Strengthened To Be Considered “Fools” and “Scum,” 22nd Saturday (II), September 3, 2022

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Saturday of the 22nd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of St. Gregory the Great
September 3, 2022
1 Cor 4:6-15, Ps 145, Lk 6:1-5

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• We have been pondering all week the contrast between thinking as God thinks versus thinking as human beings do, between being wise in the mentality of the world versus truly wise in seeing everything from the perspective of God in faith. Today brings those considerations to a head and make them personal. When we live according to God’s way, when we think as God thinks and live according to his ways, the worldly wise will often think we’re weird. As a result, they may look down upon us, tease or mock us, oppose us, and perhaps even harass, persecute us or worse. That’s what they did to Jesus. That’s what happened to the first disciples and apostles. That’s what can happen in any age. We need to be prepared not just to endure these contradictions, but, like Jesus, like St. Paul in today’s first reading, like Pope St. Gregory the Great whom the Church remembers today, to embrace them and eventually to find joy in suffering them out of love for God, for others and for the truth.
• Today in the Gospel we see how Jesus  was opposed by some of the Pharisees, among the religious leaders of his day, based on the contrast between the way God envisions true worship and the way human beings can sometimes form their own religion pretending it’s what God wants. God gave us the gift and the command to keep holy the Sabbath Day so that we would be able to be with God and allow him to refresh us in the “rest” that he gave us as an example by himself resting on the seventh day of creation. To keep the Sabbath holy, according to the Jewish conception of holiness (qadosh) was to consecrated it to God, to sever it from profane purposes so that it can be better united with God. After the exile, when the class of scribes arose to study the law and make sure the Jews weren’t violating it — because they recognized it was because of their infidelity that the exile happened in the first place — they began to create all sorts of regulations to keep themselves and their fellow Jews’ from getting anywhere close to breaking the law. So while God commanded, “Keep Holy the Sabbath Day” so that they wouldn’t return to the slavery of constant work like they experienced in Egypt, the scribes said that they couldn’t do basically any work at all. With regard to today’s Gospel, they said that you couldn’t do any reaping (plucking), threshing (rubbing it in their hands), winnowing (chucking the husks) and preparing (eating), all things that Jesus and his disciples did in today’s Gospel. Their understanding had become that to honor God and grow in holiness, they couldn’t do any work at all to prepare the food that God had given them, as if wanted his sons and daughters to starve on the day he had created to refresh them. But these Pharisaical restrictions weren’t God’s wisdom, but man’s foolishness. Those who were spying on Jesus recognized that he and his disciples “violated” all of these manmade restrictions and confronted him. Jesus tried to take them back to the meaning of the law. Jesus reminded them that David had eaten the “bread of presence” in the temple, the 12 loaves that would remain there as a sign of God’s provision, and that were to be eaten after their service only by the priests. Jesus was showing himself the new David and showing that his disciples were like David’s soldiers in fighting the battles of the Lord. It’s not a violation of consecrating oneself to God or the violation of sabbath rest to eat and to do a little, non-slavish work to obtain the food. But Jesus went further than this correction. In saying, “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath,” he was saying that to find the sabbath rest, we would need to rest in Him: to take his yoke and learn from him, who is meek and humble of heart, so that we might find the rest for their souls that God wanted. To honor the sabbath was not to be neurotic about reaping, threshing, winnowing and preparing food but to honor and be with the Lord in meekness and humility. Jesus’ defense of the true meaning of the Sabbath would lead the Pharisees to begin to plot to kill him. He suffered for the truth. He suffered for the Lord’s day. He suffered to try to bring about true worship in the midst of those who thought he was foolish and wrong.
• That leads us to the first reading. St. Paul contrasts the way the proud way the Corinthians converts were living versus the meek and humble manner of life of the apostles (and by derivation all Christians). Corinth was a very wealthy city and after the conversion of Corinthians there was a battle between their old ways and their new ways, between their ways and God’s ways, between their wisdom and God’s wisdom. Throughout this letter until now, St. Paul has been contrasting the wisdom of the world versus the wisdom of God, especially as it regards the Cross, which is folly to Greeks, a scandal to Jews, but to those who are called the power and wisdom of God. The Corinthians weren’t really experiencing this power because they weren’t really embracing the Cross. The Corinthians had been vainly boasting about their spiritual gifts, boasting of their favorite apostles, inflated with pride because of their connection to one who they thought made them better  than others. None of this was coming from God.
• St. Paul first takes them back to God and reminds them that everything is a gift from him.  “What do you possess that you have not received?” Since they’ve received everything as a grace, they shouldn’t become personally inflated and boast as if any of those gifts of God were their own attributes. Rather they should be praising God who has given them everything. He teases them that they’re living with the arrogance and self-sufficiency of kings, who were “satisfied,” who felt like they didn’t need anything from God, the very things for which Jesus condemned the Church of Laodicea in the Book of Revelation (Rev 3:17). In contrast to the way they were “inflated with pride,” St. Paul says that the apostles were rather last of all. He uses an image from the triumphal parades of ancient kings and emperors to contrast the Corinthian’s way of life to that of Paul and the other apostles, from human wisdom to God’s wisdom. Whenever kings were returning from victorious battles, they would have a procession with their soldiers carrying all of the spoils of war. At the very end of the procession, bound by chains or ropes, would be the slaves that they had captured, who often would be subject to derision on the part of the cheering crowds and many of whom would become food for the beasts in gruesome games. St. Paul says that that’s the way the apostles, like him, are treated in contrast to the vanity of the Corinthians. “God has exhibited us Apostles as the last of all, like people sentenced to death, since we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels and men alike.” That’s exactly what happened to Christ before them. He became “the last of all, … sentenced to death, … a spectacle to the world.”
