The Lord’s, in Life and Death, 31st Thursday (I), November 4, 2021

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Thursday of the 31st Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Memorial of Saint Charles Borromeo
November 4, 2021
Rom 14:7-12, Ps 27, Lk 15:1-10

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

The following points were attempted in the homily:

• Today St. Paul summarizes one of the essential aspects of Christian identity and life: We are God’s, not as property he owns, but as beloved sons and daughters he loves. Jesus’ whole life, death and resurrection was all designed so that we might become children of God. Our behavior is meant to flow from this identity. Therefore, he says, “None of us lives for oneself, and no one dies for oneself. For if we live, we live for the Lord, and if we die, we die for the Lord; so then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.” In this month of November, the Church helps us to ponder how to live according to our identity. We begin the month on All Saints Day, those who truly lived for the Lord and the martyrs who similarly died for him. On All Souls Day, we not only pray for the Faithful Departed, but also consider death, so that we can learn how to die for the Lord. Throughout the month, we seek to grow in the capacity to live intentionally and to die intentionally, consecrating ourselves to God in life (which is how, from our perspective, we belong to God) and commending ourselves to him in death, echoing Jesus’ last words on the Cross.
• This sense of belonging to God as beloved sons and daughters is very strong in today’s Gospel, which is perhaps the most moving chapter in all of Sacred Scripture, when Jesus gives us the Parables of the Lost Sheep, Lost Coin and Lost Sons, all three of which stress how God’s love for us is greater than our sins and how he rejoices when he is able to restore us to our identity. When we wander away from him like the lost sheep, he never ceases to come after us to try to restore us. When the spousal significance of our life seemed ruptured — that’s what the lost coin is, because a Jewish woman would have ten silver drachmas on a head piece; losing one of them would be like a woman’s losing a wedding ring today, a symbol of one’s sense of loving belonging to a spouse — God rejoices abundantly when we rediscover it. And in the parable of the Lost Sons (which the Church doesn’t have us ponder this week, because it comes up powerfully every Lent and twice in three years in the Sunday lectionary), we see how even when the Prodigal Son treats the father as dead and the older son treats him almost as as a slave owner, the father never stops loving them both as sons, waiting for the first son’s return and encouraging the older son’s coming into the familial celebration. The main point of this chapter is how dear we are to God, how much we belong to him from his perspective, and how he wants us to grow in our identity, in our subjectively belonging to him who has objectively and lovingly made us members of his family.
• That brings us back to today’s first reading and how our understanding of this double-belonging is supposed to influence the way we look at others. After St. Paul stresses that whether we live or die we are the Lord’s because he is the Lord of the dead and the living, he asks, somewhat surprisingly, “Why then do you judge your brother or sister? Or you, why do you look down on your brother or sister?” The “then” is like a “therefore.” If we belong to the Lord of life and death, then, he implies, we should not be looking negatively or judgmentally at our brothers and sisters, because they belong to the Lord, too, and we should approach them with the mercy that befits someone who belongs to God. Rather than judging, we should be loving. Rather than looking down, we should be esteeming. Once we grasp that they belong to the Lord, we should grow to reverence them, and, when they do things that are objectively wrong, we should relate to them like the Father of the Prodigal Son rather than the older brother: namely with mercy, and, when they convert and come back, with extraordinary joy.
• Today we celebrate a saint who illustrates all of these lessons. He knew he was the Lord’s in life and death. He knew others were God’s beloved sons and daughters. And like a Good Shepherd who cared for every one of his sheep, he gave his life trying to care for them. Born of the Medici family, St. Charles Borromeo was thrust into positions of responsibility at 22 because his uncle was Pope Pius IV and made him a Cardinal at that age without ordination. God brought good out of this nepotism, however, because St. Charles — even at a ridiculously young age — quickly became the principal figure in reforming the Church after the Protestant Reformation through helping to bring to a conclusion the Council of Trent. When his elder brother died, his family expected him to resign his offices and return to run the family estate, but he preferred God to them and he made the definitive choice for Holy Orders. He had been appointed Administrator of the Archdiocese of Milan as a benefice, but as soon as his Pius IV had died and the Council completed, he was able to be ordained subdeacon, deacon, priest and bishop and take up the charge as Archbishop. There he encountered a very corrupt situation throughout, where most people, including priests and religious, that they were the Lord’s and were not acting in accordance with their dignity. His famous phrase was, “Be who you promised you would be,” in baptism, in marriage, and in holy orders. He corrected and fought abuses out of love for those harmed in this world and forever, calling clergy to care for their flock against wolves and to help heal their wounds. He formed clergy and religious and built seminaries to train priests well so that they might be good shepherds, since many of the problems that afflicted lay people had to do with clergy who were setting a scandalous example for the people. Such reform led to his receiving much opposition. One religious community that didn’t want to be reformed actually sent some monks to try to murder him while he was praying in his chapel. Miraculously, however, the bullet that hit him in the back simply fell to the ground. Because of his hard work, however, the Catholics of Milan experienced the fruits of reform. More than anything, he sought to help the clergy recognize that to be a good shepherd required them to be willing to risk their lives for the flock. In 1576, when Milan was undergoing mass starvation and the ravages of the plague, the governor, most of his officials, and most of the nobles, all fled. But St. Charles remained and begged the clergy and the religious not to abandon the sheep entrusted to them, urging them to prefer a holy death to a late one. He had already been giving most of his earnings to the care of the poor, but to meet this crisis, he exhausted his personal fortune, even taking on large debts. He similarly sold many of the Church’s vessels. Each day he was feeding 60,000 to 70,000 poor and often contagious people daily. He challenged the clergy and religious: “How can those upon whom mercy has been given and liberally poured out be so tightly limited with theirs, and measure it out in accord with temporal and external necessities? The same Son of God, who for the sake of the salvation of all men, including his enemies and the impious, was fixed to the cross and died in the greatest shame and the bitterest torment, invites us to go forward into the danger of a quiet and glorious death for devout brethren. He to whom we owe as much repayment as we could not obtain by dying a thousand times without end, does not even request this pathetic life of ours, but only that we put it at risk. We see many go through these dangers without escaping death. Moreover, we even see many who are free from fear but still die. But if we do not escape it, this will not be death; rather it will be a quicker attainment of blessed glory, which is true life. … It is indeed a desirable time now when without the cruelty of the tyrant, without the rack, without fire, without beasts, and in the complete absence of harsh tortures that are usually the most frightful to human weakness, we can obtain the crown of martyrdom.” Because of all of these ministrations, St. Charles ended up dying basically of exhaustion at 46, but in his few years, he accomplished so much more than most people who have lived far longer.  We prayed at the beginning of Mass that the Lord would preserve among us the spirit with which he filled Saint Charles so that the Church “may be constantly renewed and, by conforming herself to the likeness of Christ, may show his face to the world.” Christ calls us to conform ourselves to him in the image of his mercy, helping us to belong to the Lord in life and death and help others to recognize, together with us, that we are the Lord’s.
• We belong to the Lord. We don’t live for ourselves or die for ourselves. We live and die for the Lord. We live and die for his kingdom. We live and die for what he sent his Son to live and die for. The Pharisees and scribes criticized Jesus as one who “welcomes sinners and eats with them.” Today as we receive that welcome and not only eat with him but eat of him in Holy Communion, we ask him to increase our sense of belonging and help us to do everything not for ourselves but for him who lived and died for us.

The readings for today’s Mass were:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download