The Proper Dispositions to Receive Jesus, 24th Monday (II), September 16, 2024

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Monday of the 24th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of SS. Cornelius and Cyprian
22nd Anniversary of the death of the Venerable François Xavier Nguyen van Thuan
September 16, 2024
1 Cor 11:17-26.33, Ps 40, Lk 7:1-10

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

The following text guided the homily: 

• Today in the Gospel, we have a chance to focus on the dispositions with which we try to receive the Lord Jesus. We see of some religious leaders who approached Jesus without reverence, more or less as a favor granter. We also see the humility and reverence with which a pagan leader treats Jesus. It provides an opportunity for us to do an examination of conscience as to how we prepare to receive him especially in the Holy Eucharist, something that today’s first reading focuses on and someone whose death the Church remembers today can help us learn how to do better.
• Let’s begin with the Gospel. The Roman centurion loved his slave and was desperate for help. There was no doctor who could help him, but he heard of Jesus the miracle worker. Even though he was a powerful military leader, he didn’t think he was worthy to approach Jesus himself, and so he sent the local Jewish leaders. They were not as humble as he. They approached Jesus and said, “He deserves to have you do this for him, for he loves our nation and he built the synagogue for us.” They were pretending as if the man merited a miracle and that Jesus was somehow obliged But a miracle is always a gift from God. Jesus, nevertheless, humbly went with them. While he was on his way, the Centurion humbly sent word that he didn’t think he was worthy to have Jesus visit his house, but asked simply that Jesus command from where he was the life-threatening illness of his servant to depart. He believed that even at a distance Jesus could command and that even sicknesses would obey, in a way similar to how he commanded soldiers. Jesus was amazed at the man’s faith. He turned to the crowd and said, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.” Not among the disciples, not among the apostles, not even, it seems, in his Mother had he found faith like that in his power to command at a distance. What an extraordinary witness of trust in the reach of God’s power and love! Jesus normally worked physical miracles as preludes to the greater miracle of faith he desired to give those healed, but in this case, Jesus didn’t need to meet the man to help him grow in faith because his faith was already remarkable.
• Throughout this ongoing Eucharistic Revival and more, the Church wants to help us to grow to have the humility and faith of the Centurion as we prepare to receive the Lord. A few weeks ago I was asked to do a blessing of a new apartment here in New York City. Because I didn’t have a public Mass that day, I asked whether the person would want to have a Mass celebrated there and invite some friends. She eagerly accepted. When it came time for the prayer after the “Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the world. Blessed are those called to the Supper of the Lamb,” the new apartment owner said with devotion, “Lord, I am not worthy that you should come under my roof, but only say the word and my [soul] shall be healed.” She told me later what an awesome privilege it was for her to receive Jesus literally under the roof of her apartment and, then, before I even had to bring it up, what an even more incredible gift it is to receive him under our palate. The question for us is whether we receive the Lord with worthy dispositions. Do we have awe? Do we have faith that Jesus can and wants to heal our soul like he healed the Centurion’s slave and make us truly worthy of him? Do we have the same humility before the “res mirabilis” (the awesome reality) of the Eucharist, or do we somehow proudly think we deserve Him and God’s other gifts?
• In today’s first reading, St. Paul calls the Corinthians to the carpet for, among other things, their lack of humility, reverence and faith for Jesus in the Eucharist and for the miracle he was wishing to accomplish coming under their collective roofs. The apostle says something astonishing: “Your meetings,” meaning their Eucharistic assemblies on Sundays, “are doing more harm than good.” The Sunday was structured with a Mass and then an agape meal that they would share as a family. But rather than sharing, rather than loving, Paul says, “when you meet as a Church there are divisions among you.” Therefore, he said, “When you meet in one place, then, it is not to eat the Lord’s Supper,” because, referring to the post-Mass reception, “in eating, each one goes ahead with his own supper, and one goes hungry while another gets drunk.” They were becoming selfish instead of selfless, focused on their own desires rather than becoming united. Having received the Lord’s love at Mass, they were refusing that love to others. St. Paul says they were showing “contempt for the Church of God and mak[ing] those who have nothing feel ashamed.” After describing that Jesus gave his Body and Blood for us in the Lord’s Supper, and that we celebrate it “in remembrance of him,” they weren’t remembering him at all, because their Masses were dividing rather than uniting, leading to factions rather than genuine agape.
