Fr. Roger J. Landry
Sacred Heart Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Thursday of the Second Week of Advent
Memorial of St. Juan Diego
December 9, 2021
Is 41:13-20, Ps 145, Mt 11:11-15
To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
The following text guided the homily:
- The Jews were waiting in the long Advent for two figures. The first was the Messiah. The second was Elijah, whom God had said through the Prophet Malachi, “Behold, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes” (Mal 4:5; Mal 3:1). Jesus in today’s Gospel identified the work of Elijah with St. John the Baptist, telling us, “If you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah, the one who is to come.” Later in St. Matthew’s Gospel, after Elijah appeared with Moses speaking to Jesus during the Transfiguration, Jesus was even more explicit: “Elijah will indeed come and restore all things, but I tell you that Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him but did to him whatever they pleased. So also will the Son of Man suffer at their hands” (Mt 17:12), pointing out how they had manhandled his precursor. “Elijah” pointed out the “Messiah” and the “Messiah” was pointing out “Elijah.” The fulfillment of the Advent for the one who would come in the person of Elijah was an indication of the even greater fulfillment.
- But because of John the Baptist’s role in pointing out the Messiah, not to mention because of his personal holiness and witness to the point of martyrdom, Jesus said something astonishing in today’s Gospel: “Amen, I say to you, among those born of women, there has been none greater than John the Baptist, yet the least in the Kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” First, Jesus was saying that up until then John was the greatest human being who had ever lived. We need to ponder that. There were lots of heroic martyrs and faithful Israelites, but he had the role to make straight the paths of the Lord. He was one born of a woman having already been blessed by God in the womb. No one had been born so exalted as to have pointed out by his leaping the Messiah. And he was still pointing him out, at the Jordan, through preaching repentance and faith, through martyrdom. But Jesus goes on to say that the littlest in the kingdom of God was even greater than John, that the one sanctified in the womb of the Kingdom is greater than all those born just of women. This is not so much a testimony about moral greatness, but about objective greatness, and a reminder to us of just how lucky we are to have been reborn in that womb of the Church soon after birth or whenever we entered into the sacred waters. We’re also greater because we’ve seen and received the full revelation of Christ to which John was still in some sense prophesying, because John hadn’t seen what would come later: Jesus’s incredible love revealed for us on the Cross that gave us the power to become children of God.
- But just as there was a cost for John’s becoming the greatest born of woman — his suffering on account of pointing out not only the Lamb but the Bridegroom and therefore the truth about marriage before Herod — so there’s a cost for our Christian greatness in fully entering the kingdom. Jesus describes both sufferings in the Gospel: “From the days of John the Baptist until now, the Kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent are taking it by force.” There are two types of violence Jesus describes: violence against the Kingdom and violence for the Kingdom. We see the violence against the Kingdom from the beginning. The slaughter of the Holy Innocents. Jesus’ neighbors in Nazareth trying to murder him by throwing him off the Nazarene cliff. The collusion of the arch-inimical Sadducees, Pharisees and Romans to have Jesus executed. We’ve seen it in the sufferings of the apostles, the slaughter of so many martyrs, the persecution of the Church throughout time right down to what our brothers and sisters are suffering today in various contexts. Jesus told us that we would be hated by all because of his name and that what they did to him they would try to do to us. The Kingdom will suffer violence against it until the end of time and we need to be prepared. But there’s also a violence Jesus describes for the Kingdom. St. Luke says in a similar passage, “The kingdom of heaven has suffered violence and men of violence take it by force” (Lk 16:16). We need to seize the Kingdom. We need to be able to do violence to ourselves, to our earthly values, in order to enter into it. We need to agonize to enter through the narrow gate. We need to deny ourselves, pick up our Cross and follow Jesus. We need to sell what we have, give the money to the door, and follow Jesus up close. We need to lose our life to save it. We need to love him more than our parents, families and even ourselves to be worthy of it. None of this is easy, but when we recognize the value of the kingdom, we’re able to give up everything else to seize this pearl of great price.
- Many of us, however, when we hear about this violence against and for the Kingdom shudder. Many of us don’t like to get shots at the doctors office because we’re afraid of needles and Jesus calls to us with nails through his limbs on the Cross to come follow him. It can be hard to take. It can seem as if it’s not really part of the “good news.” The suffering itself is not part of the good news any more than suffering and death are ontological goods. They’re not. What is part of the good news is what God says to us today through the Prophet Isaiah. We don’t suffer alone. With words that would deeply console the Jews in Babylon during the exile, God tells them, “Fear not, I will help you. … I am the Lord, your God, who grasp your right hand.” He promises that he will answer the prayers of those who are parched in search of water, and not just give them a few drops, but open up rivers on mountain tops, fountains in valleys, turn deserts into marshlands, dry ground into springs, “so that all may see and know, observe and understand that the hand of the Lord has done this.” These words of God — “Fear not, I will help you,” “Do not be afraid I am with you” — are often repeated throughout salvation history. God said them to Moses at the burning bush when he asked how he, a simple shepherd, could go before Pharaoh. He said them to Joshua when he feared how a group of nomads could defeat the fortified city of Jericho. He said them to Paul when he was in jail in Corinth. He said them to the apostles who were frightened on the sea. “Do not be afraid I am with you.” Every Advent we pray for the triple coming of God-with-us, and Jesus comes not in a static way, but comes to save us, to rescue us, to redeem us, to strengthen us, to take away our fears, to make us great, to quench our thirst, and to help us to take the Kingdom of God by force by being willing to suffer violence for it.
