The Courage and Trust That Characterizes Living in the Kingdom, 34th Monday (I), November 22, 2021

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattah
Monday of the 34th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Memorial of St. Cecilia
November 22, 2021
Dan 1:1-6.8-20, Dn 3, Lk 21:1-4

To listen to today’s homily, please click below:

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Yesterday we celebrated the Solemnity of Christ the King, pondering that he is ultimately in charge of the universe and has inaugurated a kingdom that is both now and not yet, now insofar as we can and should live by its principles, not yet, because not everyone does live by its principles. One consequence of the reality of his kingship is a trust in his providence, a trust that everything will work out for the good for those who love him. We see the homage of faith and trust to be given to him three different ways today.
• The first is in the widow Jesus points out in the Gospel. After he had finished his “formal” teaching in the courtyard of the Temple of Jerusalem, Jesus began to “people watch,” in order to continue to instruct his apostles about how to put what he taught into action. They saw the stream of people putting money in the temple treasury, which was a large trumpet shaped receptacle leading to a secure money box. They would put their coins in the horn at the top, which was like a funnel, and then the sound of the coin would resonate as it rolled down the metal tubing into the box. Many rich people, St. Luke tells us, were putting in large sums and “making a lot of noise” on the treasury trumpet. But then a poor widow came and put in two lepta, two small coins which together were worth less than a penny and likely barely made a sound. Then Jesus gave a surprising lesson that obviously the disciples never forgot. Jesus praised the poor widow rather than all the rest, saying that she had contributed more than all them, for they “gave out of their surplus, but she gave everything she had, all she had to live on.” This widow, because of her poverty, could easily have been excused for giving nothing. She could have easily chosen to drop into the trumpet only one of the coins and kept the other for herself, or, because of his poverty, kept them both. But she didn’t. She gave it all. And her generosity was praised by Jesus and will remain until the end of time. What could have moved her to give to the temple even what she needed to survive? There’s only one reason: her deep faith and trust that God would take care of her. She believed not simply that God exists, or that he worked various miracles in the past to help her people. She believed so much in him and was so convinced of the importance of what was going on in God’s house that she wanted to dedicate her life and all her goods to continuing and expanding that work of salvation. She accounted the continuance and expansion of that work even more than her own life.  The first moral lesson is not how much we contribute, but how much of a sacrifice it is; not how much we give but how much we have left over. This woman sacrificed her entire livelihood, spending herself and what she had in the service of the Lord. We should always seek to give in such a way that Jesus would be tempted to pull the saints aside in heaven and point out the way we are spending ourselves in his service, seeking to build up his Kingdom, the Kingdom we celebrated yesterday on the Solemnity of Christ the King. Many people give “something” to God, we may even give “a lot” to God, but we try to hold on to not just what we need but more than we need as an insurance policy, because, at a practical level, they often can put more of our faith, hope and love in the security that money provides than they do in God’s providence. That’s why the widow’s example is so important for all of us. She shows that trust in God, in his kingdom, in his generosity, that she’s able to be generous in return. Her putting in all she had to live on was just a sign that she had already given all she had, that she had entrusted her entire life to God.
• The second example is that of Daniel, Hananiah, Azariah and Mishael in today’s first reading. Even though they were placed in exalted positions in King Nebuchadnezzar’s service, they always served God first. They made the courageous choice to risk their lives, trusting in God, rather than eat the food of the Babylonian king. They didn’t want to eat his food because often it was from the sacrifices to idols. Even though the food and wine would have doubtless been the best in the entire kingdom, they refused it because, despite the fact that they were in the king’s service, they were intent to spend themselves faithfully in the Lord’s service even to the point of martyrdom. Later on, Azariah, Hananiah and Mishael refused to worship a 30-foot high golden statue Nebuchadnezzar made, and they were thrown into a burning hot furnace by Nebuchadnezzar in a rage. They went into the furnace with faith and the Lord miraculously saved their lives. They teach us what trust in God’s providence and total dedication to God with faith and constancy are all about. The reason why food is so important is because we’re often tempted to give into our appetites, to our pleasures, to our own desires and needs. Throughout the Old Covenant, God was disciplining the appetites of the Israelites so that he could, through disciplining their stomach, order their souls. We saw it last week with Eleazar and the seven sons