Receiving and Responding to Jesus in the Eucharist, Seventeenth Friday (I), August 2, 2019

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Friday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Memorial of St. Peter Julian Eymard
August 2, 2019
Lev 23:1.4-11.15-16.27.34-37, Ps 81, Mt 13:54-58

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Over the past eight days, Jesus has been illustrating the truth of the Kingdom of God and how to enter it through seven parables of the Sower and the Seed, the Weeds and Wheat, The Mustard Seed, the Leaven, The Buried Treasure, the Pearl of Great Price and the Dragnet. Collectively they were meant to show us how to receive and respond to God’s work in our life: that we should receive his action on good and fruitful soil, seize the incredible privilege given to us like we would a pearl of great price or a treasure buried in a field, watch it grow like a mustard seed, and recognize that our choice has great consequences: that in the Church there will be both wheat and weeds, good (beautiful) fish and bad (rotten) fish, depending upon how we respond to God’s work. Today in the scene from Jesus hometown of Nazareth we see these lessons being illustrated.
• When Jesus stands up to read from the prophet Isaiah and give a homily in the Nazarene Synagogue on the Sabbath, the people seem to receive what he says on rocky soil but it really is hardened soil by the way side. They are astonished, not so much by his words, but by who was saying them.  “Where did this man get such wisdom and mighty deeds? Is he not the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother named Mary? Where did this man get all this?” They were totally hardened to the possibility that someone they had basically grown up around could be the Messiah, as Jesus’ words, remembered for us by St. Luke, attest. And that’s what led to their taking offense at him and eventually seeking to kill him by tossing off of the precipice on which the upper city of Nazareth had been built.
• But also in Nazareth, we find good soil. We find it in the Blessed Virgin Mary, the soil of whose receptive response not just produced fruit, but the Blessed Fruit who is the Word of God made flesh. She was one whom, as soon as she was aware of what God was asking through the Angel Gabriel, replied, “Let it be done to me according to thy word,” the sincere paradigmatic refrain of everyone with truly good soil. We find it in St. Joseph, who, as soon as the Angel told him in not to be afraid to take Mary, his wife, into his home after she had become pregnant by means other than through him, did as the angel of the Lord had commanded. Mary and Joseph show us what good soil looks like, how the wheat grows up in the midst of weeds and how in God’s net are found both “good” and “evil”, how what starts small can save the world, how one or two fiats can lift up the world, and how to consider everything else as loss compared with the joy of choosing God as the treasure and pearl of great price.
• It’s worth noting that Jesus sought to do his work among his fellow Nazarenes in the synagogue on the Sabbath, in the midst of their worship. That’s where Jesus seeks to do so much of his saving work, sowing his seed and hoping to transform those who receive him on good soil, that he can sow them in the world as mustard seeds or place them as leaven who have chosen God as the treasure he is. God seeks to transform us through worship to be able to complete his work in the world. We see that in all of the liturgical feasts he prescribes for the Jews in the first reading. He gives them a list of celebrations, but what’s striking is the rhythm of “work” and “rest” he prescribes and how God seeks to incorporate the fruit of their labor and of his provident generosity into the oblations made — gifts of the first fruits, of the cereals they’ve made from the grain and more. Their work is supposed to become “liturgy,” which is the Greek word for “public work” of the people for God. In all these ways, God was preparing them to glorify him through becoming fully alive through worship, for as the great St. Ireneus taught 1820 years ago, “the glory of God is man fully alive and the life of man is the vision of God.” God was preparing them for work through worship, because it is through worship that God was doing his work in them, planting those seeds of glory.
• We see this in a very deep and beautiful way in today’s Gospel. St. Matthew describes St. Joseph as a “tekton,” which is normally translated into English as “carpenter,” but it’s so much greater than a carpenter. I often translate the term as a “construction worker” because a tekton would build using lots of materials, not just wood. But perhaps the best translation would be an “architect” who would build according to his blueprints. In being regarded, therefore, as the “son of the tekton,” Jesus’ contemporaries did not know how right they were. While they were mistaken in thinking him Joseph’s son according to the flesh — though he was his son according to the law — they were mysteriously exactly right because he was the eternal Son not only of the Architect of the Universe, of Creation and Redemption, but of the One who would build him as the definitive temple for worship and seek to build us up in him. We can recall the famous scene between David and Nathan when David was scandalized that he was living in a house of cedar while the ark of the Lord was dwelling in a tent. David wanted to build something glorious for God and asked Nathan about it and the prophet told him that it was obviously a good thing to do and he should go for it. But the Lord spoke to Nathan and sent him back to David saying that he wasn’t going to allow David to build him a house; God, rather, was going to build a house for David that would know no end. And that’s precisely what God did through David’s descendant according to the flesh, God’s own co-eternal Son. God, the divine tekton, wants to incorporate us into that same great building plan. St. Paul and St. Peter both describe how God wants to build us into a spiritual edifice on Christ the Cornerstone, how  we are to be built up on the pillars of the apostles as living stones into a spiritual edifice. That’s what the King does for those in his Kingdom — he makes us a part of the living royal palace in which he dwells! God’s greater glory happens when we cooperate fully with his plans to build us a house in his Son!
• He does that through the sacraments. In a special way, he does through the Holy Eucharist. Today’s first reading focuses on the Old Covenant feasts God decreed for the Jewish people. All of them find their fulfillment in the Eucharist. The Eucharist is the new and eternal passover, leading us from death to live. It’s the fulfillment of the feast of unleavened bread, as Jesus himself becomes our leaven. It’s what Pentecost pointed to, as every Mass is a “little Pentecost” as the same Holy Spirit who changes bread and wine into Jesus changes men and women into his Mystical Body. It’s the fulfillment of the Day of Atonement, as we offer to the eternal Father his Son’s body, blood, soul and divinity, in expiation of our sins and the sins of the whole world. And it’s the culmination of the Feast of Booths, as rather than going out to make a tent and live in it for seven years as the Jews did, Jesus comes to tabernacle himself within us.
• Today the Church celebrates a saint who grasped these Eucharistic lessons and tried to show the whole Church how to receive Jesus as prophet, priest and king in his native place, within us who by baptism have become his familiars. St. Matthew describes Jesus’ “brothers” and “sisters,” meaning his male and female cousins, but we through baptism have become his true brothers and sisters. When he comes to us in the Eucharist, we’re supposed to treat him the way Mary and Joseph did, not the way the other Nazarenes did. St. Peter Julian Eymard received Jesus this way and tried to help others. He tried to help his brother priests by founding the Priests of the Blessed Sacrament, the first institute dedicated explicitly to Eucharistic adoration and propagation. He tried to help women religious, founding the Servants of the Blessed Sacrament, a women’s religious order dedicated to perpetual Eucharistic adoration. He tried to help workers live Eucharistic lives, by founding the Work for Poor Adults, preparing adults to receive Holy Communion worthily. And he tried to help the entire Church receive Jesus well, and founded the Archconfraternity of the Blessed Sacrament, that the 1917 Code of Canon Law encouraged every parish to institute. His work continues to this day in those foundations. As we prepare to receive Jesus today, let us ask for the grace to do so as St. Peter Julian Eymard did.

The readings for today’s Mass were: