Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Tuesday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Memorial of St. Maria Goretti
July 6, 2021
Gen 32:23-33, Ps 17, Mt 9:32-38
To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
The following points were attempted in the homily:
- Today’s readings are about the connection between our prayer, the discovery of our vocation and our perseverance in it, as we learn how God gives us the help we need to fight the good fight and triumph with him.
- In the first reading from Genesis, we encounter the mysterious scene of the nocturnal wrestling match between Jacob and an angel of God that throughout the history of the Church has been treated as an illustration of the “battle of prayer.” Describing this scene in the midst of its tremendous section on prayer, the Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “Before confronting his elder brother Esau, Jacob wrestles all night with a mysterious figure who refuses to reveal his name, but he blesses him before leaving him at dawn. From this account, the spiritual tradition of the Church has retained the symbol of prayer as a battle of faith and as the triumph of perseverance” (2573).
- Pope Benedict XVI gave an entire catechesis on this scene on May 25, 2011 at the beginning of his beautiful 18-month series on prayer. He said that our prayer requires tenacity not to give up when prayer is hard, but to continue struggling to see God and embrace his will. Prayer is he emphasized, “the good fight of the faith.” “For the believer the episode of the struggle at the Jabbok thus becomes a paradigm. … a reference point for understanding the relationship with God that finds in prayer its greatest expression,” Pope Benedict said.. “Prayer requires trust, nearness, almost a hand-to-hand contact that is symbolic not of a God who is an enemy, an adversary, but a Lord of blessing who always remains mysterious, who seems beyond reach. Therefore the author of the Sacred text uses the symbol of the struggle, which implies a strength of spirit, perseverance, tenacity in obtaining what is desired. And if the object of one’s desire is a relationship with God, his blessing and love, then the struggle cannot fail, but ends in that self-giving to God, in recognition of one’s own weakness, which is overcome only by giving oneself over into God’s merciful hands.” He finishes by saying that such a struggle summarizes not just the prayer of a Christian but also the entire life of faith. “Our entire lives are like this long night of struggle and prayer, spent in desiring and asking for God’s blessing, which cannot be grabbed or won through our own strength but must be received with humility from him as a gratuitous gift that ultimately allows us to recognize the Lord’s face. And when this happens, our entire reality changes; we receive a new name and God’s blessing. … Whoever allows himself to be blessed by God, who abandons himself to God, who permits himself to be transformed by God, renders a blessing to the world.”
- We see the connection between the battle of prayer and faithful perseverance in life in how the angel strikes Jacob’s hip socket, which caused a life-long limp. One of the foremost Biblical expressions of living by faith is “to walk,” to walk with God, to walk in God’s ways, to walk as children of the light, to follow him. Jacob’s whole life would be influenced by the prayer he made that night, as the “battle,” we could say, continued, as he confronted a little of the pain but recognized it was the means by which he would receive God’s blessing and become a blessing. Thankfully God does not give most of us chronic sciatic pain and a limp, or similar reminders, to help us to recall him and implement the fruits of our encounter with him in prayer. But he does give us his blessing to help us live as we pray.
- This connection between prayer and the life of faith is underlined by Jesus in the Gospel. St. Matthew tells us Jesus’ heart exploded with pity for the crowds because they were like abandoned and mangled sheep without a shepherd. And so he turned to his disciples and said, “The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few; so ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest.” Jesus had already spent days teaching these hungry crowds in their synagogues, curing every disease and illness and casting out demons. There was an urgent need for hardworking collaborators. He knew there would also be an pressing demand for such coworkers whose hearts likewise would be so moved with mercy that they would follow Jesus in caring for the vast crowds. And so Jesus gave an imperative with no expiration date. He told his disciples to pray, not just for persons in the vineyard, but “laborers,” those who know how to roll up their sleeves and work up a sweat. Little did those who began to pray recognize that they were going to be the Harvest Master’s answers to those prayers, as we’ll see in the Gospel tomorrow when Jesus after a night of prayer calls the first apostles by name. Likewise, when we pray to the Harvest Master, we’re not only praying for “others” to step forward to labor in the Vineyard but we need to be open to how the Lord wants all of us, in different capacities, as apostles in that vast worldwide vineyard bringing in a great harvest of souls before they perish on the vine. Our prayer is not isolated from our life. Faith unites and is meant to suffuse both. And the struggle of prayer and the life of faith likewise continues.