of the widow who refused to eat pork. While today we don’t have to avoid certain types of food in order to please God, the Lord wants us to be in his service no matter what, and always eating as a Christian rather than a pagan. At the same time, there are plenty of analogous things from which we need to fast in order to be fed by a different type of food. One is worldly information. So many today gorge on celebrity news and gossip, others on the headlines, others on sports. The Lord, however, calls us to have a different appetite, to hunger for his word, for his wisdom. The world may tell us, like Ashpenaz feared, that we will be “infamished” and suffer as a result of different fare, but like Daniel, Hananiah, Azariah and Mishael, we need courageously to seek different nourishment out of faith, we need not to obey our appetites but hang on every word that comes from the mouth of God, and give of ourselves to the King who seeks to feed us with a different type of food, to make us far healthier.
• The third example of the trust in God’s providence that flows from faith we have comes from the saint whose feast we mark today, who with joy and gladness at a time of ferocious anti-Christian persecution, lived with fidelity, persuaded her husband to join her, and together with him and others, helped others courageously to becoming living sacrifices to God. Cecilia came a noble Christian family and when she was young, living out her intense baptismal consecration to God, fasted, wore a hair shirt and desired to give herself always as a virgin to God. Her father, however, had plans for a good marriage to a young pagan patrician named Valerian. During their wedding, among the music and rejoicing of the guests, Cecilia stayed apart, singing to God within and praying for help. When she and Valerian retired to the place where he was prepared to consummate their marriage, Cecilia told him a secret, that she has an angel watching over her and that if he touched her in the way of marriage, the angel would make him suffer, but if he respected her and got baptized, he would see him. Valerian with faith and love believed her. He received instruction, got baptized by Pope Urban, and then saw the angel standing by Cecilia’s side. The angel put on both of their heads a crown of roses and lilies, signs (like we’d see much later in the life of St. Maximilian Mary Kolbe) of martyrdom and purity, respectively. Valerian consecrated himself and together they consecrated their marriage to God and made their home a domestic Church, a house of prayer. Valerian eventually helped his brother Tiburtius to convert and the two of them began to care for the bodies of all the martyrs, seeking to bury them, since after all those bodies were sacred, having been the temple of God’s presence. That work of mercy and faith exposed them as Christians and both were brought to martyrdom with the guard, Maximus, who witnessed their supreme testimony, became a Christian on the spot and immediately a fellow martyr. Cecilia buried all three bodies and was herself exposed as a Christian. She was brought to trial before Almachius, who tried unsuccessful to threaten the faith out of her. After failing to suffocate her by fire, they ended up trying to behead her, but the axe wouldn’t penetrate through her entire neck. The blow, however, turned out to be fatal after three days in which she entered more deeply still into the Paschal mystery. She was buried close to the popes in the catacombs that would eventually be named after St. Callistus. Her relics were translated by Pope St. Paschal in the early 800s to the area that was believed to have been her house and where a Church had been built after the age of persecutions. In 1599, the Cardinal in charge of the Church of St. Cecilia (Cardinal Sfondrati), in doing various renovations, decided to re-inter Cecilia with SS. Valerian, Tiburtius and Maximus. As he opened her tomb, he found her incorrupt. He had the great renaissance sculptor Stefano Maderno make a sculpture identical to what was seen in the tomb. That statue is now found before her tomb as well as a copy has been placed in the catacombs where her bodied had rested for over five centuries. Her remains looked as if she were sleeping. You could see the axe marks in her neck. But what has always those who see Maderno’s replica is the way she was prophesying even in death. In her right hand, she had two fingers and her thumb extended. In her left, she had her index finger extended. This was a means by which she was proclaiming her faith in her Triune God, one God in three persons. She was proclaiming that she had been a temple of the indwelling of the Blessed Trinity! This was the supreme witness she was giving that not even Roman executioners could cut her off from her union with the kingdom of God, because she was united with God even in martyrdom.
• And so today, inspired by the example of the widow, of Daniel, Hananiah, Azariah and Mishael, of Saint Cecilia, we come to the altar. It’s here in the Eucharist that Christ the King gives himself to us totally, converting himself into our spiritual food, our special ration to keep us stronger than the rest. And it’s here in response that at the offertory we seek to put our whole livelihood, presenting with trust and courage our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable, our logike latreia, the only worship that makes sense.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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