Fr. Roger J. Landry
Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Thursday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
June 17, 2021
2 Cor 11:1-11, Ps 111, 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:
- Throughout the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus shows us how to become “perfect as [our] heavenly Father is perfect,” how to fulfill the law, how to have our righteousness surpass that of the Scribes and the Pharisees, how to seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, how to build our life on the rock. The main point of it all is our relationship with God the Father. Yesterday he told us to pray, fast and give alms not to win acclaim but out of love for the Father, seeking what he seeks, hungering for what he hungers, sharing the providential care he has placed into our hands. On Saturday we will ponder Jesus’ words about how we should not worry about what we are to eat, drink, or wear or where we are to sleep because our Heavenly Father loves us more than the sparrows and lilies and will care for us. He’ll tell us elsewhere that he will never give us a stone when we ask for bread. The Sermon on the Mount, which is a compendium of the Christian life, is geared to Jesus’ helping us learn how to relate to God the Father. The pinnacle of that instruction is, of course, the way he teaches us to enter into the total exchange of persons that is faithful prayer. He does so by his own example of prayer, by his testimony of the proper dispositions we need to pray well, by his letting us eavesdrop on his own prayers — all of which begin with “Abba” — but most of all through the Lord’s Prayer, or Our Father, he gives us today in the Gospel.
- 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.” That word already sums up to a large degree who he is, who we are, and how we’re supposed to relate to him. And when we’re relating to him in love, then we begin to focus on him. 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, in short, 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 Jesus teaches us to 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 — and St. Cyprian in today’s Office of Readings — 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. Jesus opens us up to the Father’s providence. Next we ask the Father for mercy, of which we’re always in need, and we ask for it in a way in which we will become merciful like him through our forgives of 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. God the Father wants to strengthen us in trial and protect us from the one who wants us to treat Him as if he is dead, which is the essential sin of the Prodigal Son as we see in Jesus’ parable. This entire prayer taught to us by Jesus is not just a prayer to the Father but a prayer to help us to become ever more united to and like the Father. That’s what Jesus wants to do when he says, “This is how you are to pray.” He wants us to relate to God the Father’s loving fatherhood as beloved sons and daughters.
- That fatherly care is meant to be transformative. It certainly was in the life of Saint Paul. He wrote in his Letter to the Ephesians, “I kneel before the Father from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named” (Eph 3:15) and he was seeking to emulate that fatherhood in his service to the Church. In today’s passage from the Second Letter to the Corinthians, he shows it in two ways. The first is by his hard work in providing for them and for himself. In the midst of criticism from those who were trying to disqualify him and his words, he reminded them that, unlike their sophists and so many traveling pseudo-evangelizers, he had preached the Gospel to them without charge, not burdening them in any way, precise because of his paternal love. Every true father wants to provide for his children, rather than be provided for by them. Saint Paul showed his paternal love in this sacrifice. But the second way is even greater. A father is a protector, who seeks to strengthen us in temptation and to free us from the evil one, and St. Paul was doing that with the Corinthians, who were prone to sexual libertinism as we see throughout St. Paul’s writings to them. He gave them a strong paternal correction. He had come, he said, to betroth them to “one husband, to present you as a chaste virgin to Christ,” but rather than remain faithful, “as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning,” their thoughts had been “corrupted from a sincere and pure commitment to Christ.” He gave proof for this by saying, devastatingly, “For if someone comes and preaches another Jesus than the one we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it well enough.” His words are quite relevant to us today, because even though we’re supposed to be a faithful bride, when others preach a Gospel different than the faith of the Church, most of us put up with it well enough. We put up with those who call themselves Catholic but promote the destruction of unborn children in the womb. We put up with those who try to change God’s explicit words about marriage. We put up with those who try to change the basic anthropology expressing our having been made in God’s image and likeness. We put up with those who teach a different Gospel that Jesus’ about the importance of Christian unity, or his Real Presence in the Eucharist, or about the necessity of Baptism, or about how he established to forgive sins. We put up easily with those who try to water down the Gospel to satisfy their pleasures. St. Paul loved them enough as a spiritual father to intervene, and we need to receive the same correction. So many of the problems the Church faces is a defect of this spiritual fatherhood — flowing from not seeking with ardor God’s name, kingdom and will. The clergy sex abuse crisis, for example, was about a defect in spiritual fatherhood not ridding the Church of horrible abuses against God’s beloved little ones, flowing from “putting up well enough” with sin in the clergy in general. Right now so many of the confusions that plague God’s family come from conflict aversion in spiritual fathers who don’t address them with firmness, tenderness and perseverance. Today St. Paul shows us a different way and Jesus, by teaching us how to enter into a transformational conversation with God the Father, makes it possible for us to imitate St. Paul as he imitated Jesus’ spiritual paternity.
- As we prepare to receive Jesus as the “super-substantial Bread” given each day by the Father, from the inside Jesus wants to help us seek, as he did, to hallow the Father’s name, do his will, enter his kingdom and help others to do so.
The readings for this Mass were:
Reading 1 2 COR 11:1-11
Brothers and sisters:
If only you would put up with a little foolishness from me!
Please put up with me.
For I am jealous of you with the jealousy of God,
since I betrothed you to one husband
to present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.
But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning,
your thoughts may be corrupted
from a sincere and pure commitment to Christ.
For if someone comes and preaches another Jesus than the one we preached,
or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received
or a different gospel from the one you accepted,
you put up with it well enough.
For I think that I am not in any way inferior to these “superapostles.”
Even if I am untrained in speaking, I am not so in knowledge;
in every way we have made this plain to you in all things.
Did I make a mistake when I humbled myself so that you might be exalted,
because I preached the Gospel of God to you without charge?
I plundered other churches by accepting from them
in order to minister to you.
And when I was with you and in need, I did not burden anyone,
for the brothers who came from Macedonia
supplied my needs.
So I refrained and will refrain from burdening you in any way.
By the truth of Christ in me,
this boast of mine shall not be silenced
in the regions of Achaia.
And why? Because I do not love you?
God knows I do!
Responsorial Psalm PS 111:1B-2, 3-4, 7-8
R. (7a) Your works, O Lord, are justice and truth.
or:
R. Alleluia.
I will give thanks to the LORD with all my heart
in the company and assembly of the just.
Great are the works of the LORD,
exquisite in all their delights.
R. Your works, O Lord, are justice and truth.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Majesty and glory are his work,
and his justice endures forever.
He has won renown for his wondrous deeds;
gracious and merciful is the LORD.
R. Your works, O Lord, are justice and truth.
or:
R. Alleluia.
The works of his hands are faithful and just;
sure are all his precepts,
Reliable forever and ever,
wrought in truth and equity.
R. Your works, O Lord, are justice and truth.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Alleluia ROM 8:15BC
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
You have received a spirit of adoption as sons
through which we cry: Abba! Father!
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
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 others their transgressions,
your heavenly Father will forgive you.
But if you do not forgive others,
neither will your Father forgive your transgressions.”
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