The Generosity and the Possibilities of God, 20th Tuesday (II), August 20, 2024

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Church of the Holy Family, Manhattan
Tuesday of the 20th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Doctor of the Church
August 20, 2024
Ezek 28:1-10, Deut 32:26-28.30.35-36, Mt 19:23-30

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

The following text guided the homily: 

• Yesterday, we had in the Gospel the scene of Jesus’ encounter with the Rich Young Man, a good guy seeking the way to eternal life, who had kept the commandments from his youth but knew that keeping the commandments, just not sinning, wasn’t enough. He knew he was lacking something and asked Jesus what he needed. Jesus looked at him with love and summoned him to perfection by giving him the path: to go, sell all that he had, give the money to the poor, become rich in heaven and what truly matters, and then to come, follow Jesus up close. When presented with the choice between Jesus and his stuff, between having it all by seizing the pearl of great price, or retaining his stuff without that far more intimate relationship with Jesus, the young man went away sad, continuing to hold on to, and be owned by, his possessions. That’s what led Jesus in today’s Gospel to swear an oath and declare, “Amen, I say to you, it will be hard for one who is rich to enter the Kingdom of heaven. Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the Kingdom of God.” The disciples, astonished by the degree of difficulty Jesus had just declared for entering the Kingdom, cried out, “Then who can be saved?,” and Jesus answered by saying that it’s impossible for men on their own to be so detached from the things of the world, but “for God all things are possible.” He was communicating that, no matter whether we’re rich or poor, salvation is impossible for us as a result of our efforts alone, because salvation is always a grace. But God does will all to be saved (1 Tim 2:4) and therefore makes possible by his own divine grace what would be impossible for us according to our nature and effort.
• We see that impossibility in today’s first reading. Ezekiel proclaims a message to the pagan prince of Tyre. He was so rich through his trading on the Mediterranean and as part of one of the big trade routes of the eastern Mediterranean, his treasuries were so full of gold and silver, that his heart grew haughty, he became full of pride and arrogance, and began to look at himself as a god. He forgot who he was as a creature dependent on God. And so God, medicinally for him and for others, would allow him to recognize that he was in fact a creature when other nations would invade Tyre, destroy it and even take his life. It would be a humbling experience that would remind him that he was a man and not a god and given him a chance to cry out for mercy to the one true God.
• What happened to the Rich Young Man and to the Prince of Tyre can happen to anyone. We can begin to place our faith, hope and love in material things, in money and what money can be, that we can in practical terms forget God. That’s why Jesus will stress elsewhere in the Gospel that we cannot serve both God and mammon. We have to make the choice to serve God, to place our faith, hope and love in him. We have to reject the worship of the golden calf under various disguises. Sometimes we can persuade ourselves that, because we’re not as rich as Elon Musk, because we’re not millionaires and billionaires, that we’re not at risk of our hearts becoming arrogant, of choosing our stuff over Jesus, of even deeming ourselves gods, but what we see in the Rich Young Man and in the Prince of Tyre can in fact happen to anyone, regardless of the size of one’s bank accounts, who begins to become like a lava waste and place our trust in mammon. That’s why we need to turn to God and ask him for the moral miracle of trusting in him so much that we will live with genuine poverty of spirit. We need to ask him for the grace to be willing to divest ourselves of earthly riches for heavenly treasure. We need to beg him to help us truly place our trust in his providence more than in earthly securities.
• This is a choice that ultimately the apostles made, that countless generations of religious and priests and faithful lay men and women have made over the course of the centuries. And it’s worth it. In the Gospel today, after being stunned by the clarity of Jesus’ words about passing through a needle’s eye and not being able to take salvation for granted, St. Peter asked about whether his and the apostles’ sacrifices were prudent investments. “We have given up everything and followed you. What will there be for us?,” he queried. And Jesus promised that those who have left everything to follow him — houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands — would receive 100 times more in this life and eternal life.  This is the Lord’s promise and his guarantee was sealed not just in his blood but in his own triumph over death on the third day. He promises us not just eternity but 100 times more in this life. He doesn’t promise us that we will be 100 times richer than Bill Gates, but he does promise us far greater love, a far greater family, far more lasting possessions, much deeper happiness, even here and now. This is what we see, for example, in the lives of the saints — the saints the Church remembers at the altar and the many “saints next door” who have quietly but truly placed God first — who have given up everything to follow the Lord.
