Fr. Roger J. Landry
Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Friday of the 32nd Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Memorial of St. Josaphat, Bishop and Martyr
November 12, 2021
Wis 13:1-9, Ps 19, Lk 17:26-37
To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
The following points were attempted in the homily:
- Yesterday we pondered how the Kingdom of God is among and within us because the King is here. The presence of the King and his Kingdom is not supposed to be something that’s sought all over the place in spectacle but discerned and found in ordinary circumstances.
- In today’s first reading we see that all created realities are meant to be a reminder of the King and the Kingdom. The Book of Wisdom tells us that from the “good things seen” we’re supposed to succeed in “knowing him who is.” From studying the “works of the artisan,” we’re supposed to discern the Creator. Everything — fire, wind, air, stars, water, planets — are supposed to remind us of their Author, “for from the greatness and the beauty of created things their original author, by analogy, is seen.” This is the “science” of finding God, going from the “results” or “effects” to their “causes” and “ultimate Cause.” The problem is that often we lose the connection between sign and signified, we stop at the work and fail to get to the Creator. We “search busily among his works but are distracted by what [we] see because the things seen are fair.” This was the experience of St. Augustine, when he said, “In our unloveliness, we stopped at the loveliness of your creatures.” We sometimes fail to see the created world as the footprints of God, following them back to the Creator. That’s why it’s key for us to develop the spiritual habit of reconnecting everything in the kingdom to its King. St. Paul challenged the Christians and non-Christians of his day to do make this obvious connection between creation and creator: “Ever since the creation of the world,” he wrote, the Creator’s “invisible attributes of eternal power and divinity have been able to be understood and perceived in what he has made” (Rom 1:20). St. John Paul II also underlined the same process of reason and faith. Toward the end of his papacy in 2002, he returned to his love of poetry and gave us three great poems. The first is called “The Stream” and is broken down into two parts, the first on wonder and the second on following things to their “source.” He wrote, “The undulating wood slopes down to the rhythm of mountain streams. To me this rhythm is revealing You, the Primordial Word. … What are you saying to me, mountain stream? … If you want to find the source, you have to go up, against the current, tear through, seek, don’t give up, you know it must be somewhere here. Where are you, source? Where are you, source?! Silence…. Stream, stream in the wood, tell me the secret of your beginning! … How carefully you have hidden the secret of your beginning.” The Book of Wisdom is calling us to go from the created world to its Source, to find the fingerprints and footprints of the Creator everywhere.
- This is what the Gospel is all about, the contrast between living in the kingdom with a sacramental vision and the seeming oblivion of others to it. Jesus contrasts Noah with those who perished in the flood, and Lot and those who perished in Sodom. Some were attentive to God — through the signs of Creation and otherwise — and some were not. Jesus encourages us to be similarly on guard. He says that when he comes we shouldn’t head down into the house to get possessions or come in from the field, because we should be focused on the Creator more than on creatures. Two will be sleeping, two will be cooking, but only one will be taken. This isn’t to be misinterpreted as if God’s going to do an arbitrary 50/50 split. Rather, it’s saying some in the very same circumstances will be ready because they’re connecting sleeping or cooking to God, and others won’t be ready, because all they think they’re doing is sleeping or cooking. When they ask where this will take place, Jesus uses an aphorism, “Where the body is, there also the vultures will gather,” to indicate that just as vultures find a corpse, so we should find the kingdom! We should find what’s, or the One, behind all earthly realities as easily as vultures naturally are drawn toward their next meal. By these images Jesus is motivating us to respond morally to a factual situation. The two people in bed together point to a married couple, the two women grinding grain for a meal, to two friends, perhaps sisters, preparing for a big family meal. These are people we care about. These are people he cares about. God doesn’t want either one left behind. Many, however, are just not paying attention to the most important things. Jesus is not merely reminding us of the need to be alert but to help others wake up from the ways they sleepwalk through existence.
- Someone who was constantly going from sign to signified in life, from the created world to God, from the gifts of the kingdom to the King, from life in this world to the Author of life and giver of eternal life, is the bishop and martyr we celebrate today. St. Josaphat (baptized Ivan Kunchych) was born Orthodox in the Ukraine in 1580. In 1595, in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the Metropolitan of Kiev and five bishops, representing millions of Ruthenians, came back into communion with Rome after the split in 1054. The teenage Josaphat was among them. Josaphat would eventually become a monk and begin to preach in favor of Christian unity in the midst of tremendous opposition — fundamentally political — against reunion with Rome. He knew, as Jesus taught, that a kingdom divided against itself couldn’t stand and he wanted the kingdom that subsisted in the Church to be as strong as God intended and desired. In 1617, he was ordained Bishop of Vitebsk and soon thereafter appointed Archbishop of Polotsk. There he continued to suffer to heal the scandal of schism and bring about the cause of unity. Just as he went from the created reality to the Creator, so he went from God to his image, recognizing that the Trinitarian communion of persons needed to be reflected in the communion of the Church on earth, and his priestly call by the Good Shepherd to emulate his pastoral virtues. He was so effective in bringing people to God that he was called by his contemporaries “the thief of souls.” When people were threatening to kill him, he said, “If I am accounted so worthy as to deserve martyrdom, then I am not afraid to die.” When people in the city of Vitebsk were plotting against him, he said, “You people of Vitebsk want to put me to death. You make ambushes for me everywhere, in the streets, on the bridges, on the highways, in the marketplace. I am here among you as your shepherd and you ought to know that I should be happy to give my life for you. I am ready to die for the holy union, for the supremacy of St. Peter and of his successor the Supreme Pontiff.” His enemies got their chance on November 12, 1623. He returned home after prayer to find people attacking those who worked for him. He said to the persecutors, “My children, what are you doing with my servants? If you have anything against me, here I am, but leave them alone.” They began to cry, “Kill the papist!,” and he was pierced by a bullet and brained with a halberd, as he gave his life for the union offered to us in Christ. As Jesus says in today’s Gospel, he lost his life but saved it. He was ready to be taken by the Lord when it was his time. He flew to the Lord faster than vultures circle a dead body. And as we approach the 400th anniversary of his martyrdom in two years, he remains not just a pivotal ecumenical figure and intercessor, but an eschatological one.
