The Holy Spirit’s Help Under Trial So That We May Know and Witness to the Hope that Belongs To Our Call, 28th Saturday (II), October 17, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Saturday of the 28th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of St. Ignatius of Antioch
October 17, 2020
Eph 1:15-23, Ps 8, Lk 12:8-12

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today in the Gospel Jesus continues his words to his disciples about bewaring of the “leaven” or “hypocrisy” of the Pharisees and about how not to fear them, not to fear the devil or anyone else who can only harm the body, but to fear God alone who has the power to throw into Gehenna. But that fear must be a holy, reverential, loving awe, because the One Jesus is telling us to fear has numbered every one of the 130,000 follicles on our head, who is attentive to every sparrow that falls to the ground and accounts us worth more than many sparrows. Jesus gives us those words to fill us with courage in the face of the challenges that will come from living and proclaiming the Gospel. We see that courage in him, as he faced the Pharisees, the Scribes, the Herodians, even the Romans, as they conspired to harass, arrest, mock, torture and crucify him. In today’s passage he calls his first disciples and us to go on proclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom of God fearlessly. “I tell you,” he says,” “everyone who acknowledges me before others the Son of Man will acknowledge before the angels of God.” He cautions us to be faithful, in contrast to the duplicity of the Pharisees: “But whoever denies me before others will be denied before the angels of God.” But even with that stern warning that might frighten us, he yet again shows us how to trust, by turning us toward divine mercy should we stumble under pressure. “Everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven.” When he tells us that the “one who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven,” we need to know that that blasphemy is not counting on the power of the Holy Spirit, for the forgiveness of sins, for strength under pressure, for all of the help we need. He tells us, “When they take you before synagogues and before rulers and authorities, do not worry about how or what your defense will be or about what you are to say. For the Holy Spirit will teach you at that moment what you should say.” The Holy Spirit wants to infuse us with himself — with his wisdom, knowledge, prudence, understanding, reverence, awe and courage — precisely to help us to do this, even and especially when it’s hard. Jesus promises that God will strengthen us by his own power so that we might bear witness under trial, so that we might acknowledge Christ before all, so that we might witness to faith in God before those threatening our life because we know every hair has been counted.
• St. Paul was one who lived with this apostolic courage despite all of the sufferings before synagogues, rulers and authorities he endured. He was one who acknowledged Christ before the whole world and who wrote about living according to the spirit so that, even under trial, one might experience the “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-mastery” that is the fruit of the Holy Spirit. In the section from his Letter to the Ephesians we have today, he seeks to strengthen the Ephesians to do the same. He mentions the divine help we have in order to witness to Christ audaciously and always. He describes the “spirit of wisdom and revelation resulting in knowledge of Christ” so that we can better give acknowledge him. He mentions the enlightenment of the eyes of our hearts so that we “may know what is the hope that belongs to [God’s] call, what are the riches of glory in his inheritance among the holy ones, and what is the surpassing greatness of his power for us who believe.” We are filled with hope because of our faith in God’s promises. We recognize that earthly rulers can’t rob us of our divine inheritance or the divine power working through humility and meekness to draw good even out of evil. St. Paul points to the ground of that hope in what God the Father did in Jesus’ own case, when he displayed “the exercise of his great might, which he worked in Christ, raising him from the dead and seating him at his right hand in the heavens, far above every principality, authority, power, and dominion, and every name that is named not only in this age but also in the one to come.” We see what God the Father did after Jesus’ crucifixion. St. Paul is saying he will acknowledge us and our fidelity in the same way.
