Receiving and Giving the Christian Prophecy of Love, Fourth Sunday (C), February 3, 2019

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Annunciation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Suffern, NY
Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
February 3, 2019
Jer 1:4-5.17-19, Ps 71, 1 Cor 12:31-13:13 Lk 4:21-30

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

The following text guided today’s homily: 

The Sequence of Reactions in the Nazareth Synagogue

Today in the Liturgy of the Word we learn a great deal about Jesus and how he wants us to relate to him, and a lot about our own vocations and how we’re supposed to relate to each other.

The Gospel scene is a continuation of what began last Sunday when Jesus, arriving in his hometown synagogue, was invited by the Chazzan, the synagogue leader, to read a passage of God’s word and to give a commentary. By this point, Jesus already had a reputation for teaching with authority unlike any had ever heard. He was becoming famous especially for the miracles he was working throughout Galilee, like casting out demons and curing the sick and the paralyzed. Jesus unrolled the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, read one of the most famous passages referring to the Messiah for whom the Jews had long awaited and gave a once sentence homily, that Isaiah’s words, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,” were fulfilling in their hearing.

St. Mark and St. Luke both tell us that his listeners’ first reaction to Jesus’ teaching was astonishment. They were amazed at the “gracious words that came from his mouth” and “the wisdom that had been given to him,” both of which were probably very much on display in the way he read the words of Isaiah that he, the Word of the Father, had inspired seven centuries before. But that quickly changed once they began to reflect on what he said. First, Jesus was saying that he was the Messiah. That couldn’t be, they thought, because they knew him, they likely had pieces of furniture he made, they remember him playing with them or their kids when he was younger. Echoing the doubt that that Nathaniel would say to Philip when Philip told him they had found the One about whom Moses had spoken, they didn’t believe, on the basis of Scripture and experience, that anything good, not to mention the Messiah, could come from Nazareth. “Is this not Joseph’s son?,” they derisively asked themselves. “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary?,” they assailed his credentials. Second, if the Scripture their long-time neighbor and construction worker had read was being fulfilled in their hearing, and he had come to proclaim the Gospel to the poor, liberty to captives, recovery of sight to the blind, freedom to the oppressed, then they naturally began to ask themselves whether he was saying theywere poor, captive, blind and oppressed.

Rather than engaging their consciences, however, to see if what Jesus was saying might be true, rather than humbly asking, “What should we do?,” St. Mark tells us that they began to ask him to put a show there of healing like he had done in the Synagogue of Capernaum. Jesus not only didn’t do miracles there but couldn’t — except for the healing of a few sick — because of their “lack of faith,” which left Jesus stupefied. To try to provoke them to faith, Jesus described the faith of some pagans whose faith led to great miracles, but they didn’t want to have anything to do with it. Their doubts quickly multiplied and, as St. Mark describes, they began to “take offense at Jesus.” Not only did they refuse to believe in what he said, but they were offended by it, because if he were the Messiah, it would necessarily change everything, their relationship with him and, in fact, their whole lives. Jesus knew their thoughts, St. Luke tells us, and said, “No prophet is acceptable in his hometown.” That “filled them with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff, but he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.” In a series of reactions that would later be recapitulated in Jerusalem, when the mobs would pass from crying out, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” to “Crucify Him!,” within the span of a few days, these good Nazarenes — people who went to the synagogue religiously on the Sabbath — went in just a few minutes from praising Jesus and amazement, to doubts, to taking offense at him, to trying to kill him. In the beat of an eye, they went from praying in the synagogue to trying to murder their guest preacher. Not only would they not accept Jesus as a prophet by heeding his words and welcoming him as they would the God who sent him, but they, like preceding generations who “kill the prophets and stone those who are sent to it” (Mt 23:37), would seek to kill him. In other cities, strangers who didn’t know him growing up were willing to leave everything to follow him, were moved and converted by his preaching, and were amazed by his miraculous power such that they with faith were bringing to him all those who needed help. But among his own, he was rejected and deserving of death.

