The Lord’s Desire to Make Us Clean, 12th Friday (II), June 26, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Friday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of St. Josemaria Escriva
The 21st Anniversary of my Ordination
June 26, 2020
2 Kings 25:1-12, Ps 137, Mt 8:1-4

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Over the past two-and-a-half weeks at daily Mass, we have been pondering Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount, in which he sets forth his standards — and the standards by which he wishes us to live — that surpass that of the Scribes, Pharisees and virtuous pagans. He calls us to be “perfect” (teleios) as his Father in heaven is perfect, to be great by keeping his commandments and teaching others to do the same, to seek first the kingdom of heaven and God’s holiness. He calls us to seek to be, in contrast to the standards and behavior of so many in the world, poor in spirit, compassionate to the point of mourning, meek, merciful, peacemaking, hungry and thirst for holiness, pure of heart, and willing to suffer for the sake of holiness. He calls us to love our enemies, pray for our persecutors, do good to those who are evil, to turn the other cheek, to walk the second mile, to give our cloak when all that’s asked for is our tunic, to not hate and not only not kill, to be chaste in heart and not just continent in the body, to have our eye mean yes and our no mean no, to pray, fast and give alms only for God the Father and not for show, not to worry about what we are to eat, drink or wear but to trust in the Father’s providence, to take out the beams from our own eyes and stop judging, to enter through the narrow gate of life, to do to others what we ourselves wish to be done to us, to become a good tree bearing good fruit and to build our whole life on his word. After hearing all of this, it is understandable that we might feel overwhelmed, as if the standards Jesus is proposing are unreachable. We may recognize just how often, every day, we fall short.
• That’s why in God’s providence, and in the Holy Spirit’s inspiration of St. Matthew, right after the Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus makes clear the standards by which Christians are called to live, we have Chapter 8, which features seven different miracles of healing. The first we have today, in which a leper approaches Jesus, kneels down in homage, and humbly asks, “Lord, if you wish, you can make me clean.” We can say the same, with similar adoration and trust: “Lord, if you will, you can cleanse me of all of the ways I’ve lived by the standards of the world rather than by yours. If you will, you can give me the help you know I need to become teleios, to become great by keeping and teaching your commandments, to seek first your kingdom, and to base my whole life on the rock of your holy word!” And we have every confidence Jesus will respond like he did to the leper, to all the others who approached him through Chapter 8 and in other scenes in the Gospel, and say, “I do will it! Be made clean!” After hearing God’s wisdom at length, now we encounter God’s healing power to strengthen us to live up to the high standards of ordinary Christian living to which Jesus calls us.
• God’s desire to cleanse us, to make us pure, to fill us with his mercy to overflowing, explains the motivation behind Jesus’ incarnation, his hidden life, his passion, death and resurrection. Jesus’ whole life screams the ardor of God’s hunger to make us clean, to heal us of our words and the leprosy of sin that alienates us from God, others and our truest selves. In the ancient world, leprosy was the worst disease one could have. Not only would it eat away one’s flesh and bones and make one stink in a most disgusting fashion, but it would also cut the leper off from everyone other than fellow lepers. One needed to remain 50 feet away from others, cry out “Unclean! Unclean!” whenever anyone approached. One couldn’t be with one’s family or friends. One couldn’t live in one’s home. Even though there was technically a place for lepers in the synagogue, none would go because of the social stigma and obstacles others would place in their way. It’s a sign of the alienation that can happen to us spiritually through sin, where we begin to cut ourselves off from communion. Jesus comes, however, to restore us. He reaches out, he touches us through the Sacraments, and he renews us like God in touching us at the beginning gave us life. All we need is faith. We remember the scene after the Transfiguration when Jesus, Peter, James and John descend from the mountain and meet the dad whose son was tormented by a devil that the other nine apostles couldn’t exorcise. The father said to Jesus, “If you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us” (Mk 9:22). Jesus replied by challenging him to grow in faith, “If you can! Everything is possible to one who has faith!” In this case, there was no doubt in the leper about Jesus’ power to do what he was asking. He politely say, “If you wish, you can make me whole,” and Jesus did.
