Proclaiming the Gospel in Life and in Death, Fourth Thursday (II), February 1, 2024

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, New York
Thursday of the Fourth Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of St. Brigid of Kildare
February 1, 2024
1 Kings 2:1-4.10-12, 1 Chr 29:10-12, Mk 6:7-13

To listen to today’s homily, please click below:

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today Jesus gives instructions to the Twelve as he was preparing to send them out to preach the Gospel of the Kingdom. Normally, when we go on a trip, especially if we’re not accustomed to traveling, we prepare a list of the things we need to pack in our suitcase so that we don’t forget anything. Jesus likewise prepares a list for the apostles, but it’s precisely a list of things not to take. He tells them to take nothing except a walking stick (something that would give them greater stamina for the mission), no food, no sack of clothes and toiletries, no money. Why? Because he knew that they needed to preach the Gospel not principally by their words but by their witness, by who they were. If they were going to be preaching that God cares for us more than he cares for the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, then they needed to manifest that trust in his divine Providence. If they were going to be indicating to others the path to happiness, they needed to be living the first beatitude, “Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” If they were going to be proclaiming love of neighbor, of forgiving 70 times 7 times, then they really couldn’t go out alone, but rather with at least one other whom they would need to love and forgive. If the essence of the Gospel is to receive Jesus and in receiving him, to receive the Father who sent him, they themselves needed to be willing to be received and not be on the lookout for better offers; hence Jesus’ instruction to remain where they’re welcomed and embraced. If they were going to be proclaiming the call not just to believe in Jesus and enter his kingdom but also to announce it, then they themselves needed to manifest the apostolic dimension of our faith. Jesus sends them out with his words, his authority over demons, his power to heal, to proclaim repentance and conversion, so that people not just hear the message but see it, not just in what the six missionary pairings did but who they were. The same Lord Jesus who sent them out to manifest the Gospel they were proclaiming chooses and sends us out.
• This summons to announce Christ and his Kingdom is supposed to happen not just in the way we live but in the way we die. One of the most important ways we preach is through our valedictory, through our last words, our last will and testament. This is an opportunity to show others, as we’re approaching likely death, what we truly value and what they wisely should value. Many times when we hear that expression “last will and testament,” we think fundamentally about the disposition of our money and goods, but that just shows the materialism of our age. Our last will should manifest our will to do the Lord’s will and our hope and prayer that others do the Lord’s will. Our last testament should be about the testament or covenant God made with us and we’ve sought to keep with him. Our last will and testament should be an exclamation point on the way we’ve truly tried to live with the Lord, suffer with the Lord, die with the Lord, and even give witness to the Lord after he has called us to Himself.
• That’s what David shows us how to do in today’s first reading. As the time of his death was approaching, he called his 18 year-old son Solomon to him and gave him these instructions, not only as father to son but also as king to successor. “I am going the way of all flesh,” he said. Everyone — whether a prince or a pauper — dies, and everyone needs to prepare well for death so that he or she may die well. The first instruction he gave was, “Take courage and be a man.” This means two things: first, be brave; and second, be responsible and mature. It takes courage to be an adult, to assume our responsibilities rather than make excuses, to confront difficulties rather than run away from them, to prioritize wisely and let go of perhaps fun, but ultimately unimportant, things. David was calling Solomon, at 18, to act like a grown-up, to act with wisdom, something Solomon clearly did when he was young in life but then didn’t do later in life, as we’ll see in upcoming days. Then David described for Solomon the path of spiritual maturity: “Keep the mandate of the Lord, your God, following his ways and observing his statutes, commands, ordinances, and decrees as they are written in the law of Moses, that you may succeed in whatever you do, wherever you turn.” In his last will and testament, David was asking Solomon to observe the Lord’s will and his covenant, which is the same word as testament.
• We see similar sentiments throughout history from saints who in their last words sought to preach the faith. We can focus on a few:
  • St. Louis IX, King of France, touchingly wrote to his son and successor, 25 year old Philip III, in 1270, “My dearest son, my first instruction is that you should love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your strength. Without this there is no salvation. Keep yourself, my son, from everything that you know displeases God, that is to say, from every mortal sin. You should permit yourself to be tormented by every kind of martyrdom before you would allow yourself to commit a mortal sin. If the Lord has permitted you to have some trial, bear it willingly and with gratitude, considering that it has happened for your good and that perhaps you well deserved it. If the Lord bestows upon you any kind of prosperity, thank him humbly and see that you become no worse for it, either through vain pride or anything else, because you ought not to oppose God or offend him in the matter of his gifts. … Be kindhearted to the poor, the unfortunate and the afflicted. Give them as much help and consolation as you can.… Always side with the poor rather than with the rich, until you are certain of the truth. … Be devout and obedient to our mother the Church of Rome and the Supreme Pontiff as your spiritual father. Work to remove all sin from your land, particularly blasphemies and heresies. … In conclusion, dearest son, I give you every blessing that a loving father can give a son. May the three Persons of the Holy Trinity and all the saints protect you from every evil. And may the Lord give you the grace to do his will so that he may be served and honored through you, that in the next life we may together come to see him, love him and praise him unceasingly.” What an incredible witness, that the blessing he really wanted for his son, the greatest inheritance he was giving to him as his heir, was the blessing of the Trinity and the prayer to do God’s will.
