Proclaiming and Living a Faith That is Not Vain, 24th Friday (II), September 18, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Friday of the 24th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of St Joseph Cupertino
September 18, 2020
1 Cor 15:12-20, Ps 17, Lk 8:1-3

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• In today’s the Gospel, we see Jesus’ peripatetic preaching, journeying with the Twelve apostles from one town to another preaching and proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom. This was a snapshot of his ordinary life, what occupied most of his days. He was announcing the kingdom and inviting people to enter. In the midst of all of their sufferings, hardships and up-until-then unfilled hopes, he was proclaiming the good news. He was helping them to see that Sacred Scripture was being fulfilled in their hearing, inviting them to strive to enter through the narrow gate, encouraging them to buy the treasure buried in a field and selling everything they have for the precious pearl of the kingdom. But St. Luke adds another detail, a very important one. He said that some women were accompanying Jesus and the apostles, women who had received Jesus’ healing power — they “had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities” — and wanted to spend their life, with faith and constancy, assisting him to heal others and raise them up. Three get named — Mary Magdalene, Joanna, the wife of Herod Antipas’ epitropos or money-man Chuza, and Susanna — but he also says “and many others,” who “provided for them out of their resources.” They were the ones who, to some degree, made possible Jesus’ and the apostles’ preaching, so that Jesus everyday wouldn’t have to multiply loaves and fish, so that they wouldn’t have to appall the hypersensensitive Scribes and the Pharisees by plucking heads of grain while walking through the fields. Like the widow with her two lepta placed in the Temple treasury, these women were giving all they had not just to make possible but to assist the preaching of the Gospel. They were the ones who were providing drink to lubricate Jesus’ and the apostles’ vocal chords. They were the ones who were making sure that they would have the necessary bread within to be able to preach man doesn’t live on bread alone but on every word that comes from God’s mouth. St. Paul’s in the passage from the First Letter to the Corinthians that is for Monday of the 24th Week describes how the Holy Spirit inspires us all to cooperate for the building up of Christ’s body the Church. There’s a division of labor — apostles, prophets, teachers, administrators, etc. — like there is in a body between organs. For the body to be healthy, each of the parts must do its function. And these women were making possible everything that Jesus and his disciples were doing. This was not a group of bored do-gooders who figured that these wandering 13 men would be lost without their feminine genius and maternal practicality. Having received much from the mercy of Jesus, as we heard yesterday, they loved much, and they wanted to give Jesus and his mission all the love, the time and the material goods they could.” They’re a model for all of us.
• What was the purpose of Jesus’ preaching and the apostles’ preaching? It was to lift people up, to lead them ultimately from death to eternal life, from sin to sanctity, from light to darkness, from the kingdom of the world to the kingdom of God, from ignorance to a knowledge (conoscere) of God the Father and his Son Jesus the Resurrection and Life that would know no end. And they spent themselves fully with faith and constancy to preaching this reality, as did St. Paul. In today’s first reading, St. Paul is describing the reality of the resurrection to the Jewish and Greek Christians in Corinth who were doubting or denying it. There were doubtless some Jews who, like the Sadducees, didn’t believe in the resurrection because the allusions in the Hebrew Bible were not strong enough for them and what they had read about Sheol convinced them that it was permanent. There were also many Greeks who, following Plato, believed in the immortality of the soul, but viewed the body as a prison from which a person needed to be liberated in order to experience that immortality. They didn’t deny Jesus’ resurrection, but considered it basically a unique exception. St. Paul sought to explain to them that if the resurrection is impossible for us then it was impossible for Jesus according to his humanity, and if we’re not raised, and Christ is not raised, then our faith is vain, then our preaching is vain, then all of Paul’s labors are vain, then the forgiveness of sins is impossible, then hope is gone, then we’re the most pitiable of people, and then the last one to start his ignition in the Church parking lot and leave is the biggest fool. But — and he finishes with a powerful adversative conjunction — “but now Christ has been raised from the dead,” he says, and he is the “first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.” He’s the first of many. He had begun this Letter knowing and preaching nothing but Christ crucified but he finished saying that the crucified Christ he preaches is the risen one bearing the wounds. It’s not enough, however, to know the fact of Christ’s resurrection and the fact of the bodily resurrection of all those who have died (either to the resurrection of life or the resurrection of condemnation). We have to live the resurrection. As St. Paul said to the Colossians, “If Christ has been raised,” and he has, “seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.” The truth of Christ’s resurrection must permeate our whole life.
