The Mercy and Obedience That Make Us Members of Jesus’ Family, 16th Tuesday (II), July 21, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Tuesday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of St. Lawrence of Brindisi, Doctor
July 21, 2020
Mic 7:14-15.18-20, Ps 85, Mt 12:46-50

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

The following points were attempted in today’s homily: 

• In the Liturgy of the Word today, we finish both the Twelfth Chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel as well as our biennial three-day focus on the Book of the Prophet Micah. By each of them God is seeking to provoke in us a conversion based on getting right what the Scribes and the Pharisees in the Gospel, and the people of Judah in Micah’s time, got wrong. The whole twelfth chapter of Matthew has focused on Jesus’ confrontation with the Scribes and Pharisees over whether his disciples were doing what is unlawful on the sabbath by picking, winnowing, threshing and eating heads of grain, whether Jesus himself was violating it by curing a man with a withered hand in the Synagogue on a sabbath, or whether he was exorcizing a blind, mute possessed man by the power of God or the power of Beelzebul the prince of demons. Jesus’ whole approach was summarized in last Friday’s Gospel, which is, “If you knew what this meant, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice….'” The Scribes and Pharisees, for all their religious practice, had forgotten that religion is supposed to make us like the one we worship, that it’s supposed to help us grow in the image and likeness of God. It’s supposed to make us merciful like God the Father is merciful. It’s supposed to make us like Jesus the Suffering Servant, whom God the Father has chosen, loves and in whom he delights, who with the power of the Holy Spirit will proclaim justice not by contention or crying out, not by breaking bruised reeds or quenching smoldering wicks, but through meekness and humility. It’s supposed to make us good trees that bear good fruit “out of a store of goodness.” Yesterday as you recall Jesus, when asked by the Scribes and Pharisees for a sign, told them that no sign would be given except the sign of Jonah, which is a sign of conversion leading us to die and rise with him, entering into the mercy of what he did when he spent three days and three nights in the heart of the earth, and seeking to follow him who is greater than Jonah, greater than Solomon, and greater than the Temple.
• That brings us to today’s Gospel, which is the exclamation point on the whole chapter. When people tell him that Jesus’ mother and his relatives (the Hebrew and Aramaic words for brother was used for all relatives) were outside hoping to speak to him, he used it to stress who his family members really are. His words were revolutionary for the Jews, who prided themselves, and based so much of their theological understanding on their biological connection to Abraham. Jesus was saying that they needed rather to imitate Abraham’s obedient faith to live as members of God’s family. Stretching out his hands toward his disciples, Jesus said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my heavenly Father is my brother, and sister and mother.” This was not denigrating his mother in the least, because she was one whose whole life was summarized by her words to Gabriel, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be done to me according to your word.” She was the one whom Jesus implicitly praised when a woman from the crowd blessed the womb that bore him and the breasts that nursed him, and he replied, “Blessed, rather, are those who hear the word of God and observe it.” And at the end of this chapter in which Jesus and the disciples were suffering on account of mercy shown on the Sabbath, we must grasp that doing the will of Jesus’ heavenly Father involves learning the meaning of the words, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice,” and living by those words.
• The Prophet Micah similarly emphasizes this theme of God’s mercy and how we are to open ourselves up to it through conversion. He says to God, “Who is there like you, the God who removes guilt and pardons sin for the remnant of his inheritance; who does not persist in anger forever, but delights rather in clemency, and will again have compassion on us, treading underfoot our guilt? You will cast into the depths of the sea all our sins.” That’s what leads us to cry out in the Psalm, “Show us, O Lord, your mercy, and grant us your salvation,” and to express with gratitude, “You have forgiven the guilt of your people; you have covered all of their sins.” The problem with the people of Judah during the time of Micah is that they were not doing the will of God. Rather than loving God with all they have and are, they were adoring idols. Rather than loving their neighbor, they were treating them with hardened hearts and defrauding them. They weren’t keeping the commandments and being faithful to the covenant. They were not doing justice, loving mercy, or walking humbly with God, as we pondered yesterday. Through Micah, God was extending once more a call to mercy, a call to obedient faith, a summons to behave as true sons and daughters of Abraham and true sons and daughters of God, but sadly they resisted. The Lord was showing them mercy and love and they were not receiving it and being transformed by it. That led ultimately to the medicine of the exile, from which the grateful words of the Psalm were able to echo what the Prophet Micah had been preaching to them all along.
• Today the Church celebrates a saintly doctor of the Church who sought to bring people to conversion, obedient faith, and a life of mercy. St. Lawrence of Brindisi was gifted with extraordinary intelligence and an incredible memory such that he learned almost all of the modern European languages as well as the ancient ones used in the Bible, so that he could really learn and do the will of God expressed in the word of God. He didn’t allow his intelligence to go proudly to his head, but humbly sought out God’s wisdom not as a thing to be known but a gift to be lived and nourished through prayer and shared with others. As a six year old boy, he used to give powerful homilies at Christmas time to his family members and other parishioners on the meaning of Christ’s incarnation. Eventually after he had become a Capuchin Franciscan, he became a famous preacher of conversion, first to Catholics in traditional mission and sermons, then to Protestants in Germany who had left during the Reformation and finally, at Pope Paul V’s request, to the Jews in the Jewish Ghetto in Rome. In all three circumstances, his enfleshment of the beauty of God’s mercy, his awe at God’s holy wisdom, and his radiance of the happiness that comes from walking in the Lord’s way brought many to profound conversion, healing and the fullness of faith through the Catholic Church. In the breviary lesson we prayed this morning in the Office of Readings, he focused on how we’re supposed to respond to the word of God with faith. “With faith,” he said, “it is impossible to please God. And faith is not conceived unless the word of God is preached.” He focused on how the angels, Moses, Jesus, and the apostles all preached the word of the Lord and, echoing St. James’ words, he urged all of us, “Welcome the word that has taken root in you, with its power to save you” (James 1:21), words that St. James says immediately before he tells us to be “doers of the word and not hearers only.” To welcome the word of God as words to be done and to do it was what made him a great doctor of the Church and a saint. That word was one of mercy on God’s side and conversion on our side, meant to help us learn how to love God and loved others as God has loved us. At the beginning of Mass today, we prayed to God the Father to grant us “that in the same spirit [of St. Lawrence], we may know what must be done and, through his intercession, bring it to completion.” God tells us in the word what we must do and gives us grace, like he did St. Lawrence, to do it. And as we do it, we behave as true sons and daughters of the Eternal Father and true brothers and sisters of Jesus.
• At every Mass, we come to welcome the word of God, to allow it to take root in us, and to grow into a sturdy tree bearing great fruit. It’s where we come to cry out for God’s mercy and for the grace of turning with God (converting) in every aspect of life. It’s where we learn what must be done and resolve to bring it to completion, as we act on Jesus’ command to do this in his memory. It’s where God shows us his mercy and love and we, together with Mary and all of the saints, our spiritual siblings, seek to respond with obedient faith and overflowing gratitude in such a way that, with them, we may come to experience the “completion” of in the family home of heaven, where God’s will is done in heaven as it is done on earth.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

GospelMT 12:46-50

While Jesus was speaking to the crowds,
his mother and his brothers appeared outside,
wishing to speak with him.
Someone told him,

“Your mother and your brothers are standing outside,
asking to speak with you.”
But he said in reply to the one who told him,
“Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?”
And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said,
“Here are my mother and my brothers.
For whoever does the will of my heavenly Father
is my brother, and sister, and mother.”

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