Responding Like Our Lady to the King’s Visitation, 33rd Thursday (II), Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, November 21, 2024

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Thursday of the 33rd Week of Ordinary Time, Year II
Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Pro Orantibus Day
November 21, 2024
Rev 5:1-10, Ps 149, Lk 19:41-44

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today, as we draw closer to the Solemnity of Christ the King on Sunday, we have a scene in the Gospel that seems incongruous to the proclamation of Jesus King of the Universe: Jesus, the King of King and Lord of Lords, is weeping. Understanding his tears and responding with what alone will help turn his tears into joy is the point of the Christian life and the best means by which we will not only celebrate appropriately this upcoming feast but learn to live in his kingdom so that we may celebrate the reality of his kingdom eternally. Today on the Memorial of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, we can learn from her how to do that.
• We begin with Jesus’ tears. As he drew near Jerusalem, Jesus saw the city and wept over it. There’s a Church on the Mount of Olives overlooking the city called Dominus Flevit, “The Lord wept,” built on the spot traditionally where we believe this scene happened and where Christians are able to ponder the Lord’s tears. When I was there a few of years ago with a big pilgrimage group it was pouring outside, a meteorological event that movingly allowed us to ponder the immensity of the Lord’s weeping. St. Luke tells us why Jesus was weeping. “If this day you only knew what makes for peace,” Jesus lamented, “but now it is hidden from your eyes. For the days are coming upon you when your enemies will raise a palisade against you; they will encircle you and hem you in on all sides. They will smash you to the ground and your children within you, and they will not leave one stone upon another within you, because you did not recognize the time of your visitation.” Jesus was weeping because the inhabitants of Jerusalem, which in Hebrew means “City of Peace,” didn’t know what makes for peace. He was weeping because the city and its inhabitants would be destroyed. He was weeping because all of this would occur because they hadn’t recognized the time of their “visitation.” In Catholic life, there’s a difference between a visit and a visitation. Anybody can pay a visit, but a visitation is something much longer. It’s a time when a diocese, a parish, a religious order, or some charity receives a visitator, when it submits to an evaluation, where it is commended for what it is doing well and corrected for what it needs to change. It’s a time, in short, when the visitator helps the whole entity to take a good look at itself and where it’s going. In the incarnation, God did not just “visit” his people but came for a “visitation.” The Prince of Peace has come to establish the definitive peace treaty between God and man, to help people see where they are in terms of peace with God and with each other. The inhabitants of Jerusalem, however, representing the vast majority of Jews, hadn’t embraced Jesus and the path to divine peace he had come to leave us and give us, as he would say during the Last Supper. Had they embraced the life he was announcing, had they grasped the type of kingdom he was inaugurating, the political tensions that had led to Rome’s destroying Jerusalem in 70 AD, Jesus was prophesying by implication, likely wouldn’t have come about. And Jesus was weeping over all of these realities.
• It’s important for us to grasp that Jesus was not weeping over ancient Rome. He wasn’t weeping over modern day Amsterdam, Las Vegas, or San Francisco. He wasn’t weeping over the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or suffering cities in Ukraine, Gaza, Venezuela, China, or North Korea. He was weeping over Jerusalem, where the vast majority of people believed themselves to be religious, to be God-fearing, to be faithful. Jesus was weeping because the people of the holy city hadn’t recognized the time when God had come to visit them and that shortly they would run him out of it carrying a Cross. We need to ask ourselves whether Jesus would be weeping over Manhattan, over the United States, over the world for the same reason. Do we recognize the time of our visitation?  Do we grasp what the ancient Jews, most of whom considered themselves religious, didn’t grasp: what makes for peace and how the Lord has come to visit us? We prayed in the Alleluia verse before the Gospel, “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts,” and the reality is that many times the inner ears of our heart are closed to God’s voice calling us to conversion and holiness. Are we receptive to the Lord’s action? Do we welcome and dwell in his peace? Do we allow him to not just to visit but to “visitate” our heart and life and stay there? He longs for the time when we and others will allow him and his kingdom of peace to enter fully. The more we receive him and his word, however, the more we receive those he sends, the more we console him.
