Receiving or Rejecting God, His Message and His Messengers, 26th Friday (II), October 5, 2018

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Friday of the 26th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Anniversary of the Dedication of St. Patrick’s Cathedral
Memorial of St. Faustina Kowalska
Memorial of St. Francis Xavier Seelos
October 5, 2018
Job 38:1.12-21;40:3-5, Ps 139, Lk 10:13-16

 

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

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

  • “Guide me, Lord, along the everlasting way.” Today the Lord responds to that petition we repeated several times in the Responsorial Psalm, indicating to us not only the beginning of that path but how to persevere in following the Lord to eternity. It begins by recognizing who God is and how he acts, receiving his work, words and will, and responding to it with reverence, faith and perseverance. Today’s reading and three feasts drive home that point.
  • In the Gospel, Jesus reproves Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum for their failure to respond profoundly to all that he did among them, saying that if what he did in those cities had been done in the debauched pagan cities of Tyre and Sidon — and, according to a similar passage in St. Matthew — in Sodom and Gomorrah, the inhabitants would all have repented, but he didn’t find profound conversion in the three cities of Galilee and threatened that they would go to Hell rather than be exalted. In St. Matthew’s Gospel, which is either a more detailed account of the same words or the description of a similar scene, Jesus said that the Queen of Sheba had come to hear Solomon’s wisdom, and the Ninevites had repented at the preaching of Jonah, but there was a greater than Solomon and Jonah among them, and they hadn’t received the wisdom and repented. They didn’t recognize who was among them.
  • This is something God taught Job in today’s first reading. After Job finally succumbed to his grief and to his physical suffering and began to question God’s wisdom and goodness, God spoke to him reminding him that he was the commander of the morning, who holds the ends of the earth, who has entered the sources of the sea and knows the breadth of the earth. God almost seems to joke with Job asking how old he is compared to God. Job, having heard God speak, responded with humility, putting his hand over his mouth and listening to what God had said verbally and through his works, rather than seeking to lecture God.
  • This brings us to the Alleluia verse and the end of today’s Gospel. “If today you hear [God’s] voice,” we sang, “harden not your hearts” (Ps 95). Jesus described the spiritual hardening of the arteries at the end of today’s Gospel in terms of what happens to him and what will likewise happen to us. Either God’s word will be received or rejected.  “Whoever listens to you listens to me,” Jesus says. “Whoever rejects you rejects me. And whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.” Jesus is calling all of us to ponder whether we really listen to him or reject him, especially as he speaks to us through his emissaries, the apostles, their successors and others, and as he speaks to us through the evangelists and apostles who have been the Holy Spirit’s instruments to give us God’s word. He also has us recognize that one of the greatest gifts we give to others is the opportunity to receive Jesus through receiving us, which is why we go out to evangelize. If we occasionally experience rejection, most often it’s not we who are being rejected, but God in us, and so that’s an occasion to pray for the one rejecting that they may eventually be open to receiving God.
  • We see the truth about receiving the word of God with faith, and occasionally experiencing rejection, in the lives of two saints the Church remembers today. The first is St. Faustina Kowalska. She received her vocation when she was a 7 year old child, praying before the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, and wanted to enter the convent after completing her schooling, but her parents refused to give permission. Her parents put her to work at 16 cleaning houses to make money for the family. When she was 19 she went with her sister to a public dance in her hometown of Lodz and during the dance she had a vision of the suffering Jesus. She went to the cathedral where Jesus told her to leave for Warsaw immediately and join a convent. She obeyed, packing a bag that night and getting on the train, without her parents’ permission or knowing anyone in Warsaw. She entered a Church in Warsaw and asked the priest for guidance as to what community she should join. She approached various convents only to experience rejection, that they weren’t interested in accepting “maids.” Eventually she found the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy, who told her that they’d accept her provided she could pay for her habit. She worked for a year for the money and then entered. Beginning in 1931, three years after her first vows, Jesus started to appear to her and reveal to her the message of his mercy. With childlike trust and receptivity, she began to document this in her diary, serving as the Lord’s “secretary.” She suffered for doing so. The first thing that happened when she said to a priest that she was receiving these messages was that she was sent to a psychiatrist. Several of the other sisters began to get jealous of her, why she was something special, when they had so many more talents. But she dusted the criticism off, trusting in God’s providence. Jesus revealed to her how often his mercy is rejected, either directly or indirectly through not opening ourselves up to its abyss. Through her he wanted to try to give people another chance. The best way we can celebrate her feast day is to receive anew today the message Christ gave her, the message of his mercy, learn it, celebrate it and announce it. The message of divine mercy reemphasizes what Jesus himself said in the Gospel, that we need his mercy, that he wants us to receive it in the way he established on Easter Sunday Evening (the Sacrament of Reconciliation and Penance), and that he wants us to share that mercy with others. It wasn’t enough for Jesus that we merely know these realities, but he wanted us to grow in veneration and love for these realities. That’s why he revealed to St. Faustina five practices he wanted us to engage in to grow of our recognition of how much we need his merciful love, how frequently we come to receive it, and how lavishly we receive it.
  • The second holy one is St. Francis Xavier Seelos. He was born in Bavaria in 1819 and as a child received on very good soil the seeds God had planted in such a way that he had a lifelong desire to be a priest. Soon after meeting the Redemptorists, who have a mission to evangelize the most abandoned, he entered the Congregation in order to minister to German speaking immigrants to the U.S. He arrived in New York City at the age of 24 in 1843 and was eventually ordained in Baltimore. He served in Pittsburgh with St. John Neuman, who served as his spiritual director and confessor and pastoral guide, and he began to receive everyone as he would want to receive Christ, people in various languages, black and white and so much more. He served later in Baltimore, Cumberland (MD), Annapolis, and Detroit, preached Missions in Connecticut, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Wisconsin, before being transferred as a pastor to New Orleans, where he cared for those dying of yellow fever and contracted the dies. He did on October 4, 1867, at 48 years and 9 months, which is exactly my age now. He was a means of sanctification for so many because as they received him they were receiving the Lord. He was beatified on April 9, 2000, at a ceremony I was privilege to attend, three weeks before St. Faustina was canonized.
  • The final example we can mention today is that of a Church. Today is the anniversary of the Dedication of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, which is a feast in the Archdiocese and therefore liturgically trumps the memorials of St. Faustina and Blessed Francis Xavier Seelos. The Cathedral, like any Church, is supposed to be a place where God is received among us, where we hear and heed his word, where we are strengthened by the Lord himself to receive others as we receive him. The celebration of the feast of the Dedication of a Church is a reminder for us that we are called to be a temple, a holy dwelling place of God, in an attractive way that like St. Patrick’s draws many people to see the beauty of a life in which God dwells and reigns.
  • The supreme way we welcome Jesus is in the Holy Eucharist, which is the most important reason why St. Patrick’s exists. As we prepare, as Jesus taught St. Faustina to pray, to offer the Eternal Father Jesus’ body, blood, soul and divinity in expiation for our sins and those of the world, let us ask that we might respond to him like Faustina, Francis Xavier and the countless saints, known and unknown, who have grown in holiness visiting St. Patrick’s!

