Remaining Astonished by Jesus, His Words and His Works, 22nd Tuesday (II), September 3, 2024

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Tuesday of the 22nd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of Pope St. Gregory the Great, Doctor of the Church
September 3, 2024
1 Cor 2:10-16, Ps 145, Lk 4:31-37

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today we meet Jesus teaching in a synagogue. After he was booted and almost killed from the Synagogue in Nazareth where he grew up — which we heard yesterday — he went to Capernaum, on the Sea of Galilee, where Peter, Andrew, James and John all lived and worked. In Nazareth when he taught, St. Luke tells us all were initially “amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth,” but eventually doubts entered because they thought they knew him and those doubts quickly passed to rage and homicidal intentions.  Today in Capernaum, St. Luke says that those in the Synagogue “were astonished at his teaching because he spoke with authority” and later, after he had rebuked a demon, they were “all amazed and said to one another, ‘What is there about his word? For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits and they come out!”
• One of the most important aspects of our Christian response in faith is to be amazed and astonished at Jesus and at his words or works. This astonishment is an experience most of us, I hope, had when we first started living by faith, when — for those of us lucky enough to be cradle Christians — our parents read to us from the Bible or from Bible stories and told us that the Bible contains the words of God himself; when we first began to pray and we recognized that God was listening to us with love; when we first discovered that the Eucharist is God and comes down from heaven on the altar, and dwells within the tabernacle, or loves us from the monstrance; when we first started to hear about Jesus’ great miracles, his multiplication of the loaves and fish, his walking on water, his casting out the devil like he does in today’s Gospel, his healing the sick, and his rising from the dead. This is an amazement and astonishment that likewise envelops anyone at the time of our becoming aware of God’s calling us to follow him in a special way like when priests or religious become aware of their call within their baptismal call to holiness. But what can happen over time to every Christian is we can begin to lose our astonishment. The things of God can become routine. We can cease to view with amazement the fact that God has spoken to us in Sacred Scripture, that he listens to us in prayer, that he awaits us with love in the Eucharist wanting to nourish us with the only nourishment worthy of our souls, that he thirsts to forgive us in the Sacrament of his Mercy, that he is risen and alive and seeks to walk with us throughout each day, that he can continue to work great miracles if we approach him with faith and it really is in alignment with what’s best. We can begin to take things for granted, to “domesticate” Jesus, and lose our awe. It’s one of the saddest things that can happen in the life of faith. I think of those priests, religious and “professionally Catholic” lay people who have lost the basic astonishment that accompanies the life of faith, so that they begin to look at the Mass as just some dramatic ceremony, who begin to place tabernacles in “worship spaces” as if they’re placing potted plants, who begin even to use words to describe the Eucharist like “bread” and “cup,” who deconstruct the Word of God as if they’re dissecting a cadaver instead of analyzing a Living Word, who mock the Sacrament of Penance as if it’s just a historical vestige rather than a gift of God we need for salvation. Real faith always brings with it this childlike astonishment and amazement before God and what God has done and is doing. It’s important for us all to ask the Lord for the gift never to lose this holy awe and to help us grow in it each day. How can God, who never gives us stones when we ask for loaves of bread, refuse such a humble, filial prayer?
• There’s a particular type of awe that we’re called to ponder in today’s Gospel. It’s astonishment at Jesus’ teaching, at the power of his word. St. Luke tells us that the people in the Capernaum synagogue were amazed because “he spoke with authority.” Most of their rabbis — as well as the Scribes, Pharisees and anyone who tried to teach the Jewish faith — would normally instruct by citing passages from the Hebrew Bible or from the oral tradition of the rabbis. They were constantly using footnotes to ground what they were saying. Jesus didn’t do that. He spoke as if he were the author — that’s what it means to speak with authority. We see this clearly in the way that he used parables. We see it even more strikingly in how he preached the Sermon on the Mount, beginning with what they knew from the Mosaic law and then taking the teaching much further by declaring, “But I say to you.” Much like with the disciples on the Road to Emmaus when Jesus started to do this and their hearts began to burn, those in the Capernaum synagogue could sense that they were hearing the truth from one who knows.
