Receiving, Living and Transmitting the Word of God As It Truly Is, 21st Wednesday (I), August 30, 2023

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Wednesday of the 21st Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
August 30, 2023
1 Thess 2:9-13, Ps 139, Mt 23:27-32

To listen to an audio of this homily, please click: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today St. Paul retraces how he sought to treat the new Christians in Thessalonika with parental love. Yesterday he told them “We were gentle among you, as a nursing mother cares for her children” and went on to show how that mother-like affection led him to share with them “not only the Gospel of God, but our very selves as well, so dearly beloved had you become to us.” Like a mother who breastfeeds her child, giving her own self together with the nourishment, so St. Paul was describing how he was giving himself to the Thessolonian Christians together with the Gospel. Today he mentions a type of paternal inspiration moving children past their fears and excuses: “We treated each one of you as a father treats his children, exhorting and encouraging you and insisting that you walk in a manner worthy of the God who calls you into his Kingdom and glory.” We can learn so much from each of these images about how to be spiritual mothers and fathers of others. God, as we know, loves us with both paternal and maternal love. His paternal love is expressed by the masculine word in Hebrew hesed, which points to how loyal and unwavering his merciful love is. His maternal love is conveyed by the word rahamim, which is tender and can never forget a child (Is 49). It’s from God’s love that the Church — and each of us in the Church — learns how to love as both mother and father, giving ourselves in love together with God’s word, much like mothers put their whole lives into their care for their children, and challenging kids to live up to their potential, much like fathers help children leave comfort zones and confront and overcome obstacles.
• With parental pride, St. Paul gives thanks to God for the way that the Thessalonians had received both the Gospel and Paul’s own self-gift as means to walk — behave— in a way consistent with the kingdom to which God calls. “For this reason we too give thanks to God unceasingly, that, in receiving the word of God from hearing us, you received it not as the word of men, but as it truly is, the word of God, which is now at work in you who believe.” They received the Word as a gift from God himself and allowed that word to change their life, to work within, to bear fruit from good soil, to separate their bone from their marrow. The Word of God is meant to impact our life and change it and they were allowing that metanoia, that revolution of the way they live, to happen as a result of the word of God.
• This was in huge contrast to the Scribes and Pharisees whom Jesus calls to conversion in today’s Gospel. After the exile in Babylon, as a result of the Jews’ failure to hear and heed the Word of God, the Scribes were formed to study meticulously every letter of the Mosaic law and Sacred Scripture to prevent a recurrence of the exile due to ignorance and infidelity. The Pharisees were ones whose whole life revolved around putting into practice what the scribes themselves taught. Many scribes were Pharisees and vice versa. But lots of them, instead of being set free by the truth of God’s word, allowed it to become a means to enslave them. They started to draw huge human interpretations around God’s word — like hand washing, or the way to live the Sabbath — that began to strain out gnats and swallow camels, that had them ignore the weightier parts of the law for the sake of the less important material. In the 23rd Chapter of St. Matthew, Jesus pronounces seven “woes” to call them to conversion, so that the word of God would save them and give them life. He knew that their pride in thinking they were experts in the Word of God had hardened the ears of their hearts to the conversion the Word made flesh was asking, had made them impervious to the power of the Word of God in those who believe, and so he used brutal images, images that were nevertheless true about the state of their approach to God and his word enfleshed in Jesus. Real love shows occasionally itself in such righteous anger, just like fathers and mothers, teachers and coaches, need to be very stern with those they love and are calling higher and better. Jesus calls them hypocrites — actors — who say they live the word but don’t really. They’re like whitewashed tombs, full of death and filth, rather than God. They mark the tombs of the prophets but were conspiring right then — with their archenemies the Sadducees and Herodians — to execute Jesus, to whom all the prophets pointed. They were pretending to be holy while at the same time plotting to do something that would become the worst sin of all time.
• It’s important for us today to ask ourselves to what extent we receive the Word of God as it really is and allow that word to work in us. Sometimes those who are close to the Word of God, who hear it every day, who get into the routine of good religious habits, can became harder soil, thinking we already “know” what we need, even though Christianity isn’t an intellectual exam but a way of life. The key is always whether we incarnate God’s word, whether we bear fruit from what he has revealed to us. The model for this is our Lady, who heard the Word as a Word to be done, who replied, “Let it be done to me according to your word,” who let the Word transform her and treasured and pondered it so much within that she was able to make Hannah’s song and the psalms totally her own in her Magnificat. The Word of God that we listen to is powerful. It created the universe. It calmed stormy seas. It raised the dead, cured lepers, cast out demons. It changes bread and wine into God on the altar. It forgives us even our worst sins and makes formerly whitewashed tombs places of resurrection and life.
• St. Paul today is praying that we might receive the Word of God today and always as it is and allow that word to do its work within us, so that we may, in turn, become spiritual fathers and mothers. And the great way this metamorphosis happens is when we hear the Word of God at Mass as a word to be lived and then receive the Word made flesh, Christ himself within. This is the way we will not build monuments to prophets whom we kill through sin, but become those prophets who build their whole life on the rock of Christ and his word!

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Reading 1
1 THES 2:9-13

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