- Someone who shows us the violence we need to do in response to our fears in order to seize the kingdom, someone whose life manifests the the tenderness of God in grasping us by the hand and helping us confront and overcome our fears, is the humble holy one the Church celebrates today: St. Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin. This 57-year-old man was chosen by Mary 490 years ago today to participate in a special way, together with her, in facilitating the encounter with God, in experiencing God’s proximity and love, and in bringing many others to experience the greatness that comes through entering the kingdom of God. When the Blessed Mother appeared to St. Juan Diego on Tepeyac Hill on December 9, 1531, he was a simple, humble, 57 year-old widower known for walking with his head down and shuffling his feet. He had been baptized only seven years before by the Franciscan missionaries through whom he had first encountered the true God. He soon became a fervent believer. Every Saturday and Sunday he would walk 15 miles each way to Mass. As he was journeying one cold Saturday morning, he heard a voice calling from the top of a hill, “Juanito,” “Dieguito,” “Come here!” He scaled the rocky slope, where at the top he saw the Blessed Virgin Mary arrayed in splendor. Our Lady announced she had come on a mission as our Mother of Mercy and wanted him to be her emissary to Bishop Juan de Zumárraga of Mexico City to have him build a church on Tepeyac Hill where the encounter with God could continue. Obeying simply and immediately, he headed in his simple peasant’s outfit to the episcopal residence, where he was forced to wait for hours in a cold outdoor courtyard. Eventually the bishop received him, treated him with kindness, but basically, despite Juan Diego’s obvious sincerity, as a little deluded. Juan Diego left feeling like a complete failure. Returning at once to Our Lady on Tepeyac Hill, he said that he had struck out. “I beg you, Noble Lady,” he implored, “to entrust this message to someone of importance, someone well-known and respected, so that your wish will be accomplished. For I am only a lowly peasant and you, my Lady, have sent me to a place where I have no standing. Forgive me if I have disappointed you for having failed in my mission.” But Our Lady smiled tenderly on him and said, “Listen to me, my dearest son, and understand that I have many servants and messengers whom I could charge with the delivery of my message. But it is altogether necessary that you should be the one to undertake this mission and that it be through your mediation and assistance that my wish should be accomplished. I urge you to go to the Bishop again tomorrow. Tell him in my name and make him fully understand my disposition, that he should undertake the erection of the teocalli (temple) for which I ask. And repeat to him that it is I in person, the ever Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, who send you.” Mary didn’t strictly speaking need Juan Diego. She could have appeared to the Bishop himself. But she wanted to incorporate him in this saving mission, in this great harvest that would take place in the Americas. She wanted to help him do violence to his fears and seize a greater participation in the kingdom God calls us all to spread. Likewise she wants to involve each of us, no matter how unqualified we feel or may in fact be. So after that second meeting with our Lady, Juan Diego went with trepidation to see the bishop again. He feared what the bishop’s overprotective servants might do to him. They greeted him with ill-concealed exasperation. He was told the bishop was busy with more important matters. He told them he was willing to wait — and did, for several hours in the frigid outdoor courtyard. When he finally met the bishop again, he repeated, with fervor and tears, the message of Our Lady entrusted to him. The bishop asked some questions. Though moved by Juan Diego’s sincerity, he wasn’t going to build a church in a desolate spot on the basis of one native’s unsubstantiated word. To test the message, the bishop asked him for a special secret sign from Our Lady. Juan Diego left at once to ask for the sign. Arriving back at Tepeyac, the Virgin told him to return the following day to receive the sign to bring the bishop. That sign turned out to be Castillian roses, which had not yet been introduced to Mexico, growing on the top of a stony hill in frigid December temperatures. Juan Diego was instructed to bring them back to the bishop in his tilma, or outer parka. When he returned to the bishop, as he opened up his tilma, the bishop saw the roses from his native Castille, which was the sign he was seeking. He and everyone else also saw something even more miraculous: some of the roses had melted into the tilma and produced the miraculous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe: our Lady, dressed like a pregnant Aztec princess, was giving witness that she was ready to give birth to Christ among the Mexican people. St. Juan Diego’s tilma is now the most famous piece of clothing of all time. His outer garment became part of the message and mission Our Lady had given him. It remains a reminder to all of us how God seeks to transform every part of us through entering into his kingdom so that every part of us might be help us serve, like John the Baptist, as forerunners.
