The Discipline By Which Jesus Strengthens Us As Disciples to the End, Fourth Wednesday in Ordinary Time (I), February 3, 2021

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Wednesday of the Fourth Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Memorial of St. Blase, Bishop and Martyr
February 3, 2021
Heb 12:4-7.11-15, Ps 103, Mk 6:1-6

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• As we’ve been noting for the past three-and-a-half weeks in our daily meditation on the Letter to the Hebrews at Mass, this letter was written to the early Christians at a time in which many had undergone fierce persecution and when much more persecution was anticipated. We’ve seen that Christ, the definitive Word of the Father, took on our flesh and entered into our world to lead us to eternal glory, to perfection as sons and daughters, but that he would do so precisely through uniting our suffering and death to his salvific suffering and death. He pierced the veil of the heavenly holy of holies precisely to give us confidence that follow him along this path. In the past few days, we’ve been talking about the holy hypomone — the sacred stamina or endurance — that we need to live the faith in the midst of hardships and difficulties. The Letter to the Hebrews has inspired us by focusing on the persevering faith of so many in a great cloud of witnesses.  Yesterday, if we didn’t have the proper readings for the Feast of the Presentation, it would have reminded us to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, to consider how he despised the shame of the Cross and endured opposition, so that we may not grow weary and lose heart. Today it gives us a third motivation: to endure our trials “as discipline,” as the training that will make us holy disciples.
• Quoting Proverbs 3:11-12, the Letter exhorts us: “My son, do not disdain the discipline of the Lord or lose heart when reproved by him; for whom the Lord loves, he disciplines; he scourges every son he acknowledges.” Therefore, he says, “Endure your trials as ‘discipline’; God treats you as his sons. For what ‘son’ is there whom his father does not discipline?” He tells us that discipline isn’t fun, but it’s important if we’re ever going to mature: “At the time, all discipline seems a cause not for joy but for pain, yet later it brings the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who are trained by it.” Then he gets to the punch line, to get over any potential self-pity party, or diabolical temptation that because we’re suffering God mustn’t love us, by appealing: “So strengthen your drooping hands and your weak knees. Make straight paths for your feet, that what is lame may not be dislocated but healed.” And he makes an appeal for the means by which we are to use our restored hands, feet and knees, not just through folding them as we kneel down in prayer, but precisely through genuine love of neighbor: “Strive for peace with everyone, and for that holiness without which no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one be deprived of the grace of God, that no bitter root spring up and cause trouble, through which many may become defiled.”
• We don’t like discipline because many of us aren’t deeply docile. We don’t think we need to learn or sometimes want to learn, at least in ways we don’t want to learn. We may not think we’re opposed to discipline, just the discipline that we don’t want… We’re resistant to being surprised by the Lord. We see that in the Gospel. In Nazareth, they were not willing to become disciples of one of their own, one with whom they grew up, one whose furniture and perhaps even houses he had made. From initial amazement at his words, they turned to taking offense at him and as we’ll see in St. Luke’s account, they’d even reach homicidal rage. Jesus was amazed at their lack of faith. It tells us that he could work no miracles there, except for healing a few sick people. Normally healing the sick and the lame would be considered great miracles; the greatest miracle Jesus wanted to work was salvation, was the forgiveness of sins, was growth in faith, but the lack of faith in the most of the recipients in his home town prevented that.
• Someone who shows us the docility to discipline God wants is the bishop and martyr the Church celebrates today, St. Blase. He took the discipline and strengthened his drooping hands and weak knees, he strove for peace with everyone and for holiness and, even in the midst of his sufferings for the Gospel, sought to share with others the grace of God. St. Blase had studied philosophy and became a doctor in Sebastia, Armenia. When the bishop of that city died, the people, knowing his virtue and talents, chose him to be their bishop. His holiness could not be hidden, as he soon got the reputation during his lifetime for miracles. In 316, the emperor Licinius sought to kill the Christians and the local governor, Agricola, had him arrested. On his way to jail and then to martyrdom, a mother rushed to him with her only son, who was choking of a fish bone and laid the boy at his feed with maternal pleas. He blessed the boy and at once the child was cured. The Christian people have been turning to him ever since with prayers that they be freed from all illnesses of the throat and every other malady. The governor sought to make Blase renounce Christ and the Gospel but failed. He was disciplined by being beaten with a stick, having his flesh ripped by iron combs and eventually beheaded. But he exercised holy hypomone until the end, pierced the veil with Christ and now is one of the great cloud of witnesses cheering each of us on.
• Today we ask through his intercession that as Jesus comes to this Church, now his native place, we may meet him with similar faith and, as we witness the great miracle of transubstantiation and prepare to receive him in Holy Communion, we pray that he may discipline us to become more and more like him, sharing his priorities, sharing his word, sharing his training, so that we might, like Blase, continue his mission.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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