• Recovering this astonishment at Jesus’ word is one of the principal works of the Holy Spirit. St. Paul tells us in today’s first reading that “no one knows what pertains to God except the Spirit of God,” but adds that “we have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand the things freely given us by God,” and that we are then helped by the spirit to “speak about [the things freely given us by God] … with words taught by the Spirit, describing spiritual realities in spiritual terms.” The world needs this truly spiritual perspective, of amazed hearers of the word and astonished apostolic echoes. When we’re truly amazed and astonished at Jesus’ teaching, the Holy Spirit helps us to understand it according to an inner logic and then makes us capable of passing on that understanding as words that astonish and amaze us just as much in proclaiming them as they do when we hear and read them. And that amazement and astonishment is contagious when it is met by those listening with faith.
• Today we celebrate the feast of someone who was amazed and astonished by Jesus, his words and works, and gave his life to share that amazement and bring as many as possible to come to its source. Pope St. Gregory I is the greatest saints in history and in my opinion, the greatest Pope. By the power of the Holy Spirit, he not only came to know the Word of God inside out, but became a Doctor of the Church sharing with wonder that great gift. Gregory became prefect (mayor) of Rome when he was just 30 and did a tremendous job in trying to rebuild the buildings and morale of Rome after four brutal sackings within a short period of time. But in his mature discernment, he recognized that God was calling him to something different and more. With grateful astonishment at his vocation and to the astonishment of others, he left worldly power behind in order to become a monk, founding the first Benedictine monastery in Rome in his house on the Coelian Hill across from the Colosseum. There he grew in prayer, holiness and divine wisdom through his prayer and meditation on the Word of God. Eventually, however, the Pope asked him to leave the Monastery and go as his apocrisarius, his legate, to the emperor in Constantinople. It would have been easy for him to beg off returning to public life, but he grasped that God was asking him to serve him in this new way. He wisely brought along some of his monks with him to Constantinople so that he could keep up the good habits of prayer and meditation that he had established and would need even more among all the intrigues at the imperial court. Eventually he was allowed to return to Rome, where he and his monks would regularly sacrifice themselves by caring for those who were suffering from the plague and other illnesses in the city. Eventually, after the death of Pope Pelagius II, Gregory was elected his successor. He tried to refuse the office he didn’t want, but after it became clear it was God’s will, he accepted, and was ordained a priest and a bishop (he had already been ordained one of the seven deacons of Rome while still in the monastery). Over the course of his 15 years as the 64th pope, he set an example of spiritual wisdom and sought to train others in the same discipline. He was one who wrote Dialogues for common folks, Pastoral Letters for priests, a Commentary on Job for monks, and  a “Pastoral Rule” for all bishops, one that is still very much consulted today. He reformed the liturgy, both with regard to its music (Gregorian Chant), to the need for mercy (by introducing the three cycles of three Kyries at the beginning of Mass), to its focus on God’s grace by inserting the “Hanc igitur” in the Eucharistic Prayer, and even to the dependence on God the Father by moving the place of the Our Father in the liturgy. Because he knew lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi, that the way we pray forms the way we believe that in turn forms the way we live, he wanted the Mass to be precisely that means by which we’re filled with God. He confronted, rather than ducked, problems in society and in the Church. He had special care for the poor, orphans and widows. He prayed and intervened to help out during terrible plagues that would come from the overflowing, polluted Tiber. He sent his monks to places near and far to evangelize and assist illiterate kings in the government of their feudal empires. He became truly what he chose as his papal title, a servant of the servants of God (servus servorum Dei) modeled after Jesus himself, who came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for the many. Everything began with his astonishment at Jesus and at the invitation Jesus gave him to spend his life with him.
• Jesus’ most astonishing words of all are those that he says through the accent of his priests each day, when he takes simple bread and wine and changes them into himself. He does this by his authority as Creator over all creation, but he also does it by his love as our Redeemer. Today he comes not to the Capernaum synagogue, but here to this beautiful chapel, and even more particularly, he comes to each one of us, seeking to make us his temple and speak with authority to us from within throughout the day. Let us ask the Spirit who helps us to understand the things of God to give us greater amazement at this tremendous mystery as we prepare to greet him with the astonishment of the Roman Centurion: “Lord, I am not worthy that you should come under my roof, but only say the word and my [soul] shall be healed.”

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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