The Call to Imitate God, 30th Monday (II), October 26, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Monday of the 30th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
October 26, 2020
Eph 4:32-5:8, Ps 1, Lk 13:10-17

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• St. Cyril of Alexandria, one of the early doctors of the church, said about Christians that they are the ones who behave like God. Christians are not those who merely believe in God, and in the Son whom God the Father, sent. Christians are the ones who seek to behave like God with God’s own help, with God’s own love.
• Today, in the first reading, that’s the message that St. Paul gives to the Christians in Ephesus. Be imitators of God, as his beloved children, and live in love. We don’t just seek to imitate God on the outside out of some type of duty. But having been loved in such a way by God, we seek to imitate that love and live in it. And the way that we live in that love is not just by being loved by God, but allowing God to love others through us, together with our entire personality.
• There’s a particular way in which we’re called to live that love of God. Having received God’s mercy — because God’s love for us is always merciful —  we seek to imitate that merciful love toward others. So St. Paul begins today, “Be kind to one another.” Be really benevolent. That word crestos in Greek means that we care about somebody else’s needs just as much as we care about our own. If we were hungry, we’d be looking for something to eat, and therefore if someone else is hungry, we feed them. Just as we like to be clothed, we clothe others. Just like we hate to suffer and are grateful for the care for others, so we care for them. “Be kind to one another, compassionate,” that we really take into consideration another person’s sufferings, even when we might not visibly see them, but to recognize that everyone is suffering. So often a person’s behavior is explainable by the sufferings that that person is presently enduring and not just has endured. “Forgiving one another is God has forgiven you in Christ.” And this forgiveness is not just an extrinsic action in which we basically say, “I don’t hold any grudges.” When St. Paul says “Forgive one another as God has forgiven you in Christ,” we know how God forgave us in Christ. It wasn’t just by words that corresponded to the heart. It was by dying, in order to take somebody else’s sins away. It was through real sacrifice, to reestablish somebody, to the right relationship with the Father. In all of these ways, we are being called to imitate God as his much loved children. St. Paul says, “Christ loved us and handed himself over for us as a sacrificial offering to God for a fragrant aroma.” He recognized that his love for others was sweet incense. It was an extraordinarily beautiful prayer that rose up to God. It was, in a sense, his greatest worship. The care that we have for others is a fragrant offering. It’s part of the holocaust we bring as praise before God. And St. Paul himself sought in particular detail to imitate Jesus in this way and so make his life sweet smelling incense, rising up to God as the supreme prayer of his life.
• St. Paul wants us to be that same type of prayer. He describes what is the foul smell that we could bring toward God. In contrast, he says that “immorality, any impurity or greed must not even be mentioned about among you. Because this is idolatry.” Do we recognize this? None of us wants to engage in idolatry. We believe in God. We love God. But when we are immoral, we’re worshipping an idol, whatever it be. When we’re acquisitive, we’re putting our treasure not so much in growing to be more and more like God through receiving his own grace, but we really think for our happiness, we need x or y. Impurity is a type of corrupted love in which we’re not living as God’s beloved children — as if God’s love is not enough — but that in fact, we’re not seeing God in others,  we’re not reverencing God in others, and through those impure loves, we’re cutting ourselves further and further off from God. God wants us to receive His mercy precisely so that with his eyes, we can see him in others and reverence them. St. Paul describes that there’s another type of life, this life of immorality, impurity, or greed. He says it begins with obscenity or silly and suggestive talk, which is out of place among God’s holy ones. That’s where the devil often wants us to start and St. Paul is isolating it. Just like William Bratton, when he was a police commissioner here in New York, wanted to attack violent crime, murders and rapes, by fixing broken windows, covering up graffiti, and making sure people weren’t selling ripped off stereo systems on street corners. The way he attacked the biggest crimes was by making sure that the little crimes had no place in the city. That type of corruption would just not be tolerated. In the same way, turning our culture around begins with the way we think and we talk, with no obscenity no or suggestive talk, which is one of the reasons by the way, that the vulgarities in our culture are so severe. We need to focus on the language that is coming from the heart. If we can change that language, then it is possible for us to stop more violent expressions of sin, that likewise are rampant. St. Paul stresses to the Ephesians that when someone is immoral or impure or greedy, when a person is in idolatry in this way, he has no inheritance in God’s kingdom, because he’s placing his treasure in some other type of wealth. It’s not a punishment, but rather a diagnosis. And so, we need to help people enter the kingdom precisely by overcoming these forms of idolatry that flow from concupiscence. He warns them that there’ll be lots of empty arguments and that they shouldn’t be deceived. Don’t be associated with these empty arguments, he says. Think, see, reason, speak in a different way. He describes the huge change that happened in baptism and by faith in Christ: “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.” And therefore, let act follow being, live as children of the light. That is our task, that God has filled us with this light, and we seek to reflect that light and all that we do, as imitators of God as his much love children.
