Proclaiming the Kingdom of God’s Spousal, Merciful Love, 14th Thursday (II), July 12, 2018

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Thursday of the 14th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of SS. Louis and Zelie Martin
July 12, 2018
Hos 11:1-4.8-9, Ps 80, Mt 10:7-15

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today through the Prophet Hosea we continue to focus on the reality of the merciful dimension of Christ’s spousal love. Through his prophet God first describes the infidelity of the people of Israel, how after he had rescued them from slavery in Egypt, rather than keeping his covenant, drawing closer to him, and seeking to become holy as he is holy, they broke his covenant, wandered far from him, and became idolatrous. “The more I called them,” God says through Hosea, “the farther they went from me, sacrificing to the Ba’als and burning incense to idols. … I drew them with … bands of love, I fostered them like one who raises an infant to his cheeks, yet, though I stooped down to feed my child, they did not know that I was their healer.” Yet, even though God’s people had repeatedly committed spiritual adultery and it would have been fitting for God to have reacted with righteous indignation, he responded rather with mercy. “My heart is overwhelmed, my pity is stirred,” he tells us today through Hosea. “I will not give vent to my blazing anger. I will not destroy,… for I am God and not man, the Holy One present among you, [and] I will not let the flames consume you.” To symbolize God’s relationship to his people, he had Hosea marry Gomer, a prostitute, to show that God’s will was mercifully to take us back after we had engaged in infidelity with other deities, saying, as the Church heard at daily Mass on Monday, “I will espouse you to me forever … in right and in justice, in love and in mercy. I will espouse you in fidelity and you shall know the Lord” (Hos 2:17-18; 21-22).
• This was the plan of God that was fulfilled when Christ, the Bridegroom, eventually came. As St. Paul described for us in his Letter to the Ephesians, “Christ loved the Church and handed himself over for her to made her holy, cleansing her by the bath of water with the word so that he might present to himself the Church in splendor, without spot or wrinkle, … that she might be holy and immaculate” (Eph 5:25-27). Despite our sins, Christ not only forgave us, he not only redeemed us by taking us back, but through his merciful love, he changed us, taking our sins away, so that we in the Church might be his holy and immaculate Bride. He continues to do this work of redeeming love through the Sacraments of Baptism and Reconciliation, through the holy bath of his Word and through the one-flesh consummation of our spousal union with him in the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. That’s the power of his mercy and the goal of his mercy. That’s what we are called to receive. That’s also what what we’re called to live, rejoice in and proclaim.
• That brings us to today’s Gospel. The true experience of God’s mercy is not something we can or ought to keep to ourselves. It’s a gift we’ve received that we’re called to announce to others. Today in the Gospel, Jesus sends the apostles on their first missionary journey. These would be the ones to whom on Easter Sunday evening he would entrust the power of the Holy Spirit so that just as God the Father had sent him as the Lamb of God to take away the sins of the world, he could send them with God’s authority to forgive and retain sins in his name (see Jn 20:19-23). He was preparing them — and through them, us — to take his mercy to the ends of the earth. In this first expedition of evangelization, Jesus didn’t give them a lengthy message, just five words in St. Matthew’s Greek, and seven in our English translation: “The Kingdom of heaven is at hand!” What was far more important than words was for them to incarnate the message of the arrival God’s Kingdom in the living, breathing presence of the long-awaited King. His kingdom, they were to announce in the present tense, is one of liberating truth and loving mercy. As a confirmation of the succinct but staggering heraldic proclamation, Jesus gave them his authority to do the very same things he was carrying out to confirm that the long awaited Messiah had indeed come. He told them, “Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, drive out demons.” They were to manifest God’s power over every disease and illness, his power over life and death, his ability to cleanse us of our outer and inner leprosy and all of the alienation associated with it, even his power over the devil. Jesus didn’t want his Father to be able to say about his and the apostles’ contemporaries, “They didn’t know I was their healer.”  But in addition to the proclamation and power, he sent them out with a particular “packaging” for the message and deeds he was sending them to announce and accomplish. He wanted them to show by their behavior that the Kingdom had really come and what life in the kingdom looks like. By their peace, by their mutual love and mercy, by their trust in God’s providence, by their joy, he wanted them to be a living display of life in that kingdom. And that’s why he told them:
  • “Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give” — They were not to be preaching in order to gain but to help others be enriched. They were to be signs of the gratuitousness of God’s spousal love.
