Resolutely Determining to Follow Jesus On the Way of Trust and Love, 26th Tuesday (II), October 1, 2024

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Tuesday of the Twenty-Sixth Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, Doctor of the Church
October 1, 2024
Job 3:1-3.11-17.20-23, Ps 88, Lk 9:51-56

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

The following points were attempted in the email: 

• Yesterday in the Gospel Jesus spoke to us about the path to greatness in receiving little children — those who can’t repay — in his name and in so doing, receive him and God the Father who sent him. We were able to focus on the general spirituality of receptivity to all God gives, including to suffering, to the gifts given to others, and to the Word of God. Today we confront the reality that, rather than being received, Jesus is often rejected, not just in the person of children not received, but straight out, something that sheds light not just on our relationship with him but on the fact that often we, too, will be and feel rejected.
• St. Luke tells us that Jesus had “resolutely determined” or literally “fixed his face” on Jerusalem to complete his salvific mission, which is really the fulcrum of his entire Gospel. Before he would do that, however, he was going to try to include the Samaritans more intimately in that saving mission. He had already been to Samaria before, where he met the woman at the well. The end of that scene had the Samaritans all exclaiming in Sychar around the well of Jacob, “We have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the savior of the world.” But because Jesus was planning to head on to Jerusalem, with whom the Samaritans had been in a theological war for centuries, “they would not welcome him.” They put their disagreement with the Jews above their receiving their Savior! And when the Boanerges brothers — the Sons of Thunder, John and James — sought to call down fire from heaven on the Samaritans as God had once destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, we see that they, too, had taken their eyes off of Jerusalem and Jesus’ salvific will. So Jesus, rather than rebuking the Samaritans (which he easily could have), rebuked James and John. The failure of both the Samaritans and the sons of Zebedee teaches us a valuable lessons: many times we can put our own grievances, our own petty scores to settle, above God and the work of salvation he wants to accomplish. We can take our eyes off of Jesus and off of where Jesus has set his eyes. We can put conditions on God’s saving work, like the Samaritans tried: “We’ll allow you, the Savior of the World, to enter our village provided that you promise that you won’t go to Jerusalem!” Even though all of us recognize how silly it is when the Samaritans of yesteryear do it, we need to become more conscious of the way we likewise refuse welcoming Jesus. We see it when we refuse the Cross, like St. Peter and the apostles initially did when they reprimanded Jesus after he said that he would be betrayed in Jerusalem, suffer at the hands of the religious and civil leaders, be beaten, scourged and murdered. Still today many do not want to embrace Jesus’ determined vision about the way he wishes to be with us, united with us on the path of sacrificial love we call the way of the Cross. They seek Christ without the Cross, a Christianity without suffering, The Cross remains a scandal and a folly for many today, just as it was for many at the time of the apostles. What happened in Samaria in today’s Gospel is simply one more illustration of what St. John described in the prologue to his Gospel, that Jesus “came to his own and his own received him not.”
• Sometimes we, too, can feel rejected, abandoned, all alone in misery. That’s what Job felt in today’s first reading. It was tough enough when he lost his cattle, sheep, camels, children, and house, but now he was covered with boils and in such misery and pain that he wished he had never been born. It was a little foretaste of what Jesus himself would experience in his fourth word on the Cross when he would cry out, in the words of Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” But as we see at the end of the Psalm, Jesus continued to trust, and we know how the story ends, which provides hope for us when we are in difficult circumstances. Just like the story of Job has become a sign of hope to so many in suffering, so God sometimes permits us to feel abandoned, rejected, so that we may like Job because signs of more credible hope to others of trust in God as we seek to welcome him even in suffering.
• The positive moral of both the Gospel and Job is to keep our eyes fixed on what God wants, and not to become so distracted by others rejecting God and what he sends. Someone who kept her eyes fixed on Jesus all the way and followed him to Calvary and through Calvary to heaven is the great saint we celebrate today, St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face. She has become a doctor of the Church even though she never attended high school, because she has helped everyone, through her little way of trust and love, often called her little way of spiritual childhood, come to keep their eyes determinedly on God and his will. It’s so important for us to learn this little way of sanctity. At the beginning of Mass today, we prayed, “O God, who open your Kingdom to those who are humble and to little ones, lead us to follow trustingly in the little way of Saint Therese, so that through her intercession we may see your eternal glory revealed.” Her little way, she described, is one of “trust and love,” one that trusts in God the Father, his providence and merciful love, one that cooperates with the Holy Spirit in exulting in our divine filiation, one that is humble and is content with who God created us to be, one that finds God in the little things of every day, including trying to sanctify one’s heart beats, one that it all in for God rather than seeks to become “half a saint.” She famously linked two passages about the kingdom of God together to arrive at an important truth. The first is that unless we convert and become like little children, we cannot enter the kingdom of God. The second is the first of the beatitudes, that to the poor in spirit is the kingdom of God. Becoming childlike and becoming poor in spirit are basically synonymous. As Therese made spiritual childhood her own, so she made her own poverty of spirit. She aspired to be nothing more than “a poor little child” who looks to her Father for everything and who obtains everything from Him because of this same poverty. She kept her eyes on Christ who, though he was rich made himself poor, so that in his poverty we might become rich. And with him, she kept her focus on the generosity of God the Father.