• It’s also important for those of us who seek to love the Lord with all our mind, heart, soul and strength to enter into his tears and weep with him for all those who do not open up their hearts to him, who refuse or reject his peace, his presence, his grace, his sacraments, his word, and his brothers or sisters. Jesus said in the second beatitude, “Blessed are those who mourn.” The path to heaven is paradoxically a path of tears. This world is a journey, as we pray in the Salve Regina, “mourning and weeping through this valley of tears.” We Christians don’t ponder enough Jesus’ tears and don’t weep enough with him, not just for the hardened sinners far from the Lord, but also for those who believe themselves to be close to him but who out of stubbornness don’t allow Jesus to change them for the better because they don’t want to be disturbed. Today is a day in which we first confront the possibility that Jesus has been weeping for us because we haven’t yet fully responded to his call to become saints, because we have not yet really meant the words we’ve prayed thousands of times, “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” And we weep because so many others haven’t prayed those words at all or have not fully desired God’s kingdom and for God’s will to be done over theirs.
• In the first reading, we see St. John’s tears and it’s likewise important for us to understand them and enter into them, because they show us how the Lord’s tears, John’s tears and ours will be turned into joy. St. John tells us that he “shed many tears because no one was found worthy to open the scroll and examine it,” the scroll with writing on both sides, sealed with seven seals, being held by God the Father who sat on his throne. After the mighty angel had asked “Who is worthy to open the scroll and break open its seals?,” and revealed, as we heard yesterday, “what must happen afterward,” no one was able to come forward, because no one was really able to receive it, no one was really disposed to live according to what was contained within it. Multitudes were curious about what would be contained in it, but no one was docile enough to let everything develop according to the words of that scroll. And John wept. He, too, was not worthy, though he hungered for God’s will to be done. Do we share his tears over the fact that no one was found worthy to receive the plans of God and implement them? Do we weep because we haven’t responded to God’s grace to the point that he would purify us so that we could be worthy? Finally, one of the 24 elders said to John, “Do not weep!” The elder told him that someone would be coming worthy to open the seals of the scroll. He said, “The lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, has triumphed, enabling him to open the scroll with its seven seals.” The lion of the tribe of Judah was the fulfillment of the prophecy Jacob gave to Judah his son calling him a “lion’s whelp,” a baby lion (Gen 49:9). Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judah, and became the grown up lion from Judah the whelp. Jesus is also the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy that a “shoot will sprout from the stump of Jesse,” David’s father, and Jesus is that root and shoot. But when finally the One appeared to open the seals, he didn’t look like a Lion or a Shoot. St. John tells us, “I saw standing in the midst of the throne and the four living creatures and the elders a Lamb that seemed to have been slain.” Jesus appeared as a simple Lamb, the Lamb whom St. John the Baptist indicated had come to take away the sins of the world. He was a Lamb that seemed to have been slain: he bore all the marks of death but he was in fact very much alive! John continued, “He had seven horns and seven eyes.” The horns are signs of triumph and seven of them mean perfect triumph because seven (from God’s rest on the seventh or sabbath day) signifies perfection. They’re a sign of Jesus’ omnipotence. The eyes are an indication of his omniscience, that Jesus sees perfectly everything. “He came,” St. John went on, “and received the scroll from the right hand of the one who sat on the throne.” He was worthy to take in and open it. When he did, the four living Creatures and 24 elders “fell down before the Lamb in adoration,” just like they had adored God the Father seated on the throne. “Each of the elders held a harp and gold bowls filled with incense, which are the prayers of the holy ones.” They were playing music of praise to God and offering up our own prayers in the incense bowls. And they were singing to Christ the King words that we should often take to our adoration, “Worthy are you to receive the scroll and break open its seals, for you were slain and with your Blood you purchased for God those from every tribe and tongue, people and nation. You made them a kingdom and priests for our God, and they will reign on earth.” They were adoring the Lamb because he died in order to redeem not just the Jews but those from every people and nation in order not to make them a kingdom of diplomats or civil servants, not a kingdom of soldiers or troubadours, but a kingdom of priests for our God who will reign with the Lamb on earth.
• As we prepare for the Solemnity of Christ the King, we need to understand that to enter into Christ’s kingdom and reign with him, we need to become a kingdom of priests. What this means is not an exclusive caste of ministerial priests, but a kingdom of those who are living out their baptismal priesthood, the common priesthood of all the faithful, who are offering to the Father the Lamb looking as if he has been slain, and offering ourselves together with the Lamb (Rom 12:1-2). We are called, as the Lord indicated to St. Faustina, to offer ourselves together with Jesus as his Bride and Body to the Father in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (1546-7) describes this reality. “Christ, high priest and unique mediator, has made of the Church ‘a kingdom, priests for his God and Father.’ The whole community of believers is, as such, priestly. The faithful exercise their baptismal priesthood through their participation, each according to his own vocation, in Christ’s mission as priest, prophet, and king. Through the sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation the faithful are ‘consecrated to be … a holy priesthood.’” The Catechism goes on to say, “The ministerial or hierarchical priesthood of bishops and priests, and the common priesthood of all the faithful participate, ‘each in its own proper way, in the one priesthood of Christ.’ While being ‘ordered one to another,’ they differ essentially. In what sense? While the common priesthood of the faithful is exercised by the unfolding of baptismal grace — a life of faith, hope, and charity, a life according to the Spirit — the ministerial priesthood is at the service of the common priesthood. It is directed at the unfolding of the baptismal grace of all Christians. The ministerial priesthood is a means by which Christ unceasingly builds up and leads his Church. For this reason it is transmitted by its own sacrament, the sacrament of Holy Orders.” Jesus has instituted the ministerial priesthood precisely in order to help all of the faithful become a kingdom of priests, offering Christ and themselves with Christ to the Father for the salvation of the world, serving others together with Christ as Good Samaritans, and announcing the Word of God as faithfully as Christ himself, the High Priest, opened up the seals and announced the fullness of God’s plans to all of us. The other point that is revealed in this passage is that it is the “kingdom of priests” who “reign on the earth.” We might think it’s otherwise, that the ones who are in charge are the heads of state of the US and China, the titans of tech and industry, the leaders of armies. But Jesus is saying that the ones who are reigning, not just later in heaven but already here on earth, are the saints, those who are living in Christ’s peace, and offering Christ and themselves with him to the Father. We could spend whole retreats on this, but it’s important for us to stop and ask whether we recognize that in humility, often in hiddenness, from chapels like this, we are reigning to the extent that we’re living out our baptismal priesthood with Christ. When all in this world passes away just like ancient Jerusalem was destroyed, the people who will be remembered will not be political, financial, or cultural leaders per se, the rich, famous and powerful who made the newspapers; the people who will be remembered will be those who were truly reigning the way Christ was reigning on earth, even when worldly powers didn’t acknowledge him. We should never forget that, like Christ, we reign by serving with him.
• Someone who reigned this way, even in obscurity, as Queen of heaven and earth, and who offered herself totally together with her Son the eternal high priest, is the Blessed Virgin Mary. Today we celebrate the Memorial of her Presentation in the Temple, an event that comes prior to our first encounter with her in Sacred Scripture at the Annunciation. Most of the liturgical elements for today’s feast come from the Pseudogospel of St. James (and even later pseudogospels like the Pseudoevangelium of Matthew and the Pseudogospel of the Nativity of Mary) that attest that Mary was presented as a young girl of three in the Temple in Jerusalem where she was raised until the time she was betrothed to Joseph. We read in the Pseudogospel of St. James, written about 200 years after the events and so historically useless according to the details but useful in terms of the traditions based upon it later, “And the child became three years old, and Joachim said: ‘Call for the daughters of the Hebrews that are undefiled, and let every one of them take every a lamp, and let them be burning, that the child turn not backward and her heart be taken captive away from the temple of the Lord.’ And they did so until they were gone up into the temple of the Lord. And the priest received her and kissed her and blessed her and said: ‘The Lord has magnified your name among all generations: in you in the latter days shall the Lord make manifest his redemption unto the children of Israel.’ And he made her to sit upon the third step of the altar. And the Lord put grace upon her and she danced with her feet and all the house of Israel loved her. And her parents sat down marveling, and praising the Lord God because the child did not turn away backward. And Mary was in the temple of the Lord like a dove that is nurtured: and she received food from the hand of an angel.” The essential point of the passage was Mary’s being consecrated to the Lord from the beginning of her life, her joy in the Lord’s presence, and the fact that she spent her early years in God’s presence becoming herself eventually the Temple in whom God would dwell, the Ark of the New and Eternal Covenant. Her presence in the temple shows how she was anticipating living out her common priesthood, uniting her life and all her sacrifices to those of her Son the new Temple. It’s during these years, the early Church knew, that Mary’s heart was prepared to treasure God’s word, to piece it together as tesserae in a mosaic whole, to respond to the Lord in purity of heart, and more.
• Since 1953, this feast is the occasion on which the Church marks Pro Orantibus Day, the annual observance begun by Pope Pius XII and expanded by St. John Paul II in 1997, on which the whole Church prays in a special way “For Those Praying,” for all of those in convents, cloisters, monasteries and hermitages who intercede for us without ceasing before God. It’s held purposefully on the feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who is the model of total dedication to a life of prayer and intercession in God’s service. It’s a day on which we note how they lives as a kingdom of priests for God our Father, offering their lives in communion with Christ the Bridegroom’s saving sacrifice. It’s a day on which we thank God for the tears they shed over the sins of the world praying that we will recognize the time of our Visitation. It’s a time we thank the Lord for the contemplatives’ silent, hidden, generous and beautiful vocation. It’s also an occasion on which we recognize them, thank them, encourage them and commit to give the material support they need. It’s a day on which we ponder their example of consecration and of following Christ and prioritizing him through prayer. Contemplative life is a great and indispensable gift of God. All of us benefit spiritually from the orantes’ prayers and sacrifices, from the intense way they live out their baptismal priesthood, even if many of us are unaware of their intercession or naively think that their hidden life is being wasted. Contemplatives remind us — ensnared by the frenetic, noisy and provisional — that God is truly the “pearl of great price” and the “one thing necessary.” In a world that seeks to structure itself without God, their very existence helps us to recall that God is real, provident, and worth our all. They teach us how to adore Christ with all our mind, heart, soul and strength. Today, as every day, communities of contemplatives are before God constantly praying for us, that we may — like them and our Lady — recognize the time of our Visitation, open ourselves to the Visitator, and align our whole life to his priestly passion death and resurrection. Today we pray for them, thank them and thank God for them. We’ll never know until heaven how many of the graces we’ve received — and disasters we’ve averted — have happened because of their incessant prayers.
• As the contemplatives teach us, we’re never more fully a kingdom of priests as when we come to Mass, as all of us through our common baptismal priesthood participate through the ministerial priesthood in Christ’ the high-priest’s self-offering. This is where we look upon the Lamb appearing to have been slain and say, “Worthy are you!” and “Blessed are those called to the Supper of the Lamb!” This is where we take of our prayers not in golden bowls full of incense but present them deep in our hearts to the Father. This is where we sing “a new song” to the Father — as the elders and living creatures did, as we ourselves were called to do in today’s Responsorial Psalm, and as Our Lady and the saints do in heaven — not with harps but with our lungs. This is where Jesus visitates us each day to bring us his peace and make us his holy, indestructible temple and so that we might enter into his purifying tears. And this is where he begins to fulfill his promise that those who mourn like he mourns will be consoled!

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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