Proclaiming that Our King and Vindicator Lives, 26th Thursday (II), October 3, 2024

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Thursday of the 26th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of St. Mother Theodore Guerin
October 3, 2024
Job 19:21-27, Ps 27, Lk 10:1-12

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• On Tuesday, we pondered the fulcrum of St. Luke’s Gospel (Lk 9:51), in which we read how Jesus fixed his face on Jerusalem, on Calvary, on his redemptive passion, and how everything thereafter in St. Luke’s Gospel is meant to be understood with that focus in mind, a focus he wants us to share. That’s what grounds today’s commission of the 72 to proclaim the Gospel of the Kingdom. Jesus was heading toward his coronation (with thorns). They were to be the heralds of the Kingdom, which means that that King is present, the King is alive, the King provides, the King brings peace. All of the instructions Jesus gives come with that in mind. There’s an urgency to the task: they’re to pray for fellow laborers for the harvest, because the harvest is ripe; they’re to greet no one along the way, but be focused on completing their mission; they’re being sent not as assassins but as lambs, to announce meekly to the freedom of others, rather than compel them; they’re to show their trust in God’s providence by not taking money, a sack of food, a second pair of sandals; they’re to announce the peace that the Prince of Peace has brought through the forgiveness of sins; they’re to eat whatever is set before them, whether served by Pharisees or by publicans, whether kosher or not, because the King created it all and it’s not a forbidden fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; they’re to stay in the same place, grateful to God and to their hosts, and not looking for a better one; they’re to cure the sick as a sign of the cure of the soul that the King is bringing about. All of these flow from a living relationship with the King who would sacrifice all for us.
• We see the same relationship with a living King in Job. After his friends failed to persuade him that his sufferings were a result of sin, after his arguments likewise failed to persuade them, as he was experiencing profound pain and sorrow, he made an extraordinary profession of faith: Even should he die and return to the dust from which he came, he said, “I know that my Vindicator lives and that he will at last stand forth upon the dust.” He knew that his Redeemer, God, is alive and would live on after his death — and not only that but “I myself shall see Him … with my own eyes … from my flesh,” something that filled his inmost being with longing. As body was in agony, his innards were longing not for “relief” but for his Redeemer!
• That type of faith, trust and love in the living Lord, the Redeemer of the human person, is what characterized the faith of St. Mother Theodore Guerin, the foundress of the Sisters of Providence of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, Indiana, who was baptized on this day back in 1798 in France. (She died on May 14 in 1856, but May 14 is the Feast of St. Matthias and so the Church celebrates the day of her baptism). As a young girl she distinguished herself by her love for God and those God had made her neighbor. When she made her first communion at the age of 10, she confided to the priest that she was being called to religious life, but after her father was murdered by bandits when she was 15, she cared for her mother for the next ten years. Her mother didn’t want her to leave her side and young Anne-Therese (her baptismal name) was patient and kind with her. Eventually, seeing her daughter’s devotion, Isabelle Guerin permitted her daughter to follow her vocation. She entered the Sisters of Providence of Ruille-sur-Loir and taught in schools and visited the poor and the sick. Eventually, when she was 42, her community responded to the request of the Bishop of Vincennes, Indiana, to send sisters to teach the children in the woods of Indiana. She was asked to be the superior. Even though she had signed up to be a teaching sister, she was now being asked to be a missionary and the head of a group of missionaries. She prayed about it for a long time, before recognizing that she had committed herself to a Constitution that said, “The Congregation being obliged to work with zeal for the sanctification of souls, the sisters will be disposed to go to whatsoever part of the world obedience calls them,” and that convinced her to answer the call to go to America. It was a real Cross for her, but she set her heart resolutely on the will of God and followed Christ to her Calvary in Indiana. After a four-month journey she arrived, founded the new Congregation (since they wouldn’t be able to communicate back with France) and began the work, bringing people the Gospel, an education, loving mercy in founding orphanages and even medicine in establishing various pharmacies. There are still 300 Sisters of her order in Indiana, who are continuing to proclaim that Christ, our King and Redeemer, lives, and that the Kingdom of God is at hand. On her feast day we turn to the Master of the Harvest and ask him to send out many more laborers for his harvest like St. Mother Theodore and the Sisters of Providence of Saint-Mary-of-the-Woods.
• As we prepare to behold with our own eyes the Lamb of God, to see God from our flesh, with our inmost being consumed with longing to receive our living Redeemer in Holy Communion, we ask him to fill us with the zeal of St. Theodore to be numbered among the “72” hardworking laborers sent out like lambs trusting in Providence to take in the Lord’s abundant harvest.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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