Rejoicing to Proclaim the Gospel, 14th Sunday (C), July 3, 2022

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Chapel of Villa Betania, Bracciano, Italy
Rome Experience for Seminarians
Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, C
July 3, 2022
Is 66:10-14, Ps 66, Gal 6:14-18, Lk 10:1-12,17-20

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

The following text guided the homily: 

• Most of you are aware of how the Sunday lectionary is put together. Everything begins with the Gospel. Years A, B and C feature Matthew, Mark and Luke respectively, and, in Ordinary Time, we basically follow the Gospel passages sequentially. The first reading is always linked to the Gospel, to highlight St. Augustine’s principle that the New Testament is hidden in the Old and the Old Testament is revealed in the New. The Psalm is always a response to the first reading and, therefore, also a preparation for the Gospel. And the New Testament epistle is basically on its own cycle, as we go through the letters of the apostles, sticking with the same letter for several weeks, whether or not it really links well to the other three readings. Knowing the connection between the first reading, psalm and Gospel, however, allows us to determine the main theme that the Church is trying to highlight that given Day of the Lord.
• What is it this Sunday?
• If you read the Gospel first, one would think it’s basically straightforward about proclaiming the Gospel. When the Lord sends out the 72 — basically the 12 apostles and 60 lay people, indicating he was sending out almost everyone who had been following him, in an all-hands-on-deck evangelizing mission — he gives them a message and then a packaging for that message. The Church has been seeking to respond to that sending forth ever since. But when you look at the passage from Isaiah and the Responsorial Psalm you recognize that there’s a particular emphasis on rejoicing. “Rejoice with Jerusalem and be glad because of her,” Isaiah says in anticipation of the return of the captives from Babylon. Isaiah talks about nursing with delight at the huge spiritual bosom of Jerusalem, at the comfort of being embraced in her lap, of experiencing her prosperity like an overflowing torrent. Seeing all of this, Isaiah says for God, peoples’ hearts shall rejoice.
• That theme continues in Psalm 66, when we exclaim, “Let all the earth cry out to God with joy,” “shout joyfully to God all the earth, sing praise to the glory of his name,” and then the rest of the psalm tells us why, because God’s deeds of liberating love, stretching back to the exodus, are mighty tremendous, and glorious. When we re-read the Gospel, therefore, on the basis of the two readings from the Old Testament, we quickly capture that the link is to the joy in the second half of Luke’s pericope, when the 72 “returned rejoicing” at the demons being subject to them just like Jesus had promised, together with Jesus’ gentle correction indicating what should be the source of real joy: rejoicing because their names are written in heaven.
• That connection should influence the interpretation of the entire passage. When Jesus sends out the 72 with a message that the Kingdom of God is at hand, that message is meant to be announced by joyful heralds. When he tells them to wish others peace, he wants them to be delighted in doing so, because that’s the peace he has entered humanity to bestow, which the world can’t give or rob. When he speaks about praying to the Harvest Master for laborers, he wants them to be full of joy that they’ve been chosen among the few to roll up their sleeves in his vineyard. When he describes the packaging with which they’re supposed to announce that kingdom and bestow that peace, he wants each to be enveloped in joy: when they go out like lambs among wolves, to rejoice in God’s protection; when they carry no bag, no sack no sandals and no second tunic, to rejoice in God’s providence that always cares for them; when they receive welcome, lodging, food and drink, to rejoice at people’s goodness and openness to the Gospel; even when they experience rejection, to rejoice that the Kingdom of God remains at hand, as they wipe the dust of rejection off their feet and journey to the next town not with resentment but with joy. He wants us to be joyful ultimately because of our relationship with him, because our names are written in heaven, to rejoice, in other words, because of our divine filiation and calling, to rejoice that not just the demons are subject to God’s Word and power radiating through us but that we matter to God, are loved by him, are chosen, called and commissioned by him.
• This emphasis on joy in the sharing of the Gospel is an important point on which to focus as the Rome Experience finishes and we all prepare to return home to continue the work of the 72. This experience in the heart of the Church has been a time when we have joyfully breast fed with the faith of mother Church as we have studied, prayed, and matured in her lap. It’s been a time in which we have happily experienced her prosperity across the centuries that has led to building such extraordinary houses of divine worship on almost every block. It’s been an occasion to ponder not just the events of salvation history like the exodus and return from exile but also the many times God has rescued, reformed and revivified the Church from ages when sin enfeebled her. It’s been an opportunity above all for us prayerfully to deepen our joy at our being beloved sons of God, cared for him, called by him, trusted by him, sent out by him to share with others as of our first importance the love and joy that we have received, and ultimately destined by him to share eternity rejoicing in the presence of so many of the saints before whose sacred relics we’ve been able to pray.