How is this possible? How could people who were regulars at the synagogue and the temple, who seemed hungry for the word of God, who “spoke highly of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth,” all of a sudden seek to kill him? Why wouldn’t they just have ignored him? The reason is found in St. John’s prologue: “He came to his own, and his own people did not accept him. … The light came into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.” They didn’t want a real Messiah, even or especially if he were a native son, because a real Messiah would necessarily change them. The real Messiah was a threat to their self-dominion. All things being considered, they preferred not to have Scripture fulfilled in their hearing, not to hear the good news, not to be set free from their self-imposed prisons, not to be cured of their spiritual blindness. They preferred to live in their darkness rather than be provoked to come to the light. Because Jesus spoke and acted with an authority that didn’t allow a simple refusal, because his message couldn’t stop reverberating in their synagogues, ears and consciences, however, the only way to eliminate the message he was proclaiming was, they concluded, to eliminate the messenger. Pontius Pilate and the Sanhedrin would seek to fulfill the rejection later.

Yet Jesus, knowing the rejection he would receive, came. He came to redeem those who would initially or permanently reject him. He came for those who would accept him, like Mary of Nazareth and Joseph of Nazareth. And he came to prepare us to share in his prophetic work, sending us out as lambs amid wolves, telling us that no servant is greater than his master and if they had hated him they would hate us, but promising us in the exclamation point of the Beatitudes that we would be blessed to be rejected, despised and reviled because of him, for they had done the same thing to all the prophets and our reward in heaven would be great.

Our Vocation as Prophets

That brings us to today’s first reading, which focuses on the unfolding of the vocation of the young Jeremiah and allows us to reflect on the prehistory and the purpose of each of our own vocations. God tells Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I dedicated you, a prophet to the nations I appointed you.” God mentions three things: He knew Jeremiah before he had even been conceived in his mother’s womb; second, within the womb, before he had a name, God consecrated him to his service; and third, God appointed him a prophet to the nations. In the background of every vocation, yours and mine, we find these elements.

• First, God knows us intimately. In his eternal omniscience, he knows everything about us and knows us even better than we know ourselves. He knows the talents he’ll give us as well as the frailties. He sees our fidelities and infidelities. He knows everything, and, we can humbly say that despite it all, he calls us to be his, so that through our foolishness we will shame the worldly wise, through our weaknesses we will shame the strong, and through our nothingness we will bring to humility those who think they’re something.
• Second, God consecrates us, he literally cuts us off — sacer — from the profane so that we can be with him — con.He sets us apart to belong to him, so that we might not only be the sheep of his flock who hear his voice and follow him but to some degree exercise his shepherdly care for all those in his fold, especially those who are lost, mangled or abandoned.
• And third, once we become conscious of our vocation to be with him, once we transfer the ownership of our life into his trustworthy hands, he sends us out, he gives us a mission, he commissions us in one way or another to represent him, his truth, his goodness, his beauty, his mercy to others. He makes us a prophet to the nations, beginning with our own Nazareths.

When we first become aware of such a calling, most of us are overwhelmed, just like Jeremiah was. Today’s passage excises verses 6 to 17 of the first chapter of Jeremiah’s recollections, but in those missing verses, we see how Jeremiah fights his calling. “Ah, Lord God!” he protests, “I know not how to speak; I am too young.” The Lord calms him down and says, “Have no fear, because I am with you.” Then God stretches out his hand to touch Jeremiah’s mouth and declares, “See I place my words in your mouth” and says that he is sending him out to build up and plant on the one hand and to root up and tear down on the other, to strengthen what needs to grow and to tear down idols. Similarly, many of us initially may have given God lots of reasons why we are unworthy of his calling, why so many others are better speakers, or teachers, or are more courageous and compassionate, or far more fitting for the priestly or religious life and its many salvific tasks. Many of us may still raise those concerns. But Jesus similarly and regularly calms us down, tells us not to be afraid because he will be with us, puts his words and his very self within us, and helps us, just like he helped Jeremiah, to fulfill the mission for which he has formed, consecrated and appointed us.

But even with God’s faithful assistance, this vocation will never be easy. Despite Jeremiah’s tender years, he already foresaw that he would suffer in the service of the Lord. He would experience opposition. He would be thrown in the pit. He would be threatened with death. But God assured him, “Be not crushed” because of the opposition, “as though I would leave you crushed before them.” God promised him, “They will fight against you but not prevail, for I am with you to deliver you!” Jeremiah’s faith in God’s words would be tested on many occasions, but God proved himself faithful to these words.