• The way God desires to cleanse us and make us whole is not what we would necessarily want. We see one of his means in today’s first reading, when King Nubuchadnezzar of Babylon and the captain of his bodyguard, Nebuzaradan, commit all types of atrocities against the residents of Jerusalem, sacrileges against the Temple and destruction of almost every structure in the city. King Zedekiah’s eyes were plucked out, his sons (and heirs) killed, and most of those who were not slain were enslaved. The Jews who had been taking God’s law for granted no longer did. The ones who could see the Temple but didn’t go there to pray and convert sat, as we prayed in the Psalm, by the rivers of Babylon and wept. It was a 70 year time of conversion. Even those who were being struck down by the Babylonians likely had a chance to turn to God for mercy as they paid for their sins. When they finally returned after the exile, they took God, and his dwelling place, and his law seriously as the gifts they should have always recognized.
• Another way the Lord purifies us is through our work. At the beginning of Mass today on the feast of St. Josemaria, we asked God the Father, through St. Rosemarie’s intercession, to grant us that through our daily work we may be “formed in the likeness of Jesus … and serve the work of redemption with burning love.” Work was part of God’s plan for us from the beginning. He gave us the three-fold vocation to increase and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion as stewards over God’s creation. After the Fall, that vocation remained, but it would be accomplished with pangs, toil and sweat. These sufferings in work would force us to have to persevere in working. It would purify our motivation and help us in work to learn to love God, love those who we’re serving through our work, and become more like Jesus through our work, making up for what is lacking in us of the work of salvation. St. Josemaria was God’s chosen instrument to teach us how to make our work a true opus Dei, a work of God, something that can be offered to God like the sacrifice of Abel and sanctify us through the subjective or intransitive effect of work and potentially sanctify our co-workers and clients through the Christ-like virtues we exercise in imitation of Jesus’, Joseph’s and Mary’s work in Nazareth. I give thanks for St. Josemaria’s teachings and his intercession in my life. As a priest it’s somewhat straightforward to sanctify our prayer, our preaching, our celebration of the sacraments, even our charitable work. But it’s not easy to unite all of the other stuff we need to do to Christ, the various “temporalities” like fixing toilets and other things around the parish, attending incessant meetings, paying bills with money we don’t have, and so many other aspects of priestly life. From St. Josemaria, I learned that those were not obstacles to my growth as a disciple and an apostle, were not impediments to my living by Christ’s standards, but rather opportunities. From him I learned that when I have a lot of work to do, I can respond with Thanksgiving for so much work to sanctify!
• St. Josemaria said in The Way, his most famous work of spiritual aphorisms, “Domine! — Lord — si vis, potes me mundare, — if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.’ What a beautiful prayer for you to say often, with the faith of the poor leper. …  You will not have to wait long to hear the Master’s reply: ‘Volo, mundare! I will: be thou made clean!'” (142). It is a prayer to be said often, including to cleanse our work of mixed motives, so that we might through our work be formed in Jesus’ likeness and ardently cooperate with him in our and others’ redemption.
• Every Mass we come to meet Jesus with the faith of that poor leper. We begin by confessing how much we need cleansing of our thoughts, words, and actions, and we turn to him, the Lamb of God, and beg him to have mercy on us and take away our sins. We echo the prayer of the Leper when we say, “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.” I rejoice today, on the 21st anniversary of my priestly ordination, for the 10,321st time, that I have the chance to approach Jesus and to receive within his body and blood given so that sins may be forgiven. I rejoice at the countless times Jesus has sent those who wish to be healed to show themselves to the priests so that through me had can do something even greater for their souls than he did for the leper’s body. I am not worthy of the priesthood, but Jesus has willed to call me to it anyway, saying to me repeatedly, “I do will it. Be made clean!”

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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