Responding to Jesus’ Prayerful Call, 23rd Tuesday (II), September 6, 2022

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Tuesday of the 23rd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
September 6, 2022
1 Cor 6:1-11, Ps 149, Lk 6:12-19

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• As we begin the academic year today at Columbia, and as students at every level start taking steps toward their future, it’s important for us to focus on our vocation as Christians. In today’s readings we see several important elements for us to grasp about the deepest realities of our vocation and mission to live in and spread Christ’s kingdom. We also see some who don’t live according to this vocation.
• The first lesson is that our vocation, our life, is a direct result of the prayer of the Lord Jesus. We see him at the beginning of the Gospel go up a mountain and spend all night in prayer to his Father. He who is the second Person of the Blessed Trinity was praying all night. What an example about the importance of prayer for us who are not God! Jesus seems to have been praying in discernment about whom he should choose as his apostles and praying in intercession for those whom he was about to choose. We should never forget that Jesus likewise prays for us. He’s ascended into heaven in order to intercede for us. For that reason, we should never really be afraid of living up to the vocation that God has given us, because just as much as Jesus prayed for the apostles, prayed for Peter that his faith may not fail but that after his conversion he would strengthen his brothers (Lk 22), he prayed to the Father for all those who would hear the Gospel through the work of the Apostles (Jn 17), and prays for us still.
• The second thing we see in this Gospel episode is what he did at dawn. From among his disciples, he selected twelve apostles. It says he “called [them] to himself” and “named [them] Apostles,” another way of saying what St. Mark describes: “He called them to be with him and so that they might be sent out” (Mk 3:14). We come here face-to-face with the mystery of divine election. God calls us all to him, but among all of us he chooses some for more intensely intimate cooperation with him. Out of all people he chose the Jews; out of all the Jews, some became his disciples; out of all those disciples, 12 became apostles; out of all 12, he chose three (Peter, James and John) to be with him in many of the most pivotal moments of his public life (healing the daughter of Jairus, the Transfiguration, the Agony in the Garden); and out of the three, he chose one, Peter, on whom to build his Church. Likewise we can say that Jesus calls all 7 billion alive today to come to the knowledge of the truth, but only 2 out of 7 is Christian and only half of them are Catholic. These facts don’t make us better than anyone else, but we are certainly fortunate. And just as the apostles responded to Jesus’ invitation and left other things to be with him and made themselves available to be sent out on mission, so have we, something that is a response to Jesus’ prayer and doubtless something that gives him great joy.
• The third thing we see in the Gospel is the way Jesus trained the twelve to carry on his mission. We see that he taught the crowds, he healed them of their diseases and cured them of demonic possession. Everyone, St. Luke tells us, wanted to touch him “because power came forth from him and healed them all.” The mission of the Church is to continue to teach as Jesus’ mystical body, to continue to heal through the sacraments and through charity, and to continue to make it possible for people to touch Jesus and be touched by him. For this to occur, we need to “be with Jesus,” by praying in union with him, by teaching in union with him, and by loving in union with him.
• We see in today’s readings how some failed to persevere in doing so. In the Gospel, we see that even among the 12 Jesus called after intense prayer, and after an initially positive response, there was Judas Iscariot, who would betray him in many small ways before betraying him unto death. In the first reading, we similarly see how many of the Christians in Corinth had ceased living as Christians, as Paul reminds them forcefully. St. Paul castigates them for behaving totally antithetically to their Christian identity, bringing suits against each other before civil tribunals. He asks, “How can any one of you with a case against another dare to bring it to the unjust for judgment instead of to the holy ones?” We’ve seen in the last few years the ugly case of the fight over the remains of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen when the Diocese of Peoria has sued the Archdiocese of New York in the New York Supreme Court trying to get the body of Archbishop Sheen to be translated to the Cathedral in Peoria. It was as if no one in Peoria has read 1 Cor 6 or took it seriously. Can’t we find one person in the whole Church who can fairly adjudicate this situation? But we’ve also seen in the United States many cases in which mothers sue their sons, daughters sue their parents, brothers and sisters dragging each other into civil court. All of us instinctively know that the love of God isn’t present in such familial disputes, that the family members aren’t truly living in Christ’s kingdom, when they’re putting, for example, financial concerns or inheritances above their familial bonds and often above God. St. Paul says that it’s supposed to be even stronger among us as spiritual brothers and sisters in the Church and any time Christians were suing each other in civil courts it was a scandal to others since Christ prayed that we would all be one like the members of the Trinity and seek first his kingdom. St. Paul makes two objections. The first is that when there are inevitable disagreements, he wants us to bring it to a mutually agreed upon arbiter with good judgment who can help settle the dispute consistent with Christian faith. “Can it be that there is not one among you wise enough to be able to settle a case between brothers?,” St. Paul asks. The second is that it’s better for us to lose a suit than to lose a spiritual sibling and lose the kingdom. “Why not rather put up with injustice?,” he continues. “Why not rather let yourselves be cheated? Instead, you inflict injustice and cheat, and this to brothers.” Even if we win the lawsuit, he is saying, we lose. Then he immediately goes on to remind them that the “unjust will not inherit the Kingdom of God” and he describes what they were doing as akin to the sins of fornication, idolatry, adultery, prostitution, sodomy, theft, greed, drunkenness and robbery, saying all will exclude us from the kingdom. We can’t be seeking to live in God’s kingdom, St. Paul insists, and at the same time suing each other in civil court as if we were combatants instead of spiritual siblings. We should be filled with shame over such behavior — embarrassed and mindful of why we should be embarrassed, because we’re called to something greater and better by God. These words are just as relevant today as they ever were. St. Paul calls us to a higher standard, the standard of the kingdom, saying that we were once sinners, excluded from the kingdom, but we have been “washed,” “sanctified,” and “justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.” But we’ve got to live and act in the name of the Lord and in accordance with the Spirit.
• This leads to good news we see in the Responsorial Psalm, which at daily Masses “responds” to what we heard in the first reading. Today the Psalm easily could have been, for example, Psalm 51, “Have mercy on us, O Lord, for we have sinned!” Instead, it’s “The Lord takes delight in his people.” It shows us the lesson of today’s Gospel, that not only despite our sins but even through them, God has called us, forgiven us, sanctified us, and sent us out to try to bring others to conversion. He calls us to be with him in his mercy and sends us out with his mercy so that others can learn about it, touch it, and have the demons that want them to reject or take that mercy for granted expelled. The Lord takes delight in us. Today as we pray this Mass, we recognize that Jesus is teaching us in the Gospel and through his apostle Paul, that he seeks to heal, wash, sanctify and justify us, that he calls us to himself, that he wants us to touch him on the inside through Holy Communion, and then he wants to send us out not to live a litigious but a liturgical life, transforming our whole existence into the praise of God and the consistent proclamation of his kingdom in “deeds and in truth” so that others may learn from us how to seek the things of Jesus Christ, to love others as Good Samaritans, and to live in accordance with our Christian vocation to the kingdom.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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