• When we return to our Dioceses, we will be asked hundreds of times, from family members and friends, the bishop and priests, fellow seminarians and parishioners at the places we’re assigned, “How was Rome?,” and we need to be ready to give an account of the joy we have at the graces God in his generosity has lavishly given us during this time. More so, having been nourished by the prayer, the fraternity, the classes, the pilgrimages, and much more, we have the opportunity more competently and courageously to share with enthusiasm the bigger message that in the midst of a chaotic international situation with war erupting in various places, the peace of the kingdom of God can really still be experienced by those who accept the King and Prince of peace, that while so many restlessly seek happiness by placing their faith and hope in possessions, fame, or caricatures of true love, there is an opportunity to seize what will alone suffice, through relationship with the One who is so much more valuable than money bags, sandals, walking staffs and tunics, not to mention stock in Apple, designer shoes, Teslas and fine suits.
• The places to which we’re returning really need to see us rejoicing, rejoicing in the grace of our relationship with God, rejoicing in our membership in the Church Jesus Christ has founded, rejoicing in our calling to give up mother and father, children and lands for his sake and the sake of the Gospels, rejoicing in the life of faith. Nearly fifty years ago, St. Paul VI wrote a beautiful exhortation on the joy of proclaiming the Gospel. St. John the Paul II reiterated that summons in his exhortation on our continuing the mission of the Redeemer and sought to enflesh it in his 104 apostolic pilgrimages outside Italy. Pope Benedict deepened it in his first encyclical, helping us to ground ourselves in the love of God and to share that love in word and action. And Pope Francis has sought to ground his entire pontificate in the joy of the Gospel, the Evangelii Gaudium. All of these post-Conciliar popes have recognized the central importance of rejoicing in God in the midst of a world wandering full of those addicted to the drug of substitutes.
• In the speech that ultimately convinced the Cardinal electors that he would be fit to guide the Church as the 266^thPeter, the then-Archbishop of Buenos Aires said that the next pope had to be a “man who, from the contemplation and adoration of Jesus Christ, helps the Church … to be a fruitful mother living off the sweet and comforting joy of evangelizing.” All of salvation history, he wrote in his programmatic first exhortation, is “one great stream of joy” (EG 4) as it prepared people for the coming Messiah. The Gospel, he continued, constantly invites us to rejoice, as the Archangel Gabriel summoned Mary to do at the Annunciation, as we ponder in the other joyful mysteries, as we see radiant on the face of the Risen Jesus and in the disciples who couldn’t contain their joy at his resurrection. Christian joy, even in persecution, drinks of Jesus’ “brimming heart,” Pope Francis wrote, beckoning us to “enter this great stream of joy” flowing from his side (EG 5). This is the joy that comes from having a “treasure of life and love that cannot deceive and a message that cannot mislead or disappoint” (EG 265), from the personal experience that “it is not the same thing to have known Jesus as not to have known him, not the same thing to walk with him as to walk blindly, not the same thing to hear his word as not to know it, and not the same thing to contemplate him, to worship him, to find our peace in him, as not to, … [but] that with Jesus life becomes richer and that with him it is easier to find meaning in everything” (EG 266). But the Holy Father noted, realistically, that not all Catholics have this joy, that some Christians live as if life is a perpetual “Lent without Easter,” as if they are constantly returning from a funeral, who speak like “prophets of doom” full of acidic criticism. The world, he candidly said, isn’t persuaded by “dejected, discouraged, impatient, anxious” attempted evangelizers, but from those whose lives glow with Christian joy and fervor. We all recognize that this is true, even if it is challenging to us to live on difficult days, even if it is challenging to Pope Francis, too, always to practice what he preaches. But joy is a fruit of life according to the Holy Spirit. It is a consequence of living aware that the Risen Lord is with us, that all things work out for the good for those who love God and are called according to his plan, that God cares for us with providential love, and that because of his mercy, not only do sin and death not have the final word, but that eternal life is extended to us, embryonically even here on earth. Jesus came into the world so that his joy might be in us and our joy complete. He wants his joy to be perfected in us. And that perfection of joy, when experienced, overflows. This is the most effective form of evangelization. Jesus’ joy can’t be contained. Even the most introverted, when they have it, can’t help but quietly glow with it.
