Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Monday of the 22nd Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
August 30, 2021
1 Thes 4:13-18, Ps 96, Lk 4:16-30
To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
The following points were attempted in the homily:
- There are several passages that are regularly chosen for funerals. The book of Wisdom on how the souls of the just are in God’s hands and the Prophet Isaiah about the banquet the Lord is preparing on his holy mountain are very common first readings. Psalm 23 about the Lord as our Shepherd and Psalm 27 about how the Lord is our light and our salvation is often similarly selected by families. For the Gospel, it’s quite common to have Jesus raising Lazarus, or St. Luke’s version of the death of Jesus, or the beatitudes, which focuses on the path toward the kingdom of heaven. One of the most popular New Testament readings is today’s passage from St. Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians. It’s about Christian grief. St. Paul tells the Christians in Thessalonika about the consequences of Jesus’ death and resurrection “so that [they] may not grieve like the rest, who have no hope.” He speaks first about grief but then about hope. The first is about the importance of grief. Some Christians today don’t grieve, and often aren’t given permission and help to grieve. In various places they’re basically taught that death is a canonization. Funerals are celebrated with white. Certain clerics seem to guarantee that no matter how one lived or died the person is in a “better place.” Some others go to the opposite extreme and make grief thereafter the defining aspect of their life. They mourn as if they’ve lost the most important thing in life. They wear black for the rest of their life and define themselves from that point forward by the death of a loved one. The way God wants us to look at things is to grieve because we love and our life on earth won’t be the same as before, but to mourn in such a way that we believe in God’s mercy and hope that we will be together with our loved one again. What goes for grieving the death of our loved ones similarly goes for other types of grief, like when we lose something else valuable. We can grieve the loss of a job or assignment. We can grieve when we’re transferred someplace else apart from one of our good friends or our family, or one of our friends or family members moves far away from us. We can grieve when someone discerns out of consecrated life. We can grieve when we don’t get the assignment we’re hoping for or don’t get relieved of one we treated as a burden. We certainly grieve for all those lives ended through abortion. There are many forms of grief. But in all of them we’re called to grieve with hope, which is the second point. St. Paul in his Letter to the Ephesians basically defines hope as “living with God in the world,” because hopelessness for him is living without God in the world (Eph 4:10). To grieve with hope is to grieve with Christ, who blesses those who mourn (with him) because they will be consoled. We grieve not alone or abandoned, but with a loving savior, who loves our loved ones even more than we do and died to make eternal life possible. All of us are called to show the Church and the world how to grieve in this way so that they too can learn that they have hope in their grief because of the incarnation of Jesus.
- We focus on the hope that is meant to come from Jesus in today’s Gospel, which is the beginning of our focus on the Gospel of St. Luke, which will accompany us at daily Mass through the end of this liturgical year. Jesus was seeking to help his fellow Nazarenes and all of us learn how to have hope precisely by the fulfillment of all of the Messianic prophecies. After he had read the scroll of the Prophet Isaiah about the works of the long-awaited Messiah (Is 61), Jesus said, “Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.” He was the fulfillment of the one anointed by the Spirit who was announcing and delivering the Good News to the poor, freedom to captives, recovery of sight to the blind, release to the oppressed, and a year of Jubilee. But as we are well aware, that was too much for many of his listeners. Those in Nazareth recognized that he was speaking with “gracious words” but they couldn’t or didn’t want to harmonize that with the fact that he was the supposed son of Joseph the carpenter. And their amazement soon passed to doubt and then to homicidal anger as they sought to kill him. His enfleshment of the word and plans of God, his fulfillment of their messianic hopes, was a scandal to them. They didn’t think that one of their own could be the Messiah. They didn’t want to get shaken out of their own habits to examine whether it was true and if so to follow him. Therefore they sought to reject the message by killing the messenger. They were particularly scandalized by his focusing on what Isaiah had announced, that the light was to become a light to all the nations, that Jesus was working miracles, like the prophets in the Old Testament, not just for the club of the Jews, but for all God’s children. They didn’t want to hear it and sought to kill one of their own, anticipating the homicidal rejection of the Passion. People in grief can sometimes treat Jesus in the same way. Even though Jesus came to give us all hope of life and love after death, some can choose to reject his presence, reject the call to prayer, reject the ministrations of the Church. Some “refuse to be consoled” (Ps 77:3; Jer 31:15). Jesus wants to help those grieving recognize that he is fulfilling Scripture in their hearing, that those who live and believe in him will have eternal life. He is coming to bring us good news, to free us from the captivity of grief, to help us to see the light again, and to proclaim a time of renewal. Our time of loss is the time in which Jesus most wants to console us with the fulfillment of his promises. And it shows us how he similarly wants to console us at every moment.