• When she was searching for what her vocation was, she saw that it was to be “love in the heart of the Church [her] mother.” She sought, therefore, to unite herself to Christ’s sacrificial love shown for us on the Cross. St. Therese’s way of spiritual childhood encompasses this path of love and trust that we see in Jesus upon the Cross. It’s an entrance into Jesus’ own filiation, his own trust in the Father’s goodness, his own entrusting of his soul and all he was to the Father. When we look at St. Therese’s poetry, we see just how central sharing Christ’s love on the Cross is to all that she teaches us as a doctor of the Church.
  • In one poem, she writes: “To live of love, ’tis not to fix one’s tent / On Tabor’s height and there with Thee remain. / ‘Tis to climb Calvary with strength nigh spent. / And count Thy heavy cross our truest gain.” The little way means not trying to build booths to keep the consolation of the Transfiguration, but entering with Jesus on Calvary and build our booth together with Jesus on the Cross. She continues, ” In heaven, my life a life of joy shall be / The heavy cross shall then be gone for aye. / Here upon earth, in suffering with Thee, Love! let me stay.” She begs to stay with Jesus in this crucified love in order to enter into Jesus’ eternal joy.
  • In a second poem, she stressed her desire to be crucified to the world to share in Jesus’ saving will. “I long for suffering; and the cross / With strong desire my heart doth crave. / A thousand deaths were gain, not loss, / If but one soul I help to save!” In the mosaics of the Crypt chapel in Lisieux where she is buried, there’s the expression that she recognized as a young novice, “To love is to give all, it’s to give oneself.” She made that self-gift, holding nothing back, and wants to help and encourage us to do the same.
  • In a third poem, she builds on this notion to desire and love the Cross, because one desires and loves what Jesus loves. “Remember Thou that amorous complaint / Escaping from Thy lips on Calvary’s tree: / ‘I thirst!’ Oh, how my heart like Thine doth faint. / Yes, yes! I share Thy burning thirst with Thee. / The more my heart burns bright with Thy great Heart’s chaste fires, / The more I thirst for souls, to quench Thy Heart’s desires./ That with such love always I burn, by night, by day. Remember Thou!” She thirsted for what Jesus thirsts, which is the salvation of every person. That was what burned her insides, to share that love. That’s where she kept her gaze. Likewise, with us, we need to begin with a love, with a hunger, for God so strong that it makes us want we he wants and makes us capable, by his grace, of sacrificing for it as we see so often with the martyrs.
  • In a final poem, St. Therese teaches us very practically how to walk this way of the Cross.  “O Jesu! O my Love! Each eve I come to fling / Before Thy sacred Cross sweet flowers of all the year. By these plucked petals bright, my hands how gladly bring, I long to dry Thine every tear! To scatter flowers! — that means each sacrifice, / My lightest sighs and pains, my heaviest, saddest hours, / My hopes, my joys, my prayers, — I will not count the price. / Behold my flowers! / With deep, untold delight Thy beauty fills my soul. / Would I might light this love in hearts of all who live! / For this, my fairest flowers, all things in my control, How fondly, gladly I would give! / To scatter flowers! — behold my chosen sword / For saving sinners’ souls and filling heaven’s bowers. / The victory is mine: yes, I disarm Thee, Lord, With these my flowers!” Everything in her day she treated as a flower with which she would adorn Jesus with love on the Cross. All the little sacrifices of every day could be sanctified as an act of love, and that’s what she tried to do. That’s what she’d like to help us try to do. That’s the way we keep our sights determinedly fixed on Calvary, with Jesus.
• To set our face on Jerusalem, on Calvary, on the Cross, is all about love. The way St. Therese grew in cruciform love most was not just through the physical sufferings she endured with terrible tuberculosis at the end of her life and an unexplained lengthy illness at the beginning of her life. It wasn’t just through the death of her mother at the age of four and her father’s getting dementia at the end of his days. It wasn’t merely through the dark night of the soul that tormented her over the last couple of years of her existence. It was mostly through the Mass. This is where the love of God, shown for us on the Cross, met her and renewed her vision each day. This is where we behold the Lamb of God, the Savior of the World, who can’t keep his eyes off of us. This is where we learn to trust in God’s providing everything, because if he doesn’t spare his own Son, he will give us everything besides. This is where we cry out with trust for his mercy, for if he has become so small for us, we cannot be intimidated. This is where the Holy Spirit helps us to cry out with Jesus, “Abba, Father!” This is where we, like Therese, learn humility. This is where we unite all the ordinary things of every day. This is where God seeks to make us holy, so that we may spend our time and eternity doing good. Let us ask Jesus, as we prepare to receive his Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, to “lead us trustingly in the little way of Saint Therese,” so that through her intercession, Jesus may give us his eyes, so that we might keep our eyes always on the target he has set and on the Father in heaven, where we hope, with St. Therese, to behold him always in the beatific vision and “see [his] glory revealed!”

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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