Similarly in our vocations, like Jeremiah, like Jesus, we will often experience opposition — sometimes fierce opposition — not just from militant secularists who oppose God and therefore will always be threatened by those who speak of him and seek to bring his light, leaven and salt to society, but even from family members and friends, fellow priests and religious. But God will never leave us crushed before others. He will be with us always to deliver us, although perhaps not in the way we expect or on our timetable. Many of us have already experienced that it has been precisely in our most difficult moments in religious or priestly life that we have grown in faith and, after a time, grew to discover what we prayed in the Psalm, that God is our rock of refuge, stronghold, fortress, hope, and trust. As we look back on the whole history of our vocation, he helps us reiterate what we sang, “On you I depend from birth; from my mother’s womb you are my strength,” and exclaim, “My mouth shall declare your justice, day by day your salvation O God, you have taught me from my youth and till the present I proclaim your wondrous deeds.”

But it’s nevertheless important for us to ask: why would the God whom we call our rock of refuge allow Jeremiah, the other prophets, the apostles, St. Blaise (whom the Church remembers today) and the vast white robed army of martyrs suffer so much. Why would he let others even seem to prevail over God’s chosen ones? Why would God permit Governor Andrew Cuomo to gloat over pro-lifers for the last two weeks? The reason is to strengthen one’s consecration, vocation and the completion of one’s mission. It’s precisely in the context of opposition that often we will be able to fulfill our mission most. In the Gospel, Christ promised his followers that some of us would be seized, persecuted and dragged before civil and religious authorities, that some of us would be betrayed by parents, siblings, relatives and friends, that some of us would be hated by all because of his name, but that this would “lead to your giving testimony” (Lk 21:13). He even promised that some of us would be put to death, but this, too, would lead to our supreme testimony, the witness of martyrdom, that God is so real, so loving, that we consider it totally worth it to live and die for Him who lived and died first for us, that the sufferings of this world are nothing compared to the glories to be revealed (Rom 8:18), and that we will stake our lives on this truth. Through suffering opposition, we will experience an even greater conformity to the supreme Consecrated One, Christ himself, and be able to be a more effective instrument in his hands. Through enduring difficulties, we will be able to let the love of Christ in us, which compels us to love others as he has loved us, radiate all the more as we are willing to give of ourselves, even our lives, together with him who laid down his life for us. This witness to love is the supreme Christian prophecy.

The Prophecy of Love

That’s what takes us to today’s second reading, which features St. Paul’s famous “Canticle of Love.” The Second Vatican Council, in its decree on the religious life, reminded all religious in the title of the document what the purpose of religious life is: Perfectae Caritatis prosecutionem, “the pursuit of perfect charity,” the perfection of love. The entirety of religious life is meant to be a proclamation of the “greatest spiritual gift of all.” The apostle is pretty plain in telling the Christians in Corinth that if one doesn’t grow in charity, if one doesn’t have love, in the final analysis, one “is … [and] gains nothing.” If one speaks in human and angelic tongues, but doesn’t have love, one’s just making noise despite the glossolalia and the citations of the Word of God. If one understands all the truths of the Catechism, if one has faith the size of a mustard seed to move mountains into the sea, if unlike the Rich Young Man one gives away everything to the poor, and if one hands his or her body over to the torturers, but does not do so with love for God and others, one’s life will remain fundamentally empty. As the great doctor of the Church, St. John of the Cross, said, “In the twilight of life, God will not judge us on our earthly possession and human successes but on how well we have loved.” The measure of our life is the measure of our cooperation with God’s redeeming love.