  • “Do not take gold or silver or copper for your belts; no sack for the journey, or a second tunic, or sandals, or walking stick.” — They were to show that they took seriously what they were declaring, the presence of a God who tells us not to worry about what we are to eat, drink, wear or where we are to sleep, because God knows what we need before we ask for it and cares for us more than he cares for the lilies of the field and the birds of the sky (Mt 6:25-30). They were to be signs of God’s providence.
  • “Whatever town or village you enter, look for a worthy person in it, and stay there until you leave.” — Jesus wanted them to be grateful for the hospitality given, rather than perpetually looking for a better deal. They were to be signs of how God wants to enter and stay in every home.
  • “As you enter a house, wish it peace. If the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it; if not, let your peace return to you.” — Jesus was telling them not to make prejudgments or hold themselves back to determine first whether a peaceful person lives there, but to be disposed to give his peace to everyone everywhere. They were to be signs of God’s openness to everyone if only they will receive him and the peace that life with him brings.
  • Finally, “Whoever will not receive you or listen to your words, go outside that house or town and shake the dust from your feet.” — Jesus wanted them not to be weighed down with bad memories or nurse wounds from one place to the next; if they experienced rejection, he wanted them to let it go rather than carry it to the next place, so that “the good news of great joy” would not be masked by the sadness of a previously negative experience. They were to be signs of God’s respect for our freedom, of the love that is shown in the Parable of the Prodigal Son, as those who are prone not toward grudges but forgiveness. They were also to be signs that God cares for others too and that those that receive grow in faith whereas those who don’t, don’t.
• This “packaging” is needed in every age, because the Gospel must authentically be seen before it’s truly heard. People respond to witness far more than words. It’s through seeing our generosity that others will come to the source of all munificence. It’s through our trust in God’s providence that others will be opened to see how ever-reliable God is. It’s through our own peacemaking that others will begin to discern the Prince of Peace. It’s through our resilience that people will see that we’re sowers of an imperishable seed and are undismayed when occasionally we encounter hardened, rocky or thorny soil. It’s through the way we love each other, the way we forgive each other, the way we show the joy of mercy received and given, that others are able to come to the God who has first forgiven us a debt of 10,000 talents and made us capable of paying that wealth forward to all those who owe us by their sins 100 denarii.
• We know that when Jesus sent out his apostles to announce the kingdom, he sent them out two-by-two, even though they could have covered twice as much ground. He did this, as St. Gregory the Great commented, so that they could in fact live the Gospel of love of neighbor, of forgiveness, ultimately of God’s paternal and spousal love with each other. And we know that most of the pairs of disciples God sends out two-by-two he sends out hand-in-hand with wedding rings. Today the Church celebrates one of the greatest of those couples, SS. Louis and Zelie Martin, parents of St. Therese Lisieux, who were raised to the altars ten years ago today.  The marriage of Louis and Zélie is not a hagiographical Romeo and Juliet. It begins not with erotic love but with the agapic love of God, which ordered their romantic love and gave it far greater beauty. At the time of their marriage, 160 years ago tomorrow, Louis was a 35 year-old watchmaker. At the age of 22, he had sought to become a monk at the famous Grand Saint Bernard Monastery in the French Alps. He was initially accepted, but when they discovered that he knew no Latin, he was sent home to study the humanities privately. He assiduously began, but a succession of illnesses forced him to give up his studies. After some travels, he returned to Alençon, where he earned a good living as a watchmaker and sought to please the Lord of time and eternity. His mother, however, was not satisfied with his being a bachelor, no matter how pious. One day in 1858 a 26-year-old lace-maker, Zélie Guérin, came to her notice as someone who would make an excellent wife for her son. She began to work with various celestial matchmakers to try to bring them together. Like Louis, Zélie was a very pious young woman who had sought religious life. After years of suffering from migraines and receiving scant consolation from her mother, she tried to follow her older sister Marie, a Visitation sister, into religious life, expecting to find there understanding and support than she received at home. She was drawn by the work of the Daughters of Charity and applied for entrance. The superior informed her, however, that she did not have a vocation to the religious life. Zélie took this rejection as a clear sign from God and responded with faith. “Since I am not worthy to become your spouse like my sister,” she prayed, “I will enter the married state so as to fulfill your holy will, O God. I beg you, however, to send me many children, and grant that they may all be consecrated to you!”