• In summoning us to be Christian disciples and apostles in the third millennium, Jesus wants us to live rejoicing. He wants us to see his joy, to dwell in it, to introduce others to it. One of the problems we face is sometimes our image of Jesus is not one of joy. We picture him with the stern flaming eyeballs of the apse mosaic in the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. Weighed down by our sins, we imagine that that’s all he can see, and we think that part of our conversion after having received his forgiveness is to go out to help others see their sins and scare the possibility of hell out of them. But the real Jesus is infectiously happy. Jonathan Roumie in The Chosen is doing a very good job in communicating the joy that overflowed in Jesus. Bruce Marchiano in the Visual Bible’s movie on St. Matthew’s Gospel does it even more memorably. To become Christlike is, among other things, to be filled with Christ’s joy, the joy that becomes incandescent when we recognize that he loves us just as much as the Father loves him and has sent the Holy Spirit to us so that we might never forget that love.
• To proclaim that the Kingdom of God is at hand is to proclaim divine joy is at hand. To say to others “Peace be with you” is to introduce them to the One who gives peace not as the world does, the peace that the problems of the world can’t take away. To live, travel and share the faith with evident trust in God’s providence and presence, silently proclaims through that spiritual poverty where the true treasure is, the riches that moths can’t eat, rust can’t corrode and tax collectors can’t abscond. That’s the type of life that preaches with and without words, that the Kingdom needs, and that the Church is constantly trying to form us to impart.
• And the most powerful way we proclaim it is in the midst of situations of suffering that worldly logic finds intolerable. In today’s second reading, St. Paul prays that he “may never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.” The Cross, as he wrote to the Corinthians, is a scandal to Jews and utter foolishness to Gentiles, but is truly God’s power and wisdom. Earlier in his Letter to the Galatians he said, “I have been crucified with Christ and the life I now live I live by faith in the Son of God who loves me and gave himself up for me.” And this wasn’t just a spiritual crucifixion. At the end of today’s second reading, Paul mentions, “for I bear the marks of Jesus on my body,” which most scholars believe means that he was the first to receive Jesus’ stigmata. He rejoiced and he boasted in his crucifixion. As we know, he is the apostle who, despite “far greater labors, far more imprisonments, far worse beatings, and numerous brushes with death,” despite having received “five times at the hands of the Jews … forty lashes minus one, three times [being] beaten with rods, once [being] stoned, three times [being] shipwrecked,” passing “a night and a day on the deep,” and despite being “in dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my own race, dangers from Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers at sea, dangers among false brothers,” despite “toil and hardship, … many sleepless nights, … hunger and thirst, … frequent fastings, … cold and exposure …  and the daily pressure … [of] anxiety for all the churches,” was able to say, truthfully, “we rejoice in our sufferings” (Rom 5:3-5) and to call us to rejoice always, reminding us that this is God’s will for us in Christ Jesus (1 Thess 5:16). When the joy of the Gospel radiates in us as we suffer for it, or even when it radiates as we’re suffering because of age, illness or injury, we are able to show in greater relief the joy that comes from the Kingdom and the peace that it gives. That’s why St. Josemaria would stress that the roots of our joy are cruciform. For us to be filled with joy, for us to be capable of being Jesus’ instruments to bring that joy to others, we, like Jesus, like Paul, like the Popes, the saints and the martyrs singing on the way to their final testimony, need to be crucified to the world and have the world crucified to us. We need to learn how to boast, to rejoice, even in what we have to endure, because we recognize especially there that the King of Kings and Prince of Peace is with us, the One who, crucified, was the happiest person who ever lived, because in seeming defeat, he knew he was triumphing and extending the fruits of his victory to us all.
• So, as we prepare to return home, perhaps as lambs in the midst of wolves, we do so united with the Good Shepherd who gives his life for us, leads us, feeds us, and protects us. At every Mass that Shepherd unites us with himself from the inside so that we might begin a worldwide erupt and all the earth may cry out to God with joy. The harvest is indeed abundant, and the laborers, those responding to their vocations, are few. But he has written our names in heaven and now he feeds us with himself. With the confidence that comes from this love, let us go out rejoicing by his mandate to call others with us to the Lord’s house so that they, with us, may shout joyfully to God, sing praise to the glory of his name, and say to Him, now and forever, “How tremendous are your deeds!”

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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