The Church is meant to be a school of love, to form us to grow in all of the virtues St. Paul describes as expressions of love. Just as each of these attributes was able to be predicated of Jesus Christ, so they’re able to be said of anyone who perseveres in allowing the love of God to be the defining reality of one’s existence. Religious life in particular is an advanced placement school forming us in patience because it will try our patience. It’s a seminary of kindness, urging us to treat others with the love of God even on our bad days. It’s a college of humility, preventing us from becoming inflated. It’s an academy of courtesy instead of rudeness. It’s a faculty of selflessness rather than self-seeking. It provides us the setting to work on our temper, to learn to forgive instead of brood, to rejoice with the truth rather than wrongdoing, to grow in faith, hope, endurance and charity. It’s a place where we are able to be formed to grow into “mature manhood,” to the “full stature of Christ” (Eph 4:13) by helping us put off childish things and paradoxically grow in spiritual childhood. It’s a university in which we hear the Word of God and let it resonate so much with the help of others that we begin to show what the Word of God looks like in our own conduct. It’s a place in which the love of God in the heart of the Trinitarian communion begins to reverberate in our novitiates and houses and hearts. Jesus, who is love incarnate, came to the Nazareth synagogue and comes to us as patient, kind, not jealous or pompous or inflated or rude, seeking not his own interests but our salvation, not quick-tempered but slow to anger, not brooding over injury but suffering all for us, not focusing on the evil we’ve done, but rejoicing and announcing the truth, and in each of these 15 adjectives about real love, Jesus tells us, “Come, follow me!,” and says, “Let me help you to live up to this description of me and what every Christian should not only wish to become but strive to become,” adding, “By this everyone will know you are my disciples, if you love one another” (Jn 13:35).

I’d like to finish with one important application of this prophecy of love that is meant to be the life of everyone formed, consecrated and appointed in the womb of the Church. Jesus as Jesus wants to be accepted in his native place by all of us who have been literally familiar with him since our baptism, so we wants us to accept all of the prophets he sends in our name. He wants us to accept their proclamation of love, of faith, of hope, of truth. But how open are we to this gift of prophecy he sends us each day? Do we embrace the prophetic munus of each other? Or do we say, “I know this person’s vocation story. … I’ve met the person’s parents. … I have some feast day cards this person made.” Do we classify and conquer others, placing them in convenient boxes that do not threaten our sense of self-dominion, or do we really trust in what God has given to them, that he has filled them with the Spirit of the Lord and sent them to proclaim liberty to captives, sight to the blind and a kairosof blessing from the Lord?

There’s a story that many rabbis like to tell, with the setting of an old stone Christian monasterytucked away in the middle of a picturesque forest. For many years people would make the significant detour required to seek out this monastery. The peaceful spirit of the place was healing for the soul. Eventually however fewer people were making their way there. The monks had grown jealous and petty in their relationships with one another, and the animosity was felt by those who visited. The Abbot of the monastery was distressed by what was happening, and poured out his heart an aged rabbi who was a friend of is. Having heard the Abbot’s woes, he asked if he could offer a suggestion. “Please do,” responded the Abbot. “Anything you can offer.” The rabbi said that he had received a vision that the messiah was among the ranks of the monks. The Abbot was flabbergasted. The Messiah — for a Christian, Jesus in his second coming — had come again among the monks? He knew it wasn’t he himself, but who? He raced back to the monastery and shared what the rabbi had said with his fellow monks. The monks grew silent as they looked into each other’s faces. Was this one the Messiah? From that day on the mood in the monastery changed. Many of the monks started talking again, neither wanting to be guilty of slighting the Messiah. They left behind their frosty anger and sought out each other’s forgiveness. They began serving each other, looking out for opportunities to assist, seeking healing and forgiveness where offence had been given. As one traveler, then another, found their way to the monastery word soon spread about the remarkable spirit of the place. People once again took the journey to the monastery and found themselves renewed and transformed. All because,” as the story ends, “those monks knew the Messiah was among them.”

Welcoming and Conforming Ourselves to Christ the Prophet

We’re called to receive Jesus into our home in the various ways by which he comes, including in others, including in those we might least think he has formed, consecrated and appointed to bring his truth and love to us. On this Christian sabbath, the same Jesus who came to his own in Nazareth, comes here to Suffern, to us who have not just become his hometown but his temples. He’s already taught us in Sacred Scripture, which is being fulfilled by Him live in our hearing. He awaits our embracing him in faith and letting His word take flesh in us. As we prepare to receive the Word made Flesh in Holy Communion, let us ask him first to make our hearts fitting and hospitable places for the Lord to dwell, like Mary of Nazareth’s and St. Blaise’s, so that like them we may take Jesus and his love within us out to each other and to all the nations so that through us, with throats unobstructed from every malady, he may announce the good news of how he seeks to enrich all of us by his poverty, help us to see by faith, set us free from our sins, and enjoy not just a year of the Lord’s favor but an eternity!

The readings for today’s Mass were: