down each day to help us to hallow his name, enter and proclaim his kingdom and do his will. Next we ask the Father for mercy just as we have been merciful to others. Jesus glosses the entire prayer by reminding us that if we don’t forgive others, the Father won’t forgive us; this is not because he’ll punish us by refusing to forgive us but principally because unless we’ve got merciful hearts we can’t receive his mercy. God’s will is for us to become merciful like he is merciful and we ask God for the grace to do so. Finally we ask him not to let us fall when we’re tempted and to deliver us from the clutches of the evil one, a clear recognition not only that the devil exists and will be seeking to tempt us but that we need God’s help — not just human will power — to remain faithful to Him. This entire prayer is not just a prayer to the Father but a prayer to help us to become ever more united to and like the Father.
• The whole mission of God the Son is precisely to reorder us properly to the Father. The Prophet Isaiah tells us today, “Just as from the heavens the rain and snow come down and do not return there till they have watered the earth, making it fertile and fruitful, … so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; It shall not return to me void, but shall do my will, achieving the end for which I sent it.” This refers most to the Word, Jesus, who came forth from heaven precisely to water the soil of our hearts with his Living Water, to make us fertile and fruitful, to nourish us in our divine filiation. He himself has already returned to the Father having achieved the end for which he was sent and he wants us to return through, with and in him, in his filial prayer, in his filial fasting, in his filial almsgiving, in his hallowing the Father’s name, announcing his kingdom, doing his will, becoming our supersubstantial bread, forgiving us, strengthening us in temptation and liberating us from the domination of evil. All Jesus has done is to help us to become spiritually fertile and fruitful so that we, too, might achieve the end for which we were made.
• Today we celebrate a great saint who illustrates this type of prayer and filial trust. St. Polycarp was the heroic bishop of Smyrna in southwestern Turkey who was martyred on this day in 166. He learned the Gospel as a young boy from St. John the Apostle himself. With Pope St. Clement and St. Ignatius of Antioch (a saint whom he knew, from whom he received a celebrated letter and whose chains he kissed as Ignatius was on the way to martyrdom in Rome), he is one of the three great Apostolic fathers, the great leaders of second generation of Christians. We know how the faith spread so much in the first generations: it was the witness of martyrdom — that sane people treated Jesus as someone worth living for and dying for — and the witness of Christian charity, that Christians would sell all they had, lay the proceeds at the feet of the apostles and bishops to care for everyone as family members where needed. Polycarp presided over that charity and mutual mercy. And at the end of life he also spread the faith, out of love for God and others, through his martyrdom. When the bloodthirsty mobs and soldiers came to arrest him, he said, doubtless based on the words Jesus taught in the Our Father and said in the Garden of Gethsemane, Polycarp replied, “The will of the Lord be done.” He asked for some time to pray as the guards were provided supper and prayed for two hours. He went to his inner room and, standing, entrusted to God his own flock in Smyrna and the Church universal. As he was being brought to the place where he would be tried and killed, some of his captors tried to persuade him out of it by pronouncing Caesar Lord or offering incense to the statues of the pagan gods, but he replied, “I am resolved not to do what you counsel me.” Later, in the stadium, he was given a chance to save his life simply by cursing Jesus Christ. He replied, “For 86 years I have served him and he has done me no wrong, why would I betray him now?” They sentenced him to be burned at the stake and as they were tying his feet to the stake and were about to nail his feet, but he said, “Leave me as I am. The one who gives me strength to endure the fire will also give me strength to stay quite still on the pyre, even without the precaution of your nails.” After he had prayed anew, with praise to God for having brought him to this hour, asked for the grace to partake of the chalice of Christ as a pleasing sacrifice, and enter into eternal life in the immortality of the Holy Spirit, finishing his words with a doxology and amen. They lit the fire, and the Christian eyewitnesses noted in their account of his martyrdom, “When a great flame burst out, those of us privileged to see it witnessed a strange and wonderful thing. Indeed, we have been spared in order to tell the story to others. Like a ship’s sail swelling in the wind, the flame became as it were a dome encircling the martyr’s body. Surrounded by the fire, his body was like bread that is baked, or gold and silver white-hot in a furnace, not like flesh that has been burnt. So sweet a fragrance came to us that it was like that of burning incense or some other costly and sweet-smelling gum.” He entered into the sacrifice of Christ that he had the privilege of celebrating each morning. He hallowed the name of God by his fidelity to the end, doing the will of the Lord, seeking his kingdom above all, hungering for what God gave, forgiving those who hurt him, and entrusting himself to the Lord during trial, confident that God would indeed free him from the evil one. We prayed for the same gifts as Polycarp as we opened today’s Mass, begging God to “grant, through [Polycarp’s] intercession, that, sharing with him in the chalice of Christ, we may rise through the Holy Spirit to eternal life.” This is the means by which we, too, may remain faithful to serving the Lord and never betraying him no matter how long we live and no matter what vicissitudes we face! As I celebrate today my birthday, I am conscious that each year, in fact each day, on earth is one day closer to meeting Christ definitively in heaven. Two score and 11 years I have tried to serve the Lord and he has done me nothing but loving mercy, and I pray for the grace, through St. Polycarp, never to betray him but to do his will until the end.
• As we prepare now to imitate Polycarp’s Eucharistic love as we receive the answer to our prayer to the Father to give us today our supersubstantial bread, we ask our Dad in heaven to strengthen us through this communion with his only begotten, beloved Son to pray differently than the rest, to pray as Christians, to pray united to the Father, as together as his family of beloved sons and daughters we enter into the greatest prayer ever made. We also ask him to accept our sacrifice like bread to be baked so that, sharing in the chalice of Christ, we may rise even now in life according to the Holy Spirit leading us to the place where St. Polycarp now shares the Spirit’s immortality!

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Gospel Mt 6:7-15

Jesus said to his disciples:
“In praying, do not babble like the pagans,
who think that they will be heard because of their many words.
Do not be like them.
Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

“This is how you are to pray:
Our Father who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name,
thy Kingdom come,
thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread;
and forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us;
and lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.“If you forgive men their transgressions,
your heavenly Father will forgive you.
But if you do not forgive men,
neither will your Father forgive your transgressions.”

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