• One such holy one is the great Saint Bernard of Clairvaux whom the Church celebrates today. He came from a very wealthy noble family. At 19, after his mother died, he began to think about the things that would last, about heaven, and about the blessed life that leads there. Then he started to talk to his brothers and friends. Eventually he convinced 30 of his family members and friends to join him in becoming Cistercians and all 31 of them showed up one day offering themselves to the original Cistericians, Saints Robert, Hugh and Alberic. Four of his brothers and an uncle were joining with him, but not yet his brother Nivard. As he was preparing to leave the world to follow the Lord, he told Nivard that he was becoming heir to the entire familial estate. Nivard, however, complained that that was unfair, that Bernard and the others would inherit eternity and he would just inherit stuff on earth. Nivard grasped the value of the things of God compared to the things of earth and he, too, would soon enter through the eye of the needle into religious life with his brothers. After becoming a Cistercian monk, St. Bernard traveled preaching people back to the faith, inviting them to think about heaven and the path to heaven. He was incredibly successful because he truly believed in the treasure he was passing on. He was so persuasive that many parents hid their children from him lest all of their kids would want to become priests and religious. He called people to conversion, to true holiness of life, to entrusting themselves to God who can give them the grace to do the impossible and pass through the eye of the needle even in this life. He preached on the infinite love of God for us and how we’re called to remain in that love, to love him back with all we’ve got and to love others enough to help them, with us, seize the hundred-fold gift of divine love in this life, not just in heaven. Today St. Bernard is trying to appeal to us just like he did his contemporaries. He’s praying for us that, just as he helped so many of the people of his day to treasure God above all, we might have a similar impact on our family, on our friends and our contemporaries. In the opening prayer of the Mass we turned to God and asked, “O God, who made the Abbot Saint Bernard a man consumed with zeal for your house and a light shining and burning in your Church, grant, through his intercession, that we may be on fire with the same spirit and walk always as children of the light.” Today God wants to make us truly zealous, a real light and a burning fire.
• Once when St. Bernard was preaching in Languedoc, at Sarlat in Perigord, trying to bring those who had gone over to heresies back into the faith, he blessed some loaves of bread, saying, “By this you shall know the truth of our doctrine and the falsehood of that which is taught by the heretics, if such as are sick among you recover their health by eating of these loaves.” The bishop of Chartres thought that he was speaking imprudently and said, “If they eat with a right faith, they shall be cured,” but Bernard replied, “No. Assuredly they that taste shall be cured that you may now by this that we are sent by authority derived from God and preach his truth.” And many ate the bread and all those who were sick were cured. I think that that miracle is an image of what happens in the Holy Eucharist. St. Ignatius of Antioch called it the “medicine of immortality.” When we consume the Eucharist, we come into contact with the same Jesus who called the Rich Young Man to perfection and promised 100 fold to those who would leave behind their pearls to seize him as the precious Pearl. The Eucharist was the open secret of the source of St. Bernard’s strength, the way he was able to preach indefatigably against so much opposition. This was the root of his own happy chaste celibacy. This was the foretaste here on earth of the eternal treasure to which he invited so many hundreds of thousands. Jesus Christ is the incarnate 100-fold in this life promised to those who prioritize him. And united to him, he makes the impossible possible, as together with him, risen from the dead, we pass through the eye of the needle into the kingdom, here on earth, as we prepare, with Bernard, for the eternal life that the Rich Young Man and all of us have been made to yearn for and, by God’s grace, one day receive.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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