• In contrast to the Corinthians proud ways and worldly wisdom — trying to accommodate the opinions of their peers rather than conform themselves to the power and wisdom of the Cross — St. Paul said that the apostles are “fools on Christ’s account.” He contrasted true Christianity from its watered down, false cousin: “We are weak,” St. Paul says, “but you are strong; you are held in honor, but we in disrepute.” While the Corinthians don’t need anything, he says, “to this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are poorly clad and roughly treated, we wander about homeless and we toil, working with our own hands.” But the sufferings in union with Christ don’t stop there. According to the wisdom of the Cross, all of these are actually blessings by which they can become conformed to Christ in his power and wisdom.  “When ridiculed, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we respond gently.” He summed it all up by saying, “We have become like the world’s rubbish, the scum of all, to this very moment.” But he was happy to be considered among the scum of the earth, because as he said in his letter to the Philippians, he considers everything else as a loss, he had accepted the loss of all things and considered them as trash, compared to the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus and gain him (Phil 3:8). That is God’s wisdom, and St. Paul was as a father admonishing the Corinthians to learn how to live by it in imitation of Paul and the apostles.
• This is a truly challenging message to us, who live in an American culture that resembles in many ways the culture of ancient Corinth and of Laodicea. We think we’re wise in worldly ways, often smarter than all the generations that have come before us, and superior to most other people alive. It’s easy for us to become inflated with pride, for us to think we really don’t need God, and so we expunge him from our schools, our culture, our institutions, and sometimes our homes and our time. Few of us would sign up to be the scum of the earth, to become spectacles like those sentenced to death, to be weak, held in disrepute, hungry and thirsty, poorly dressed and roughed up, homeless wanders, toilsome workers, ridiculed, persecuted, slandered and thrown away like trash. We think we’re too wise ever to opt for that type of life and, if that’s what it requires to be an apostle, we’ll just accept a watered-down version of the Christian life where we can believe in Jesus but not have to experience what Paul did, what Jesus did, what so many saints and martyrs have. We’ll take a Cross-less Christianity, thank you very much, and thank the Lord for letting Jesus’ message of self-denial, picking up our Cross and following him on the way of the Cross “expire” before we came of age. Today, St. Paul, as a spiritual father calling us to conversion as “beloved children” summons us, together with the Corinthians, to convert from living by worldly wisdom to living by God’s, so that we may in humility and meekness “know” and “gain” Christ Jesus in this life and know and gain him forever. For this to happen, however, we need to act on Jesus’ words from Sunday’s Gospel, to be wise enough in God and foolish in the eyes of the world to lose everything else in life to gain Christ rather than wise enough in worldly logic and fools in the eyes of God by gaining the whole world and losing our soul in the process. St. Paul’s is the path to heaven. Robin Leach’s is not.
• Today we celebrate the feast of one of the greatest saints in history and in my opinion, the greatest Pope.  He was a man full of the Lord’s wisdom, rather than the world’s, and he dedicated his life to trying to bring that wisdom to the world through the Church in so many innovative ways. He was capable of being considered “crazy” by others in order to follow God. And he strengthened the Church of his time, and lay people, priests, religious and bishops throughout the centuries, to be fools for Christ as well. 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. He was able to be so successful because of his spiritual maturity; he saw his office as an opportunity not to serve himself but to serve others and used all his talents to try to establish and advance the common good. But in his mature discernment, he recognized that God was calling him to something different and more. So he did something many considered crazy: 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. 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 maturely 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 divine wisdom 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, 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). He did so much to help people live like Christian fools for Christ and seek to follow in the apostolic way of sanctity, becoming the world’s rubbish, blessing when ridiculed, enduring when persecuted, and responding gently when slandered. He helped others to live this way precisely by helping unite them to Christ who did all of these “foolish” things. Whereas the world thought he was a fool to live civil power behind, we see what he was able to do when he dedicated himself to living by God’s ways and helping others to do the same.
• Today in the Gospel Jesus’ disciples accompanied him through fields of grain where they reaped, threshed, winnowed, prepared and ate corn in their hunger in imitation of the way David and his soldiers ate the bread of the presence in the temple. Today we have accompanied Jesus through the streets of upper Manhattan here, where Jesus will have us eat something far greater, the fulfillment of what the “bread of presence” symbolized, Jesus’ own real presence here among us. This is where we come to rest in him, to yoke ourselves to him in humility and meekness and learn from him. This is where we’re strengthened by him to join the procession of “fools,” like people sentenced not only to death but summoned to resurrection, people who are weak perhaps in worldly power but strong in Him, held in disrepute but to be honored forever, hungry and thirsty for the holiness he alone gives, poorly clad but adorned by his armor, wandering about homeless but built on him who had no place to lay his head, like the world’s scum but carrying within the greatest treasure of all. As St. Paul reminds us, we have nothing that we haven’t received — and what we’re about to receive is the greatest gift of all.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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