• Today we celebrate the feast of a saint who had experienced this metamorphosis and not only lived for and with the Risen Christ but in some ways became a visible reminder of how Christ wishes to lift us all up. He depended upon God’s providence like Jesus and the disciples trusted in these women. St. Joseph Cupertino (1603-1663) is famous above all because he is the most celebrated and attested levitator in the history of the Church, able even to fly in Churches to grasp onto Jesus in the Crucifix and unable to keep his feet on the ground as he was celebrating Mass. He was able to fly toward Jesus because he loved him, because he sought communion with him, and — like with Peter whose love for God, together with God’s obvious help, led him to do the physically impossible and walk on water — so St. Joseph Cupertino, because of a similar love and desire for Jesus, was able to do the physically impossible and leave the earth without propulsion. He was quite simple and unintelligent, unable to finish sentences, unable to hold a thought or a job. He wanted to become a Franciscan but he seemed so absentminded that they dismissed him. He applied to the Capuchins, but they didn’t take him either. Eventually he was able to return to the Franciscans as a third order brother and care for the mule and animals in the shed. He did so with such great gratitude to God and joy that others started to notice him. They started to come to him to explain their problems with prayer or with life and the advice he gave them in response made many begin to think that he would make a very good priest. So he was allowed to study for holy orders and received all of the minor orders, but when it was coming time for the diaconate and the priesthood, most thought that there would be no way he would pass the examinations: try as hard as he could, he just couldn’t retain information. At the diaconal examination, they asked him to comment on the passage, “Beatus venter qui portavit,” and he put his head down. He shamefacedly explained that his Latin was terrible, no matter how hard the friars worked to teach him. So they courteously said to him in Italian as a last resort, thinking that it probably would make no difference, “The passage is ‘Blessed is the womb that bore you,” at which point he smiled and began to give an extraordinary disquisition in response! That was the passage in Sacred Scripture he pondered more than any other because of his devotion to our Lady. The examiners were blown away and he was passed to the Diaconate. When it came time for the even more stringent examination for the priesthood, the first several Franciscans did so well on the exam that the examiners thought they were wasting their time and passed everyone else, including St. Joseph Cupertino, without testing them. He’s been the patron saint of exam takers ever since! When he started to levitate and even fly across Churches to embrace Christ on high crucifixes, he was denounced to the Inquisition as if he were possessed. But through it all, he grew in his adhesion to the Lord, his capacity to march to what the Lord was drumming, his experience of Jesus’ triumph over death, sin and daily contradictions, even within the Church. His example shows us that even in those places where we’re not appreciated, even when others — including in the Church — don’t respect us according to our dignity and just see our faults, even when we seem to be the least important part of Christ’s mystical Body, we can still bear great fruit in God’s plan. His faith was not in vain. He would preach and proclaim the Good News, and the joy it brings and the life to which it leads, in all circumstances.
• Today through his intercession we ask God for the grace to seek the things that above with them, that we might become signs and agents of the resurrection, messengers of the kingdom, in the midst of all today, supporting Jesus in his continued mission to go about healing the entire world of evil spirits, infirmities and death, and announcing not only that our faith is not in vain, but that to live without faith is the greatest vanity of vanities. And we pray for the grace to spend ourselves totally as he did with faith and constancy in hope of the Resurrection!

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Gospel
lk 8:1-3

Jesus journeyed from one town and village to another,
preaching and proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom of God.
Accompanying him were the Twelve
and some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities,
Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out,
Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza,
Susanna, and many others
who provided for them out of their resources.

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