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Reading 1 JB 38:1, 12-21; 40:3-5

The LORD addressed Job out of the storm and said:

Have you ever in your lifetime commanded the morning
and shown the dawn its place
For taking hold of the ends of the earth,
till the wicked are shaken from its surface?
The earth is changed as is clay by the seal,
and dyed as though it were a garment;
But from the wicked the light is withheld,
and the arm of pride is shattered.

Have you entered into the sources of the sea,
or walked about in the depths of the abyss?
Have the gates of death been shown to you,
or have you seen the gates of darkness?
Have you comprehended the breadth of the earth?
Tell me, if you know all:
Which is the way to the dwelling place of light,
and where is the abode of darkness,
That you may take them to their boundaries
and set them on their homeward paths?
You know, because you were born before them,
and the number of your years is great!

Then Job answered the LORD and said:

Behold, I am of little account; what can I answer you?
I put my hand over my mouth.
Though I have spoken once, I will not do so again;
though twice, I will do so no more.

Responsorial Psalm PS 139:1-3, 7-8, 9-10, 13-14AB

R. (24b) Guide me, Lord, along the everlasting way.
O LORD, you have probed me and you know me;
you know when I sit and when I stand;
you understand my thoughts from afar.
My journeys and my rest you scrutinize,
with all my ways you are familiar.
R. Guide me, Lord, along the everlasting way.
Where can I go from your spirit?
From your presence where can I flee?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I sink to the nether world, you are present there.
R. Guide me, Lord, along the everlasting way.
If I take the wings of the dawn,
if I settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
Even there your hand shall guide me,
and your right hand hold me fast.
R. Guide me, Lord, along the everlasting way.
Truly you have formed my inmost being;
you knit me in my mother’s womb.
I give you thanks that I am fearfully, wonderfully made;
wonderful are your works.
R. Guide me, Lord, along the everlasting way.

Alleluia PS 95:8

R. Alleluia, alleluia.
If today you hear his voice,
harden not your hearts.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.

Gospel LK 10:13-16

Jesus said to them,
“Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida!
For if the mighty deeds done in your midst
had been done in Tyre and Sidon,
they would long ago have repented,
sitting in sackcloth and ashes.
But it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon
at the judgment than for you.
And as for you, Capernaum, ‘Will you be exalted to heaven?
You will go down to the netherworld.’
Whoever listens to you listens to me.
Whoever rejects you rejects me.
And whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.”

 

Share:FacebookX