• To imitate God who need to take seriously what Jesus was doing today in the Gospel. Jesus is constantly saying, “Follow me!” And he shows that compassion, he shows that kindness, he shows that mercy here, even though we would have to suffer for it. This woman comes in, who was crippled for 18 years and could not look up. Not only is that a serious physical malady, and we’ve seen many people who have suffered this way from curvatures in the rest. But there was also, as the Fathers of the Church would always comment, a deep spiritual analogy here, where she just couldn’t look up toward God. Her eyes were constantly on the ground. There were massive psychological and spiritual effects from this physical problem. She came into the synagogue because she still wanted God. She still knew she needed God. It was on that Sabbath that Jesus, seeing her completely incapable of standing erect, said to her, “Woman, you are liberated from your infirmity.” What extraordinary words! Jesus didn’t know her name. But he used a vocative nonetheless, one that recalls the beginning of creation, one that he calls his mother. He was going to treat this woman with the care and compassion with which he wanted to treat every woman: be free of your infirmity. He was treating her with the kindness he would treat someone whom he deeply loved like his own mother. It’s an extraordinary principle for each of us. He laid his hands on her head, and once she stood up straight, and began to glorify God, not just because she was cured, but because she was now able to raise up her heart, with her back and with her chin and eyes and hopes above. But Jesus was criticized for this, as he was always criticized for good deeds, on the Lord’s day. The chief reason why Jesus was murdered — and it’s so important for us to get this in a culture in which so many blow off the Christian Sabbath — was for the meaning of the Sabbath, which was given to us out of the love by the Father, in order to restore us in a relationship with God and our relationship with others. And then unfortunately, the rigid Pharisees had gotten to the point in which their own rules, their own fences that they had made around the Mosaic law, had become so important to them, that they thought that on the Lord’s day, they should refuse to love. This lack of compassion would be more ritually pleasing to the Lord than an act of charity, they thought, as if the Sabbath was a charity-free day. “Six days work can be done, come on those days to be cured, not on the Sabbath,” they said, as if a work of love was a blasphemy against God. Jesus expose their hypocrisy, that they care for their donkeys and oxen, on the Sabbath, but they don’t really care for people. Thanks be to God, they had a compassion for animals. But they didn’t have a compassion for their fellow human beings. There’s a huge principle here that we all need to learn. Imitating God means that, even when we’re doing good things, we cross the road and lead, first, with godlike love. The whole parable of the Good Samaritan teaches that there is something more important than going to the temple. As important as that is, when somebody is dying, when somebody is hurting, when somebody really needs us, we need to stop. We need to cross. We need to care. We might not be able to solve all the problems. The hero in the parable of the Good Samaritan needed to be on his way as well. But he did what he could at the time and he cared.
• God wants us like Jesus cared for this woman to notice the others infirmities, their curvatures, whatever can keep them from lifting up their minds, hearts and souls to the Lord. And to do what we can, together with him. Would that we would be able to cure everyone the way Jesus was able to cure! He hasn’t blessed us with the gift to be physical miracle workers. At the same time, just being there for them, letting them know that they’re not suffering alone is so key, to be able to free them from the bondage of isolation. We can always do that. Be imitators of God as his much loved children.
• To help us imitate God, God now gives us himself in Holy Communion. And he desires, here in this holy place, to free us from any and every infirmity that prevents our looking up to him.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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