• That’s why St. Paul went on to say, in a passage unfortunately and embarrassingly excised from today’s reading, that they needed to examine themselves to make sure they were not eating and drinking condemnation on themselves in receiving the Lord unworthily, without charity, unhealed by the Lord’s saving word. “Therefore,” he wrote, “whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord. A person should examine himself, and so eat the bread and drink the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many among you are ill and infirm, and a considerable number are dying.” To receive the Lord under our roof worthily is to do so apart from sin, full of love for God and others. St. Paul was saying we need to examine our consciences and do so in particular with regard to sins against unity. If we, like the Corinthians, come to Mass not wanting unity with our brothers and sisters, not loving them and receiving them as we would Christ, we would be eating and drinking condemnation rather than salvation. The “Bread of Life,” as St. Thomas Aquinas wrote in his Lauda Sion Salvatorem, would become for us the “bread of death.” We need to “discern the body,” and this means not only humbly to reverence Christ’s Body in the Eucharist, but at the same time how Christ wants to make believers through communion with Him one Body, one Spirit in him. St. Thomas wrote that the res tantum (ultimate result) of the Sacrament of the Eucharist is not the transubstantiation of the bread and wine into Jesus’ Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, but the transformation of us, by the power of the same Holy Spirit through Holy Communion, into one Body, one Spirit. If we come to Mass not seeking loving communion with each other, if we’re not saying “Amen!” to the reality of Christ’s real presence and to what he wants to do in us, then we’re not receiving worthily. That’s why Jesus, for example, says that if we come to the altar and recognize that our brother has something against us, that we are first to go reconcile and then to come, because if we harboring the lack of reconciliation, we’re not really open to what Jesus wants to do. And if he can heal a servant at a distance of a life-threatening illness, then he can heal us, too, of the grudges we may hold. This is the means by which Jesus’ prayer during the Last Supper — that we may be one as the Persons of the Blessed Trinity are one — can come to fruition. This is the means by which, through Holy Communion, we may be strengthened within to love others as he has loved us. To celebrate Mass truly in “remembrance” of the Lord, making him and his love present, and entering worthily into holy communion with Him and his love, are all key parts of the Eucharistic Revival.
• Today the Church celebrates the memorial of Saints Cornelius and Cyprian, two stalwart leaders of the early Church — one a pope, the other bishop of Carthage — martyred during the persecution of Valerian in 258. They are great witnesses to Church unity and to the strength each received from Jesus in the Holy Eucharist and imparted to others. Since early in my priesthood, however, I have always celebrated on this day a Mass of the Dead, in honor of the Venerable Cardinal François Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan, who died on this day in 2002. I was privileged to have him call me a friend from the time I spent with him in Rome during his years as the Vice-President and then President of the Council for Justice and Peace in the Vatican (which has now been merged into the Dicastery for the Promotion of Integral Human Development).
• Soon after he was appointed co-adjutor Archbishop of Saigon in 1975, he was arrested and whisked away by the communists to prison, where he remained for 13 years, 9 in solitary confinement. It was an excruciating time for him, especially at the beginning, when he was kept all alone in difficult conditions often with no light and almost no human contact. He wondered why the Lord would have permitted him to be a bishop and then kept in prison far away from his people. He wondered what good his life was, as he felt useless in his incarceration. But the Lord then helped him to ponder the Gospel scene of the young boy with five loaves and two fish and how, placed into Jesus’ hands, it became a vast feast that fed a great multitude. He saw then that he might not be able to do much in prison, but he would offer whatever bread, whatever fish, he would be able to muster on a given day. He would provide for the Lord and his Church, like the women in the Gospel (Lk 8:1-4), out of the resources he still had. He still had faith, hope, love, an education and at least bursts of lucidity. So he began to pray with much greater hope for his people; if he couldn’t draw near them physically from prison, he would at least draw near them in the Lord. With the help of a young Catholic boy named Quang who would pass by his prison cell, he would scribble a spiritual thought or two a day on old rip-off daily calendars and have Quang bring them to his parents, who would copy them into a notebook and then eventually publish them all as “The Road to Hope,” a series of aphorisms that buoyed the entire Vietnamese Church under brutal persecution. And he would draw near to his guards, seeking to befriend them, to teach them foreign languages, to share with them something of the joy and hope that would flow from his relationship with Jesus. Over the course of time, his human warmth and love was converting so many of his communist guards that the communists stopped giving him new ones lest he convert them, too.
