The Cornerstone and King Who Knocks Down and Builds Up the Temple and Kingdom, 34th Tuesday (I), November 28, 2023

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Tuesday of the 34th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Votive Mass for the Faithful Departed
November 28, 2023
Dan 2:31-45, Dan 3:47-61, Lk 21:5-11

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• In this week in which we celebrate the Solemnity of Christ the King, we have a chance to think about the distinct nature of his kingdom, and how to enter his kingdom, we must allow him to destroy false allegiances to earthly notions and learn from him how to become a kingdom of priests offering sacrifices to God the Father. Today’s readings help us to do just that, examining the foundations and goals of our life by inserting us within world and salvation history.
• In the first reading, we have the dream of Nebuchadnezzar, which none of his magicians, sorcerers, or others could interpret. Nebuchadnezzar didn’t reveal what he had seen. God had nevertheless revealed a similar dream to Daniel as well as its interpretation and so Daniel asked to be introduced into the king’s presence and properly interpreted the dream. The king saw a large and bright statue with a head of pure gold, the torso silver, the belly and thighs bronze, the legs iron and the feet partly iron and partly clay. At the end of the dream the king saw a stone that was thrown from a mountain without a hand that rendered the entire statue to dust. Daniel said that Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, was the gold head. He would be surpassed by the Persians (the silver torso), who themselves would be defeated by the Greeks (bronze). The Romans (iron) would come next, but eventually their kingdom would have some weaknesses (feet half of clay). The stone that would come from above to pulverize the Romans would be the “stone rejected by the builders,” Christ himself, the Cornerstone. That’s what we celebrate during this week of Christ the King. Christ didn’t establish an earthly kingdom — his kingdom is not of this world — but the kingdom he did establish is the everlasting one that will know no end. There are three different spiritual interpretations of Sacred Scripture: the Christological, moral (how it relates to us and our behavior) and anagogical (how it relates to the last things). With regard to the last two, we recognize that if we have feet of clay, no matter how strong we are in other parts of our life, everything can come down and can impact our final destiny. We need to look to our foundation.
• Similarly in the Gospel, Jesus describes how the temple itself would be destroyed such that “there will not be left a stone upon another stone that will not be thrown down.” That’s because for many Jews the Temple had become an idol. Rather than a place of true encounter with God, they, as we saw at the end of last week, had perverted it to a den of thieves. They were not willing to grasp that that Temple was provisional until Christ the true Temple, the Messiah, came. Their foundation was built on the temple rather than on the God worshipped in the Temple. We can similarly have our own religious idols that rather than bringing us to God take us away. There are Catholics who if their Church is closed, sadly stop practicing the faith, as if the Church building, rather than God himself who dwells within the Church, is really the most important thing of all. Others make the liturgy an idol, exalting the sign over the signified to such a degree that there are Catholics who refuse even to accept the new order of the Mass after more than 50 years. Jesus wants to smash all our idols so that he can help us build our entire lives on a firm foundation.
• And what is that foundation? We see it in St. Matthew’s parallel version of today’s Gospel. After he describes what will happen at the end of time he says, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” He wants us to build our lives on his word as the foundation of rock — what he describes at the end of the Sermon on the Mount — that will keep us secure even when the earthquakes, wars, insurrections, famines and plagues happen. The saints whom like celebrate throughout the month of November, like St. Catherine Labouré today, are those who are exemplary for us in doing so.
• Today we come to Mass to build ourselves anew on Christ the cornerstone. We come to allow him to make us strong not with gold, silver, bronze or iron, but with his own trust in the Father, with his own power of love, with his own body and blood, as he seeks to make us into a temple that will never be destroyed and takes us united with him to the celestial Jerusalem to rejoice with him and all the saints.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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