- The greatest way we have to acquire this capacity to view the whole world as sacramental, as signs leading us to the Signified, is here at Mass. This is where we recognize Jesus hidden under the appearances and bread and wine and learn how to respond. Jesus comes here and we should leave the rooftop and the field to come to meet him! The more we grasp that this is the most important thing that ever happens in the world on a given day, and the more we keep communion and awareness of him in the day, the easier it will be go from created things to their Source. Today we pray that we may respond to this grace as St. Josaphat did, and begin living and showing others to live with this way of sacramental seeing!
The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 WIS 13:1-9
All men were by nature foolish who were in ignorance of God,
and who from the good things seen did not succeed in knowing him who is,
and from studying the works did not discern the artisan;
But either fire, or wind, or the swift air,
or the circuit of the stars, or the mighty water,
or the luminaries of heaven, the governors of the world, they considered gods.
Now if out of joy in their beauty they thought them gods,
let them know how far more excellent is the Lord than these;
for the original source of beauty fashioned them.
Or if they were struck by their might and energy,
let them from these things realize how much more powerful is he who made them.
For from the greatness and the beauty of created things
their original author, by analogy, is seen.
But yet, for these the blame is less;
For they indeed have gone astray perhaps,
though they seek God and wish to find him.
For they search busily among his works,
but are distracted by what they see, because the things seen are fair.
But again, not even these are pardonable.
For if they so far succeeded in knowledge
that they could speculate about the world,
how did they not more quickly find its Lord?
and who from the good things seen did not succeed in knowing him who is,
and from studying the works did not discern the artisan;
But either fire, or wind, or the swift air,
or the circuit of the stars, or the mighty water,
or the luminaries of heaven, the governors of the world, they considered gods.
Now if out of joy in their beauty they thought them gods,
let them know how far more excellent is the Lord than these;
for the original source of beauty fashioned them.
Or if they were struck by their might and energy,
let them from these things realize how much more powerful is he who made them.
For from the greatness and the beauty of created things
their original author, by analogy, is seen.
But yet, for these the blame is less;
For they indeed have gone astray perhaps,
though they seek God and wish to find him.
For they search busily among his works,
but are distracted by what they see, because the things seen are fair.
But again, not even these are pardonable.
For if they so far succeeded in knowledge
that they could speculate about the world,
how did they not more quickly find its Lord?
Responsorial Psalm PS 19:2-3, 4-5AB
R. (2a) The heavens proclaim the glory of God.
The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.
Day pours out the word to day,
and night to night imparts knowledge.
R. The heavens proclaim the glory of God.
Not a word nor a discourse
whose voice is not heard;
Through all the earth their voice resounds,
and to the ends of the world, their message.
R. The heavens proclaim the glory of God.
The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.
Day pours out the word to day,
and night to night imparts knowledge.
R. The heavens proclaim the glory of God.
Not a word nor a discourse
whose voice is not heard;
Through all the earth their voice resounds,
and to the ends of the world, their message.
R. The heavens proclaim the glory of God.
Alleluia LK 21:28
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Stand erect and raise your heads
because your redemption is at hand.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel LK 17:26-37
Jesus said to his disciples:
“As it was in the days of Noah,
so it will be in the days of the Son of Man;
they were eating and drinking,
marrying and giving in marriage up to the day
that Noah entered the ark,
and the flood came and destroyed them all.
Similarly, as it was in the days of Lot:
they were eating, drinking, buying,
selling, planting, building;
on the day when Lot left Sodom,
fire and brimstone rained from the sky to destroy them all.
So it will be on the day the Son of Man is revealed.
On that day, someone who is on the housetop
and whose belongings are in the house
must not go down to get them,
and likewise one in the field
must not return to what was left behind.
Remember the wife of Lot.
Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it,
but whoever loses it will save it.
I tell you, on that night there will be two people in one bed;
one will be taken, the other left.
And there will be two women grinding meal together;
one will be taken, the other left.”
They said to him in reply, “Where, Lord?”
He said to them, “Where the body is,
there also the vultures will gather.”
“As it was in the days of Noah,
so it will be in the days of the Son of Man;
they were eating and drinking,
marrying and giving in marriage up to the day
that Noah entered the ark,
and the flood came and destroyed them all.
Similarly, as it was in the days of Lot:
they were eating, drinking, buying,
selling, planting, building;
on the day when Lot left Sodom,
fire and brimstone rained from the sky to destroy them all.
So it will be on the day the Son of Man is revealed.
On that day, someone who is on the housetop
and whose belongings are in the house
must not go down to get them,
and likewise one in the field
must not return to what was left behind.
Remember the wife of Lot.
Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it,
but whoever loses it will save it.
I tell you, on that night there will be two people in one bed;
one will be taken, the other left.
And there will be two women grinding meal together;
one will be taken, the other left.”
They said to him in reply, “Where, Lord?”
He said to them, “Where the body is,
there also the vultures will gather.”
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