- Today the same Jesus who visited his hometown synagogue visits us. We ask for the grace to receive him, not like the residents of Nazareth failed to do that day, but the way Mary and Joseph of Nazareth did, with the faith with which Jesus praised Naaman and the widow of Zarepthath. For at Mass, Jesus always fulfills Sacred Scripture, making the Verbum Domini the Verbum caro factum est. It is here he fills us with hope, by being with us in the world and even making us his holy abode. That’s what makes it possible not only not to grieve like the rest who have no hope, but even to grieve — yes, grieve — with Christian joy.
The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 1 THES 4:13-18
We do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters,
about those who have fallen asleep,
so that you may not grieve like the rest, who have no hope.
For if we believe that Jesus died and rose,
so too will God, through Jesus,
bring with him those who have fallen asleep.
Indeed, we tell you this, on the word of the Lord,
that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord,
will surely not precede those who have fallen asleep.
For the Lord himself, with a word of command,
with the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of God,
will come down from heaven,
and the dead in Christ will rise first.
Then we who are alive, who are left,
will be caught up together with them in the clouds
to meet the Lord in the air.
Thus we shall always be with the Lord.
Therefore, console one another with these words.
Responsorial Psalm PS 96:1 AND 3, 4-5, 11-12, 13
R. (13b) The Lord comes to judge the earth.
Sing to the LORD a new song;
sing to the LORD, all you lands.
Tell his glory among the nations;
among all peoples, his wondrous deeds.
R. The Lord comes to judge the earth.
For great is the LORD and highly to be praised;
awesome is he, beyond all gods.
For all the gods of the nations are things of nought,
but the LORD made the heavens.
R. The Lord comes to judge the earth.
Let the heavens be glad and the earth rejoice;
let the sea and what fills it resound;
let the plains be joyful and all that is in them!
Then shall all the trees of the forest exult.
R. The Lord comes to judge the earth.
Before the LORD, for he comes;
for he comes to rule the earth.
He shall rule the world with justice
and the peoples with his constancy.
R. The Lord comes to judge the earth.
Alleluia SEE LK 4:18
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me;
he has sent me to bring glad tidings to the poor.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel LK 4:16-30
Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had grown up,
and went according to his custom
into the synagogue on the sabbath day.
He stood up to read and was handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah.
He unrolled the scroll and found the passage where it was written:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring glad tidings to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.
Rolling up the scroll,
he handed it back to the attendant and sat down,
and the eyes of all in the synagogue looked intently at him.
He said to them,
“Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”
And all spoke highly of him
and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.
They also asked, “Is this not the son of Joseph?”
He said to them, “Surely you will quote me this proverb,
‘Physician, cure yourself,’ and say, ‘Do here in your native place
the things that we heard were done in Capernaum.’”
And he said,
“Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own native place.
Indeed, I tell you,
there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah
when the sky was closed for three and a half years
and a severe famine spread over the entire land.
It was to none of these that Elijah was sent,
but only to a widow in Zarephath in the land of Sidon.
Again, there were many lepers in Israel
during the time of Elisha the prophet;
yet not one of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.”
When the people in the synagogue heard this,
they were all filled with fury.
They rose up, drove him out of the town,
and led him to the brow of the hill
on which their town had been built, to hurl him down headlong.
But he passed through the midst of them and went away.
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