Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Monday of the 15th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel
July 16, 2018
Is 1:10-17, Ps 50, Mt 10:34-11:1
To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
The following points were attempted in the homily:
- Today the Church celebrates the Memorial of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel. Through our devotion to her under this title, we seek to place ourselves under her protection — under the mantle of her scapular — and emulate her virtues. Anyone who has ever formally received the brown scapular dedicated to our Lady of Mt. Carmel has been inducted into the Confraternity that pertains to the Carmelite family. When we wear that scapular properly, it signifies three things: belonging, consecration and imitation. The scapular symbolizes that we have taken on ourselves Mary’s own garment. We enter under her mantle, into her school or seminary. That leads to the second element, consecration. We entrust ourselves to her in life. We transfer the ownership of our life to her so that she may guide us more and more into the mysteries of the kingdom her Son came to reveal. We enter into her meekness and humility, derived from her Son. Finally it commits us to imitating her in her becoming a true handmaid or servant of the Lord, of seeking to help others grow in faith and in the real living of the Lord’s law.
- Today we see in the readings two ways in which we need to imitate her. The first is in receiving Christ and loving him above all. He stresses in the Gospel, “Whoever receives you, receives me and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.” Mary received Christ with faith and is the model for all of us. At the beginning of today’s passage, taken from the end of Jesus’ instructions to the apostles before sending them out, we see that many don’t receive Christ fully, because they don’t love him more than they love their parents, or children, or themselves. Mary was one who put her whole life at the service of the Lord and experienced the peace that Christ comes to give. Jesus begins today’s passage by saying, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth. I have come to bring not peace but the sword.” Those are strange words from the one who sent the apostles out to proclaim, “Peace to this household.” And yet the peace he describes comes as a fruit of war, precisely that battle to put him first above other loves. In order to experience that piece, we need to chop off those good things that we make gods. Mary shows us how to love her Son above everything. Jesus in his own extended family experienced some family division, when many of them thought he was out of his mind. We saw the same thing among all of his fellow Jesus. In every family, there will be division between those who put God first and those who are jealous that others hold God first. But Mary shows us how to persevere in this.
- In the first reading, we see Isaiah’s forceful call of the people of Judah in his own day to conversion. He begins his prophecy calling his contemporaries “Princes of Sodom” and “people of Gomorrah,” something bound to get their attention. No matter how many sacrifices they made of rams, failings, calves, lambs and goats, they were not welcoming God’s word and God’s ways. They were not receiving him. God rejected their sacrifices because they were rejecting him and his law and couldn’t receive what he wanted to give them.. He calls them to wash their hands clean of blood, to “put away your misdeeds from before my eyes; cease doing evil; learn to do good,” and that would be shown in a particular way by the way they would make their own the needs and concerns of those who have suffered injustices and who were vulnerable. “Make justice your aim: redress the wronged, hear the orphan’s plea, defend the widow.” Their fidelity to God would be shown in these ways. So will ours. Our Lady of Mt. Carmel is praying for our conversion in that way.
- To belong to Mary, to consecrate ourselves to her and to imitate her, leads us ultimately to the Blessed Fruit of her womb in the Eucharist. She seeks to help us to welcome him as she did, to love him above all other loves, and at a result to do this in memory of him, making justice our aim, so that the sacrifice we make together with His to the Father will be not “worthless” but ultimately worthy! And it’s through receiving him with love here that we learn how to receive everyone else he himself sends us in his name.
The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 IS 1:10-17
princes of Sodom!
Listen to the instruction of our God,
people of Gomorrah!
What care I for the number of your sacrifices?
says the LORD.
I have had enough of whole-burnt rams
and fat of fatlings;
In the blood of calves, lambs and goats
I find no pleasure.When you come in to visit me,
who asks these things of you?
Trample my courts no more!
Bring no more worthless offerings;
your incense is loathsome to me.
New moon and sabbath, calling of assemblies,
octaves with wickedness: these I cannot bear.
Your new moons and festivals I detest;
they weigh me down, I tire of the load.
When you spread out your hands,
I close my eyes to you;
Though you pray the more,
I will not listen.
Your hands are full of blood!
Wash yourselves clean!
Put away your misdeeds from before my eyes;
cease doing evil; learn to do good.
Make justice your aim: redress the wronged,
hear the orphan’s plea, defend the widow.
Responsorial Psalm PS 50:8-9, 16BC-17, 21 AND 23
“Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you,
for your burnt offerings are before me always.
I take from your house no bullock,
no goats out of your fold.”
R. To the upright I will show the saving power of God.
“Why do you recite my statutes,
and profess my covenant with your mouth,
Though you hate discipline
and cast my words behind you?”
R. To the upright I will show the saving power of God.
“When you do these things, shall I be deaf to it?
Or do you think you that I am like yourself?
I will correct you by drawing them up before your eyes.
He that offers praise as a sacrifice glorifies me;
and to him that goes the right way I will show the salvation of God.”
R. To the upright I will show the saving power of God.
Alleluia MT 5:10
Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness,
for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel MT 10:34-11:1
Jesus said to his Apostles:
“Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth.
I have come to bring not peace but the sword.
For I have come to set
a man against his father,
a daughter against her mother,
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;
and one’s enemies will be those of his household.
“Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me,
and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me;
and whoever does not take up his cross
and follow after me is not worthy of me.
Whoever finds his life will lose it,
and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
“Whoever receives you receives me,
and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.
Whoever receives a prophet because he is a prophet
will receive a prophet’s reward,
and whoever receives a righteous man
because he is righteous
will receive a righteous man’s reward.
And whoever gives only a cup of cold water
to one of these little ones to drink
because he is a disciple–
amen, I say to you, he will surely not lose his reward.”
When Jesus finished giving these commands to his Twelve disciples,
he went away from that place to teach and to preach in their towns.