  • I’m always moved on June 21 to read the letter of St. Aloysius Gonzaga to his mother as he was preparing to meet the Lord at the age of 23. He gave witness to his faith. “May the comfort and grace of the Holy Spirit be yours for ever, most honoured lady. Your letter found me lingering still in this region of the dead, but now I must rouse myself to make my way on to heaven at last and to praise God for ever in the land of the living; indeed I had hoped that before this time my journey there would have been over. If charity, as Saint Paul says, means to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who are glad, then, dearest mother, you shall rejoice exceedingly that God in his grace and his love for you is showing me the path to true happiness, and assuring me that I shall never lose him. … Take care above all things, most honoured lady, not to insult God’s boundless loving kindness; you would certainly do this if you mourned as dead one living face to face with God, one whose prayers can bring you in your troubles more powerful aid than they ever could on earth. And our parting will not be for long; we shall see each other again in heaven; we shall be united with our Saviour; there we shall praise him with heart and soul, sing of his mercies for ever, and enjoy eternal happiness. When he takes away what he once lent us, his purpose is to store our treasure elsewhere more safely and bestow on us those very blessings that we ourselves would most choose to have. I write all this with the one desire that you and all my family may consider my departure a joy and favour and that you especially may speed with a mother’s blessing my passage across the waters till I reach the shore to which all hopes belong. I write the more willingly because I have no clearer way of expressing the love and respect I owe you as your son.”
  • Perhaps the most moving of all for me are the thoughts expressed by the 48 Seminarian Martyrs of Barbastro, Spain, in 1936, which I’ve had the privilege to visit twice.  While these Claretian seminarians were awaiting their deaths, they wrote to their families, fellow Claretians, murderers and the whole Church on any writing materials they could find — on the bottoms of piano benches, on wrapping paper for chocolates, on the insides of walls — hoping that these last testaments would be discovered after their death.One of the seminarians wrote in Latin a phrase that indicated their bravery, that they saw themselves as the successors of the valiant gladiators of old: “Christe, Morituri te salutant,” “O Christ, those who are about to die, salute You!” But their overall message was one of comfort to their families of origin and in religious life, telling them not to be sad, but to rejoice, because they were about to be martyred and would pray for them from Heaven. They wrote that even though they would not have the chance to preach the Gospel from pulpits, they would preach it even more powerfully by their witness and, like St. Therese, spend their eternity doing good upon the earth. Finally they wrote that they forgave their assassins, begging God to accept the shedding of their blood as a prayer that He not hold their sins against them.
  • Finally, we can mention St. Brigid of Kildare, whom the Church remembers today as we begin preparations for the 1500th anniversary of her death one year from today. Her great legacy was the Monastery of Kildare, which for centuries helped nuns, and through them many others throughout Ireland, learn how to follow David’s instructions to Solomon, to keep the mandate, ways, statutes, commands, ordinances, decrees and covenant of the Lord.
• These thoughts from saints and martyrs are meant to be a preparation for our own last will and testament. I always encourage all Catholics, old and young, including priests and religious, to write one, even if we may have few or no material things to bequeath. Insofar as we never know the day or the hour, as Jesus warns us, we should write one sooner rather than later, giving witness to what we value the most. I always encourage lay people to make sure that the most important and lengthy part of their will should be a description of their faith, which is by far the most important inheritance they have sought to leave their children. They should help their children and grandchildren to see that far more important than a house, or money, or wedding rings and the like is the fact that they tried to help them to seek to dwell in the house of the Lord, to be rich in his kingdom, and to enter with joy into the eternal wedding banquet. All the more a last will and testament for a religious should give witness to faith. In this kairos of mercy, our last will and testament should be like a Psalm 136 that shows how the Lord’s mercy endures forever and has been the great subtext of our life and vocation. It should be a Magnificat in which our soul can magnify the Lord and our spirit can rejoice in God our savior through our words even after the Lord comes for us. Likewise, I encourage people — all Catholics — to write a letter to the priest who will celebrate their funeral, whoever it may be, that can be given to him as he prepares, so that he will be able to know what was really in the heart of the person and be able to incorporate into his homily the person’s faithful love for God, so that the priest can in a sense echo the person’s holy valedictory. The more we prepare to pass on this inheritance to others when we die, the more we will lavishly share it in life.
• In the Mass, we enter into Jesus’ last will and testament, when on the night before he died, he went so far beyond what his 28th generation grandfather David said and did in his son Solomon’s presence. “This is my Body,” he said. “This is the chalice of my blood, the blood of the new and eternal Covenant,” the blood of the new and everlasting Testament. This is the food that will make us take courage and be a mature man or woman to the full stature of Christ. This is the nourishment that will make us the richest people on the planet. This is the means by which we will be strengthened to go out to the world united with Christ so that we can announce him credibly and help everyone else to grasp that they are heirs of this same Covenant of God’s everlasting love. This is ultimately the greatest gift that we seek to impart to those who come after us, in life, in death and even after!

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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