• Their fateful first encounter happened on St. Leonard’s Bridge in Alençon. As Zélie was passing Louis in the opposite direction, she heard an interior voice saying, “This is the husband I have destined for you.” She stopped and they became acquainted. Three months later they were married. Louis’ original hope was to live as brother and sister in a “Josephite marriage,” where they could dedicate themselves to prayer and charity. Although Zélie was willing to make this sacrifice for her husband and lived this way for ten months, she was hoping instead to have many children and raise them up for God. Eventually a confessor helped them to see that God was asking them to demonstrate that sanctity could be obtained in a holy marriage, through mutually self-giving sexual love according to God’s designs. They followed his advice without reservation and, over the span of 19 years of marriage, were blessed with seven girls and two boys. Zélie’s prayer that her children all be consecrated to God was fulfilled in several ways. They were all first consecrated to the Lord in baptism almost immediately after birth. The Lord saw fit to call four of them home soon thereafter, still in their baptismal graces. The five girls who survived childhood all were consecrated to the Lord in religious life, four in the Lisieux Carmel and the fifth as a Visitation sister. The Martin’s home was a school of holiness with the parents as model students and teachers. The whole family attended Mass each day at 5:30 in the morning. They recited daily prayers as a family in front of the statue of our Lady in their home. They all took responsibility for serving each other in the home and for doing their schoolwork. As a family they made pilgrimages to various shrines in France. Louis made retreats with the Trappists, Zélie with the Poor Clares. Louis was a member of the St. Vincent de Paul Society and was very generous to the poor and needy. Zélie ministered to the sick and the dying, making sure they were prepared by the sacraments to meet the Lord. Both parents formed their children in the faith, in life, and in virtue. St. Thérèse said that in whatever plans her parents made, they looked toward eternity, oft-repeating the phrase that “true happiness is not of this world.” Zélie died at the age of 45, having battled breast cancer for a decade and migraines for even longer. Until the end, she overcame her pain to attend daily Mass, where she would unite her sufferings to Christ on the altar. At her death, her husband and the priests of Alençon in unison said there was one more saint in heaven. Louis would die 17 years later, spending the last seven years of his life mainly in institutions as a result of severe strokes that caused hemorrhaging, memory and speech loss, hallucinations, and partial paralysis. He accepted it all with resignation to the will of God and looked at all these events as a means by which he could live as a hermit in this world in anticipation of the communion of the saints in the next. The Church teaches that the two-fold end of the sacrament of marriage is the mutual sanctification of the spouses and the procreation and education of children to be saints. Louis and Zélie Martin fulfilled this vocation with distinction and joy. They proclaimed the Gospel of the Kingdom, their house radiated the peace and spousal love of that kingdom, and their love for their children was like God’s love for Israel that Hosea described.
• Today as we celebrate Mass on their feast day, we thank the Lord for the gift of their example, we pray for all our families and married couples, and we ask for the grace, as we prepare to welcome the Prince of Peace “under [our] roof” in Holy Communion, we may dwell in the Kingdom made possible by that Eucharistic King.

The readings for today’s Mass were: