Responding to God’s Word in Full Measure, 3rd Thursday (II), January 27, 2022

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Thursday of the Third Week of Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of St. Angela Merici
January 27, 2022
2 Sam 7:18-19.24-29, Ps 132, Mk 4:21-25

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Yesterday Jesus gave us the Parable of the Sower and the Seed, which allowed us to take a soil sample of our receptivity to his action in our life and to point us toward bearing abundant fruit through eliminating the packed down soil, or subterranean rock layers or thorns that can choke the growth of the seed. He also explained to us why he uses Parables, so that we’ll be provoked to put in the work to understand the imagery he is using and apply it to our life; if we don’t find ourselves doing the work but blowing off what he says, it’s a clear sign that our hearts are hardened. Today Jesus continues that lesson by focusing on three things that should happen when we are receiving his word on good soil.
• The first is that it will shine through us. Jesus has lit the lamp of our minds and hearts with his holy word and he doesn’t want us to place it under a bushel basket or a bed but on a lamp stand. He doesn’t want us to keep what he teaches us secret but to make it visible, to bring it to the light of day so that others might similarly be illuminated.
• Second, we will take care of it. Jesus tells us to “take care what you hear.” We can understand this in two senses. First, it means to pay attention, that we listen well to what he’s saying. We ought to be at the edge of our seats when Jesus speaks, attentive to every word, remembering it, pondering it in our hearts, placing it together with what he’s taught us before and letting it become a foundation for what he wishes to teach us later in our prayer, in our listening to Sacred Scripture, in what he reveals to us in day-to-day events. The second way he wants us to take care of what we hear is to treasure what he reveals, to care for it, to nourish it, to water the seeds of his word. In today’s first reading, we see David’s prayer before the Lord, his utter astonishment at the Lord’s goodness to him, he “amen” and “fiat” to the doubly-shocking news that Nathan gave him ‚— which we would have heard yesterday, if we didn’t have the proper first reading for the feast of SS. Timothy and Titus —  that he wouldn’t be allowed to build a house for the Lord and that the Lord would build one in turn for him. Filled with awe and gratitude, caring for God’s word, David said in prayer, “Who am I, Lord God, and who are the members of my house, that you have brought me to this point? Yet even this you see as too little, Lord God;  you have also spoken of the house of your servant  for a long time to come:  this too you have shown to man, Lord God! … It is you, Lord of hosts, God of Israel, who said in a revelation to your servant, ‘I will build a house for you.’” The Lord God had blessed David with the promise of establishing in him an eternal kingdom, one that would be fulfilled by Jesus his descendent according to the flesh and it was a blessing almost too much to comprehend. David asks for God to fulfill that promise, uniting his will to the will of the Lord. Likewise, when Jesus gives us his teaching, it’s a similar blessing and we should respond to it with wonder and amazement, just like Moses in receiving and proclaiming the law of the Lord cried out to the Lord, “For what great nation is there that has gods so close to it as the Lord, our God, is to us whenever we call upon him?  Or what great nation has statutes and decrees that are as just as this whole law which I am setting before you today?  … However, take care and be earnestly on your guard not to forget the things which your own eyes have seen, nor let them slip from your memory as long as you live, but teach them to your children and to your children’s children.” We need similarly to take care and be on our guard not to forget what God is teaching us, not to let them slip from our memory as long as we live, but to pass it on.
• This leads to the third point: to share the word of God generously. Jesus tells us that the “measure with which you measure will be measured out to you and still more will be given to you. To the one who has, more will be given; from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.” This is basically the law of “use or it or lose it,” which every student, every athlete, every musician knows. The more we learn, the more we can learn. The more we work out, the more we can work out and the tougher the exercises we can do. The more we practice the piano, the more our talent develops; the less we practice, the more our ability wanes. Unless we use a gift, the gift atrophies. It’s similar with the light of the teaching he gives us: the more we give it, the more we’ll receive it, and if we don’t pass it on to others, we’re at risk for losing it. Any teacher will tell you that if you really want to learn something, try to teach it to others. The measure with which we measure is measured back to us. The way we let the light shine, the way we take care of the word, is to measure it out, so that we may not only grow in our possession of the light of his word but also grow in our giving it away as the great blessing David and Moses both recognized.
• Today we have a great illustration of what Jesus is teaching us today in the life of St. Angela Merici (1470-1540), who received the Word of God on good and fruitful soil, who let the light of Christ’s teaching radiate through her to so many students, who took care of it as a precious treasure with which to enrich the world and who shared it in full measure. She was the foundress of the Company of St. Ursula, the first teaching order of women in the history of the Church. Angela was orphaned at 15 and when her younger sister died a few years later without the sacraments, she began to look around to see how many girls, both orphans and those growing up in poor families, who were receiving no education and Christian formation. The only instruction for girls at the time happened in rich families by tutors or happened in convents. The vast majority of young women received no educational formation at all, not to mention no formal instruction in the faith. The seeds sown were often left just by the wayside for lack of care and cultivation. St. Angela opened up her family home into a primitive school to try to teach the girls of her city, others joined her, and it eventually became a model that was approved by the Church and blessed by God with many vocations. Over the course of the five centuries since, the Ursulines have formed millions of Catholic kids and spawned many other orders of teaching sisters. Her whole life can be summarized by Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount: “Whoever obeys and teaches these commandments will be called greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 5:19). She was one who obeyed God and spent her life forming sisters and with them countless children how to obey God, too. In the Collect (opening prayer) of the Mass, we asked God that following St. Angela’s example, “we may hold fast to your teaching and express it in what we do.” That’s another way of asking him to take care of it and measure it out fully.
• After having heard Jesus speak to us today in the Gospel, and as we prepare to receive him as the Word made Flesh in Holy Communion, let us ask him to give us ears to hear, to pour out the grace we need to let him shine in us as the Light of the World, to measure out to others as he without limit gives himself to us, and to be filled with an astonishment like David that he not only has chosen to build us a temple but chosen us to be that temple.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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