- Today’s saint shows us the connection between prayer and life. Saint Maria Goretti loved the Lord in prayer with great purity and was strengthened in prayer to fight to maintain that loving purity in life and in martyrdom. St. Ambrose said in the early Church, “Virginity is praiseworthy not because it is found in martyrs, but because it makes martyrs.” And we see that St. Maria Goretti’s yeses to God in chastity was what gave her courage, at age 11, to say yes to God and no to even the possibility of sin when the supreme hour arrived. When her 20-year-old next-door-neighbor Alessandro Serenelli tried to seduce her and then rape her, she said simply, “It would be a sin,” and she repeatedly refused. Her chastity flowed from her prayerful recognition that she was a temple of God and that Alessandro likewise was called to glorify God in his body, not sin. Alessandro didn’t want to hear it, however, and when she screamed as he was trying to rip her clothes off, he began to stab her 14 times with a long awl, piercing her lungs, her diaphragm, her throat and her heart. He ran away. Maria’s infant sister Teresa whom she was babysitting began to cry and when her cries weren’t addressed, Alessandro’s father and Maria’s mother eventually came to see if everything was okay with Teresa. That’s when they found Maria. She was rushed to the hospital where they did surgery without anesthesia to try to stop the bleeding and repair the damage but it was too late. When asking what happened, Maria described Alessandro’s advances and what he had done that day. Knowing her condition, she said that she forgave him and wanted him to join her in heaven. She died on the following day. Alessandro was a very bitter man after he was sent to jail for 30 years. For the first three years, he refused all advances to help him, including from priests. But then Maria appeared to him in a dream, gave him lilies — signs of her purity as well as of her resurrection — and told him anew that she forgave him. That prayerful dream changed his life. He was released after 27 years for good behavior. His first visit was to Maria’s mother Assunta to ask for her forgiveness. She said that if her daughter could forgive him, so could she, and then she brought him to Church the next day, which was Christmas Eve, and asked the whole community to forgive him — something that made it possible for him to live again in that village. Eventually he became a Capuchin brother and lived the rest of his days in holiness. He was present at the canonization of the little girl he had tried to rape and then murdered when she was canonized by Pope Pius XII in 1950, the first canonization ever to be held outside in St. Peter’s Square because of the immensity of the crowds that wanted to be present for the ceremony. Her chaste love of God had led her chastely to love others in God with the Lord’s own mercy and that love of God radiating through her in life and after death was what transformed Alessandro and is meant to transform us. In her we find a fulfillment of the true, just, loving, merciful, faithful and eternal spousal covenant God wishes to have with each of us. In her we see the way that the purity of heart by which we see God in prayer is supposed to impact our entire life.
- The Mass is the great battle of prayer that is supposed to impact our life. Sometimes Mass may be a challenge, because we’re dead tired, or are annoyed by the priest or others in attendance, or other reasons, but it’s worth the battle. St. Maria Goretti’s great love for God was expressed and fortified here. Exactly 13 months before she was martyred, St. Maria Goretti had received her first Holy Communion with intense hunger. “I long for Jesus,” she was accustomed to say. Even though she was illiterate, she learned all her prayers and catechism with the help of her parish priest and a lady of the village so that she would be ready to receive him. She would receive Holy Communion every Sunday thereafter with great zeal and would receive Jesus for the last time as Viaticum, “like an angel,” as those present attested. It was after she had received Jesus that last time that she said that she had forgiven Alessandro out of love for Jesus and prayed that God would forgive him too. That’s the power of what Jesus did in her. That’s the power of prayer in life. That’s the power of spousal love we receive and are called to reciprocate and give.
The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 GN 32:23-33
In the course of the night, Jacob arose, took his two wives,
with the two maidservants and his eleven children,
and crossed the ford of the Jabbok.
After he had taken them across the stream
and had brought over all his possessions,
Jacob was left there alone.
Then some man wrestled with him until the break of dawn.
When the man saw that he could not prevail over him,
he struck Jacob’s hip at its socket,
so that the hip socket was wrenched as they wrestled.
The man then said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.”
But Jacob said, “I will not let you go until you bless me.”
The man asked, “What is your name?”
He answered, “Jacob.”
Then the man said,
“You shall no longer be spoken of as Jacob, but as Israel,
because you have contended with divine and human beings
and have prevailed.”
Jacob then asked him, “Do tell me your name, please.”
He answered, “Why should you want to know my name?”
With that, he bade him farewell.
Jacob named the place Peniel,
“Because I have seen God face to face,” he said,
“yet my life has been spared.”
At sunrise, as he left Penuel,
Jacob limped along because of his hip.
That is why, to this day, the children of Israel do not eat
the sciatic muscle that is on the hip socket,
inasmuch as Jacob’s hip socket was struck at the sciatic muscle.
Responsorial Psalm PS 17:1B, 2-3, 6-7AB, 8B AND 15
R. (15a) In justice, I shall behold your face, O Lord.
Hear, O LORD, a just suit;
attend to my outcry;
hearken to my prayer from lips without deceit.
R. In justice, I shall behold your face, O Lord.
From you let my judgment come;
your eyes behold what is right.
Though you test my heart, searching it in the night,
though you try me with fire, you shall find no malice in me.
R. In justice, I shall behold your face, O Lord.
I call upon you, for you will answer me, O God;
incline your ear to me; hear my word.
Show your wondrous mercies,
O savior of those who flee from their foes.
R. In justice, I shall behold your face, O Lord.
Hide me in the shadow of your wings.
I in justice shall behold your face;
on waking, I shall be content in your presence.
R. In justice, I shall behold your face, O Lord.
Alleluia JN 10:14
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
I am the good shepherd, says the Lord;
I know my sheep, and mine know me.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel MT 9:32-38
A demoniac who could not speak was brought to Jesus,
and when the demon was driven out the mute man spoke.
The crowds were amazed and said,
“Nothing like this has ever been seen in Israel.”
But the Pharisees said,
“He drives out demons by the prince of demons.”
Jesus went around to all the towns and villages,
teaching in their synagogues,
proclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom,
and curing every disease and illness.
At the sight of the crowds, his heart was moved with pity for them
because they were troubled and abandoned,
like sheep without a shepherd.
Then he said to his disciples,
“The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few;
so ask the master of the harvest
to send out laborers for his harvest.”
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