The Trusting Path to Lasting Happiness, Sixth Sunday (C), February 13, 2022

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY
Sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time Year C
February 13, 2022
Jer 17:5-8, Ps 1, 1Cor 15:12.16-20, Lk 6:17.20-26

To listen to an audio recording of this homily, please click below: 

The following text guided the homily: 

• There is a huge contrast in today’s readings. In the first reading, the prophet Jeremiah describes the contrast as essentially one of trust. On the one hand, there are “those who trust in human beings and make mere flesh their strength, whose hearts turn away from the Lord.” On the other there are those who “trust in the Lord.” Those who place their trust in things of this world live, he says, like a “shrub in the desert… parched… a lava waste, a salt and empty earth.” Those who trust in the Lord, in contrast, are “like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when the heat comes: its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit.”
• This insight is crucial for us to understand why Jesus says what he says in the Gospel in his famous Sermon on the Plain. All the beatitudes and woes he describes have to do with whether a condition fosters trust in God or trust in men, material possessions, whether the condition makes us turn toward the Lord or “away from the Lord.”
  • On the subject of money, Jesus says “blessed are you who are poor, for the kingdom of God is yours” and “woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.” The point he’s making is those who are rich often place their faith, hope and security in money and the things money can buy. Those who are poor often have no one or nothing to turn to but God. In terms of what really matters, their poverty turns out to be a blessing because it helps them to place their treasure in God and stretch out their roots to his eternal stream.
  • On the subject of food, Jesus says “Blessed are you who are now hungry, for you will be satisfied” and “woe to you who are now full, for you will be hungry.” It’s those who are really hungry who mean the prayer “give us today our daily bread,” who learn to hunger and trust in God’s fatherly care. Those who are full, who have no food worries, can often begin to take its presence for granted, can stop saying thanks to God for the food. One state helps to bring one closer to God; the other can often help to turn one’s “heart away from the Lord.” In the final analysis, Jesus says one is clearly better for us.
  • With respect to human emotions, Jesus says, “Blessed are you who are now weeping, for you will laugh” and “woe to you who laugh now for you will grieve and weep.” Those who are laughing now can begin to put their trust and happiness in their own wit or in a group of interesting and entertaining friends and experiences. They may experience human contentment and have their desire for eternal happiness lessened. Those who are weeping on the other hand, who are entrusting their pains, sorrows and intercessions to God, are those who will have the time of their eternal lives.
  • The greatest contrast is in terms of how others treat us and think about us. Jesus says “Woe to you when all speak well of you” and “blessed are you when people hate you, exclude and insult you, and denounce your name as evil on account of the Son of Man.” He says that the false prophets, the spiritual terrorists and great villains of history, were similarly praised in their lifetime but ended up facing judgment; the real heroes of eternity, the true prophets — and we can add Jesus himself, his apostles and so many saints — were hated, denounced and even killed. They all lived a life, however, of total dependence on God, who trusted in him even and especially when it was hard, and now are rejoicing and leaping for joy forever.
• Jesus’ logic and focus are very clear. In terms of what’s most important, worldly blessings like riches, food, laughter and praise can be spiritual woes and curses, and worldly woes like poverty, famine, tears and derision can become spiritual blessings. It’s a sad truth that the more one is filled with human blessings, the easier it is to push God to the side, to think that one doesn’t need God. The real question each of us needs to face is whether our values, our logic, our focus are like Jesus’ or like the world’s. Many if given the chance to be humanly rich like Jeff Bezos or spiritually wealthy like a poor holy widow would say, “Show me the money!” If given the choice between being the life of the party or someone who is mocked, misunderstood, or mistreated because of our fidelity to Christ, most of us would say “Party on!” If given the choice between feasting or fasting, most of us would respond saying, “I’ll have the filet mignon medium rare and a glass of Merlot.”But like the temptations Christ will undergo the desert, the devil often uses food, riches, and the promise of power or popularity to draw us away from God. This Sunday Jesus describes for us a choice between two types of trust: genuine trust in God or a trust in the things of God that the devil can often easily manipulate to draw our hearts away from God.
• This contrast between two types of trust is starkest in today’s second reading. St. Paul describes two types of people. Those who trust in the reality of the faith in the resurrection of Christ, or those who trust in their own philosophy. Many in Corinth were teaching that Jesus had not risen. The Greeks — like, unfortunately many people again today — didn’t believe in a resurrection of the body. They thought that after death the soul continued to live, but that the body was just a temporary prison from which death liberated the soul permanently. They clung to this Greek philosophical belief and said that bodily resurrection couldn’t and wouldn’t happen. St. Paul came and preached clearly that Christ rose from the dead and said that all of Christian faith was based on this belief. He said, “If Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” To bring St. Paul’s language up to 21^stcentury terminology: if Christ has not been raised from the dead, then the last person to leave this chapel today is the biggest fool, because our faith would crumble like a falling house of cards. Jesus Christ, simply put, promisedthat he would rise on the third day. If he didn’t rise from the dead, then he was not God, then he was not even a good man, but in fact a liar or a lunatic. All of us who put our faith in him would be pitiable fools.
• Today’s readings about trust focus ultimately on what faith in God really is and does. Faith is a trust in a person that leads to our trusting what the person says or does. To believe in Jesus Christ means to trust in what he taught and did and base our life on it. Our issue may not be the issue of the resurrection. It may be one of the controversial issues today on which so many in the world want to tell Jesus and the Church he founded that they’re wrong or out-of-touch: trust in God working through the hierarchy of the Church, the need to forgive our neighbor seventy-times-seven-times or to turn the other cheek rather than retaliate, the teaching about a given sin or about the importance of Sunday Mass, the Sacrmaent of Cnofession, the counter-cultural teaching about marriage, or any other issue. The question is, when confronted with the teaching of Christ or the Church he founded, do we in trust in Jesus enough to accept and live what he announces, or do we trust in what worldly opinion makers declare?  Do we trust in God and the Church he founded to proclaim his Gospel, or do we trust more in our own opinions and ideas?
• The Missionaries of Charity have been founded on this type of trust and are called to be prophets of it in the Church and in the world. So many times I’ve had the privilege in August to preach for you the Triduum in anticipation of your communal feast on August 22 and to focus with you on the Spirit of your Society: “Loving trust, total surrender and cheerfulness, as lived by Jesus and Mary in the Gospels.” Everything begins with a trust full of all the love your mind, heart, soul and strength can muster and the joyful self-gift you make to God and in him to others as a result. These last 51 years in the US are a sign of how fruitful a path that type of trust is.
• Today at this Mass, we’re presented with the choice between two paths. It’s the choice between putting our trust fully in Christ or placing it someplace else. We might think it’s a choice between poverty and wealth, between hunger and sumptuous foods, between laughter and tears, between friends and enemies. But that’s not what it’s really about. It’s really a choice between streams of living water or deserts, between fruitfulness or sterility, between beatitude and woe, between life and death. It’s here that we come poor to receive Jesus’ riches, hungry to be fed, sorrowful and desiring to do efficacious reparation for our sins and those of the world, and seeking Christ’s strength within to remain faithful even when we should have to suffer. Today as Jesus lifts up his eyes to us, let’s lift up our eyes and hearts with loving trust to him, as he sets us on the path to eternal happiness, following him as prophets leading others onto that narrow way.

The readings for today’s Mass were:

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