- The way we experience all the lessons in today’s readings is, as we see in the life of St. Juan Diego, in the Mass. This is where our real greatness shines. We come here where God feeds us, but he feeds us in such a way that we can enter into his suffering for the salvation of the world. Some of us need to suffer violence to come here, violence from family members who mock our doing more than the minimum in our faith. Some of us need to suffer violence in dragging ourselves out of bed. Some of us need to suffer violence to walk across the city on a cold morning. Some of us need to suffer other forms of violence in order to align our schedules to the value of the kingdom. But in some sense all of us need to do more violence if we’re going to receive more from the kingdom. The Venerable Archbishop Sheen, who passed into the arms of the Father 42 years ago today, once mentioned in a retreat to families that many people then were saying, “I don’t get anything out of the Mass,” and he thundered that the reason for this is because many don’t put anything into the Mass. The words, “Pray, brothers and sisters, that this Sacrifice, yours and mine, may be made acceptable to God” don’t mean anything because they’re not really making any sacrifice. They’re not sacrificing their work. They’re not really sacrificing money. They’re not sacrificing their whole lives. And that’s why they’re getting little out of it. We need to prepare for every Mass preparing that sacrifice. Archbishop Sheen said that many Christians have been led to believe that the Mass is just a banquet, just a meal, but he said it is even more importantly a sacrifice, and if we’re not coming to Mass to join our sacrifice to Christ’s, however small ours may be in comparison to his, then all we really are parasites on Christ’s body, blood suckers, rather than members. The Mass is the supreme sacrifice of Christ and his Body to the Father and for us to pray the Mass and to get what God wants to give us out of it we need to go all in, “violently,” seizing this incredible gift and ordering our whole life to this source and summit of our faith and our Christian life. But the Mass is also a means that encourages us to be able to make this sacrifice of our life. The more and the better we receive Jesus worthily in Holy Communion, the more we’re able to make our whole life a commentary on the words of consecration, offering our body, our blood, our sweat, our tears, our breath together with Christ for others and their salvation. This is what Our Lady of Guadalupe is praying for each of us to learn and live. Today as we come to receive the Body and Blood of Christ, violently shed for us on the Cross, he tells us, “Fear not. I will help you!,” as he seeks to strengthen us to go out to seize and proclaim his kingdom and live in accordance with the greatness we have received from our gracious, merciful, patient and greatly kind God.
The readings for today’s Mass were:
Is 41:13-20
I am the LORD, your God,
who grasp your right hand;
It is I who say to you, “Fear not,
I will help you.”
Fear not, O worm Jacob,
O maggot Israel;
I will help you, says the LORD;
your redeemer is the Holy One of Israel.
I will make of you a threshing sledge,
sharp, new, and double-edged,
To thresh the mountains and crush them,
to make the hills like chaff.
When you winnow them, the wind shall carry them off
and the storm shall scatter them.
But you shall rejoice in the LORD,
and glory in the Holy One of Israel.
The afflicted and the needy seek water in vain,
their tongues are parched with thirst.
I, the LORD, will answer them;
I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them.
I will open up rivers on the bare heights,
and fountains in the broad valleys;
I will turn the desert into a marshland,
and the dry ground into springs of water.
I will plant in the desert the cedar,
acacia, myrtle, and olive;
I will set in the wasteland the cypress,
together with the plane tree and the pine,
That all may see and know,
observe and understand,
That the hand of the LORD has done this,
the Holy One of Israel has created it.
Responsorial Psalm
R. (8) The Lord is gracious and merciful; slow to anger, and of great kindness.
I will extol you, O my God and King,
and I will bless your name forever and ever.
The LORD is good to all
and compassionate toward all his works.
R. The Lord is gracious and merciful; slow to anger, and of great kindness.
Let all your works give you thanks, O LORD,
and let your faithful ones bless you.
Let them discourse of the glory of your Kingdom
and speak of your might.
R. The Lord is gracious and merciful; slow to anger, and of great kindness.
Let them make known to men your might
and the glorious splendor of your Kingdom.
Your Kingdom is a Kingdom for all ages,
and your dominion endures through all generations.
R. The Lord is gracious and merciful; slow to anger, and of great kindness.
Alleluia
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Let the clouds rain down the Just One,
and the earth bring forth a Savior.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Jesus said to the crowds:
“Amen, I say to you,
among those born of women
there has been none greater than John the Baptist;
yet the least in the Kingdom of heaven is greater than he.
From the days of John the Baptist until now,
the Kingdom of heaven suffers violence,
and the violent are taking it by force.
All the prophets and the law prophesied up to the time of John.
And if you are willing to accept it,
he is Elijah, the one who is to come.
Whoever has ears ought to hear.”
Podcast: Play in new window | Download