The Lord’s Way of Disciplining Us To Be Faithful, Courageous Disciples Until the End, 4th Wednesday (I), February 6, 2019

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Wednesday of the Fourth Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Memorial of St. Paul Miki and Companions
February 6, 2019
Heb 12:4-7.11-15, Ps 103, Mk 6:1-6

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

• As we’ve been noting for the past three-and-a-half weeks in our daily meditation on the Letter to the Hebrews at Mass, this letter was written to the early Christians at a time in which many had undergone fierce persecution and when more persecution was anticipated. We’ve seen that Christ, the definitive Word of the Father, took on our flesh and entered into our world to lead us to eternal glory, to perfection as sons and daughters, but that he would do so precisely through uniting our suffering and death to his salvific suffering and death. He has pierced the veil of the heavenly holy of holies precisely to give us confidence that follow him along this path. In the past few days, we’ve been talking about the holy hupomone — the sacred stamina or endurance — that we need to live the faith in the midst of hardships and difficulties. The Letter to the Hebrews has inspired us by focusing on the persevering faith of so many in a great cloud of witnesses.  Yesterday it reminded us to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, to consider how he despised the shame of the Cross and endured opposition, so that we may not grow weary and lose heart. Today it gives us a third motivation: to endure our trials “as discipline,” as the training that will make us holy disciples.
• Quoting Proverbs 3:11-12, the Letter exhorts us: “My son, do not disdain the discipline of the Lord or lose heart when reproved by him; for whom the Lord loves, he disciplines; he scourges every son he acknowledges.” Therefore, he says, “Endure your trials as discipline; God treats you as his sons. For what ‘son’ is there whom his father does not discipline?” Discipline is what is necessary to conform us as disciples to the Master, Jesus himself. Jesus took our humanity and himself was disciplined through what he suffered. We become more like him as we unite our trials to his and through those trials become perfected so that we may love God and others through those very trials and beyond. The sacred author tells us that discipline isn’t fun, but is crucial if we’re ever going to mature: “At the time, all discipline seems a cause not for joy but for pain, yet later it brings the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who are trained by it.” Then he gets to the punch line, to help us get over any potential self-pity party, or diabolical temptation, that because we’re suffering God mustn’t love us, by appealing: “So strengthen your drooping hands and your weak knees. Make straight paths for your feet, that what is lame may not be dislocated but healed.” Sometimes we can think that what we’re enduring is too challenging, is epochal. When I begin to get into one of those situations, I ask myself how St. Maximilian Mary Kolbe would have handled it, or St. Joan of Arc, or anyone of the martyrs. It helps me to keep my sufferings in perspective! The author finishes by making an appeal as to how we should use our restored hands, feet and knees, not just through folding them as we kneel down in prayer, but precisely through genuine love of neighbor: “Strive for peace with everyone, and for that holiness without which no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one be deprived of the grace of God, that no bitter root spring up and cause trouble, through which many may become defiled.”
• Why’s discipline so much of a problem? One reason we don’t like it is because many of us aren’t deeply docile. We don’t think we need to learn. We’re resistant to being surprised by the Lord. We may not think we’re opposed to discipline, but only discipline that we don’t want… We see that play out in the Gospel. In Nazareth, they were not willing to become disciples of one of their own, one with whom they grew up, one whose furniture and perhaps even houses he had made. From initial amazement at his words, they turned to taking offense at him and as we’ll see in St. Luke’s account, they’d even go to homicidal rage. Jesus was amazed at their lack of faith. It tells us that he could work no miracles there, except for healing a few sick people. Normally healing the sick and the lame would be considered great miracles, but it points to the fact that the greatest miracle Jesus wanted to work was salvation, was the forgiveness of sins, was growth in faith, but the lack of faith in the most of the recipients prevented that. They were unwilling to enter into the discipline that makes disciples.
• Today the Church celebrates the feast of St. Paul Miki and his 25 Companion Martyrs, who were crucified in Japan in 1597. They show us the docility to discipline God wants. They were the first of the nearly 35,000 Japanese converts who died heroically for the faith between 1597-1639. Because the imperial minister Toyotomi Hideyoski feared that missionaries from the Philippines were actually Spanish insurgents seeking to overthrow Japan, he responded by sentencing these 26 Catholics — 3 native Jesuits, 17 lay Catholics including children and six Franciscan missionaries — to death by crucifixion. They were marched an unbelievable 600 miles to Nagasaki — the distance between New York City and Grand Rapids, or Indianapolis, or Colombia South Carolina —  suffering so many indignities and tortures along the way to try to frighten any Japanese from seeking to convert to Christianity. But while the Japanese authorities were trying to use this death march as an advertisement against becoming Christian, these 26 were using it as propaganda fidei, showing the joy that comes from our faith as we endure trials as discipline. Even in the midst of torture, they sang a Te Deum to God. When they were being crucified, they had their last opportunity to evangelize those who were present for the spectacle, and they didn’t miss their chance. In the most powerful pulpit of his life, St. Paul Miki gave his last will and testament: “The sentence of judgment says these men came to Japan from the Philippines, but I did not come from any other country. I am a true Japanese. The only reason for my being killed is that I have taught the doctrine of Christ. I certainly did teach the doctrine of Christ. I thank God it is for this reason I die. I believe that I am telling only the truth before I die. I know you believe me and I want to say to you all once again: Ask Christ to help you to become happy. I obey Christ. After Christ’s example I forgive my persecutors. I do not hate them. I ask God to have pity on all, and I hope my blood will fall on my fellow men as a fruitful rain.” We see that the trials they had endured as discipline had perfected them to become increasingly Christ-like, praying for their persecutors even as they, like Christ, were being crucified. We prayed for a similar conformity at the beginning of Mass through their intercession: “O God, strength of all the saints, who through the Cross were pleased to call the Martyrs Saint Paul Miki and companions to life, grant, we pray, that by their intercession we may hold with courage even until death to the faith that we profess.” The Cross, a sign of death, of suffering, of sin, was transformed for them into a Tree not just of life, but of eternal life. They received courage from the Cross and we receive courage not only from Calvary but from the Martyrs’ Mountain in Nagasaki.
• Today we ask through their intercession that as Jesus comes to this Church, which is his native place, and seeks to be met by faith, he may through the great miracle of transubstantiation also transform us, disciplining us to become more and more like him, sharing his priorities, sharing his word, sharing his training, so that we might be able to continue his mission with the fidelity of the Japanese martyrs.