• What I want to focus on, however, is what he teaches us about the dispositions we should have toward Jesus in the Holy Eucharist, dispositions like the Centurion and St. Paul and not like many in Corinth. I think he is one of the greatest Eucharistic witnesses of modern times and had a profound impact on me as a seminarian and young priest. His priestly vocation was discovered as a young boy participating in the various activities of the Eucharistic Crusade movement in his hometown of Hue, Vietnam. Later, as a seminarian, priest, seminary professor, rector and bishop, his Eucharistic faith and piety grew. But it was during his years of imprisonment that he gave an extraordinary testimony to the power of the Mass, the reality of the Lord’s presence, and the gift of Eucharistic adoration. When he was arrested in 1975, one of his greatest concerns was, “Will I be able to celebrate the Eucharist?” The day after his arrest, his captors permitted him to write his family for necessities. He asked for the obvious, like clothes and toiletries, but then added, “Please send me a little wine as medicine for my stomachache,” confident that they would understand the code: the raw materials for the celebration of Mass, which he needed to fill his greatest hunger. When they sent the materials, they put wine in a medicine bottle marked “Medicine for Stomachaches.” They also sent hosts hidden in a flashlight. Each day during his years of isolation, around 3 pm when Jesus died on the Cross, he would celebrate Mass from memory, putting three drops of wine and a drop of water on the palm of his hand together with some crumbs of the hosts. His hand became an altar. His cell became a cathedral. “These were the most beautiful Masses of my life!,” he said to me with great devotion each time he would recount the story. It was during those Masses that he joined his sufferings to Christ’s on Calvary. He would extend his hands in the form of the Cross so as better to become one with the Crucified Jesus. As he lapped up the precious blood consecrated in his hand, he would ask for the grace with Jesus to drink the bitter chalice and to unite himself to Christ’s shedding of blood. When he was moved to a reeducation camp, he was in a crowded room with 50 other prisoners. He would wait until lights were extinguished at 9:30 pm and then would bow over his bed to celebrate Mass. Then he would distribute tiny pieces of the hosts to Catholics present under a mosquito net. He would also wrap some tiny consecrated particles in aluminum from cigarette packs to preserve the Blessed Sacrament, so that he and the other prisoners could have the Lord with them always and adore him. One tiny cigarette-paper tabernacle he would keep in his shirt pocket. Others he would pass to faithful Catholic prisoners, who, during indoctrination sessions, would surreptitiously distribute them to Catholics in other groups. At night, in each of the locations, prisoners would take turns for adoration.
• Hearing these incredible stories as a seminarian preparing for priestly ordination was life-changing. Praying about his celebrating Mass on the altar of his hand in the total darkness of his isolation hut or among the crowded prisoners taught me indelibly invaluable lessons about how to celebrate Mass well. I never looked at even the tiniest particles of the Host the same way and grew in appreciation for the gift and priority of Eucharistic adoration. In the book of aphorisms he was able to publish with the help of Quang and his parents, called, The Road to Hope: A Gospel From Prison, he unsurprisingly include many spiritual maxims about the Eucharistic Jesus, nourished by his experience in prison, which can help us prepare well to receive Jesus under our roof and never take him for granted.
  • “If you appreciate the value of the Eucharistic Celebration, you will participate in it no matter how far away or difficult it is. The greater the sacrifice involved, the more evident is your love for God.” His sacrifice was enormous, as was his love.
  •  “The whole of the Lord’s life was directed toward Calvary. The whole of our life should be oriented toward the Eucharistic celebration.” His clearly was.
  • “If you are all alone in some remote place or in the darkness of a prison, turn your mind toward the altars of the world where our Lord Jesus Christ is offering his sacrifice. Unite yourself to the Eucharistic sacrifice. Then your heart will be filled to overflowing with consolation and courage.” That was the autobiographical underpinning of his heroism.
  • “If you have lost everything but still have the Blessed Sacrament, you actually still have everything, because you have the Lord of heaven present here on earth.” That’s what enabled him to live his 13 years of imprisonment with evangelical joy.
  • “The Eucharist shapes Christians.” It obviously formed his whole life and apostolate.
  • “As the drop of water put into the chalice mingles with the wine, so your life should become one with Christ’s.” His life, like the water and wine on his palm, was commingled with Christ’s as he sought to give himself to others together with the Eucharistic High Priest.
  • Finally: “Holy people are those who continue to live the Eucharistic celebration throughout the day.” The root of Cardinal Van Thuan’s palpable sanctity was that he made his whole life a Mass.
• The 22nd anniversary of his death gives us all an opportunity to ponder the Eucharistic message of his life and to learn from him how to find in the Holy Eucharist the Road to Hope no matter how forlorn one’s earthly circumstances. That is the way to ensure that our assemblies always do far more good than harm, as we eat the Lord’s supper, consuming Christ’s body given for us and imbibing the new covenant in his blood in remembrance of him. We’re not worthy to receive this gift under our roof, but Christ wishes to make us worthy. May we seek to receive him today with the same love with which Cardinal Van Thuan received him, and may our communion with Jesus shape our whole life, and in particular, they way we reverence and treat eat other after Mass.

The readings for today’s Mass were:

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