• Someone who lived with this courage, with this hope that belongs to our call, with this assurance of God’s ability to raise us from the dead even after a gruesome death, is the saint we celebrate today, perhaps the greatest saint of the post-apostolic age, St. Ignatius of Antioch. St. Ignatius was convinced that it is the Holy Spirit who was speaking through him as he endured his imprisonment for Christ (Phil. 7.1). The Holy Spirit, he taught the same Ephesians in his letter written aboard the ship taking him to Rome, always leads us to the Cross so that we might acknowledge Christ crucified:  ‘Like the stones of a temple, cut for a building of God the Father, you have been lifted up to the top by the crane of Jesus Christ, which is the Cross, and the rope of the Holy Spirit’ (Eph. 9.1). The Holy Spirit is constantly seeking to lift us up in that way. We see how this was lived out in the passage from this morning’s breviary in his letter to the Christians in Rome. He showed how he had no fear of those who could only harm the body. He witnessed to the hope that comes from faith in the “great might” of God. He wrote, “No earthly pleasures, no kingdoms of this world can benefit me in any way. I prefer death in Christ Jesus to power over the farthest limits of the earth. He who died in place of us is the one object of my quest. He who rose for our sakes is my one desire.” He was willing to let the Holy Spirit help him to deny himself, pick up his Cross, and follow Christ through death to life. He didn’t fear death in the least, as if life in this world could possibly be more important than life in the next. He declared, “I am writing to all the churches to let it be known that I will gladly die for God if only you do not stand in my way. I plead with you: show me no untimely kindness. Let me be food for the wild beasts, for they are my way to God. I am God’s wheat and shall be ground by their teeth so that I may become Christ’s pure bread. Pray to Christ for me that the animals will be the means of making me a sacrificial victim for God. … The time for my birth is close at hand. Forgive me, my brothers. Do not stand in the way of my birth to real life; do not wish me stillborn. My desire is to belong to God. Do not, then, hand me back to the world. Do not try to tempt me with material things. Let me attain pure light. Only on my arrival there can I be fully a human being. Give me the privilege of imitating the passion of my God. If you have him in your heart, you will understand what I wish.” He was aware of the draw of the prince of this world and the spirits of disobedience seeking to draw him to deny the Gospel, to deny Christ before others. “The prince of this world is determined to lay hold of me and to undermine my will that is intent on God. Let none of you here help him; instead show yourselves on my side, which is also God’s side. Do not talk about Jesus Christ as long as you love this world. Do not harbour envious thoughts. And supposing I should see you, if then I should beg you to intervene on my behalf, do not believe what I say. Believe instead what I am now writing to you. For though I am alive as I write to you, still my real desire is to die. My love of this life has been crucified, and there is no yearning in me for any earthly thing. Rather within me is the living water which says deep inside me: ‘Come to the Father.’ I no longer take pleasure in perishable food or in the delights of this world. I want only God’s bread, which is the flesh of Jesus Christ, formed of the seed of David, and for drink I crave his blood, which is love that cannot perish. I am no longer willing to live a merely human life. … Pray for me that I may obtain my desire. I have not written to you as a mere man would, but as one who knows the mind of God.” He saw his martyrdom as the time he would become a Christian not just in name but in deed.
• St. Ignatius drew his strength from the Eucharist. The Mass is the great place that the Lord seeks to enlighten our hearts, to renew us in the hope that belongs to our call, to introduce us to the riches of glory that are the inheritance of his holy ones, and to strengthen us to go and announce the Gospel of the Lord, even to the point of being hoisted up by the rope of the Holy Spirit on the Cross of Christ. St. Ignatius saw his life, as we just noted, as being ground into wheat so that he could become in Christ pure bread, united and transubstantiated in the Eucharistic sacrifice. He called Jesus in the Eucharist God’s great gift and the medicine of immorality, given for the forgiveness of sins, which makes real and eternal life possible. We don’t need lions to grind us into wheat; we have ordinary life, the vicissitudes of which is meant to prepare us for this sacrifice. The first and greatest way we need to correspond to the Holy Spirit, to let him guide us, live in us so that we may follow him all the way to the Father’s house with many mansions (Jn 14) is here at Mass, where the Holy Spirit comes down to overshadow not just the priest and the altar to transform bread and wine entirely into God the Son in his body, blood, soul and divinity, but seeks to transform us into one body, one spirit of Christ. We prayed in the Psalm, “What is man that you should be mindful of him, or the son of man that you should care for him?” God does more than remember us or care for us. He entered our world, died for us, and made himself our food. If God is for us in this way, as St. Paul would write to the Romans, who can be against us? If God loves us this much, how can we not acknowledge him?

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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