The Vocation of the Lord’s Foolish, Weak and Lowly Remnant, Fourth Sunday (A), January 29, 2023

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Chapel of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx
Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A
January 29, 2023
Zeph 2:3.3:12-13, Ps 146, 1 Cor 1:26-31, Mt 5:1-12

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

The following text guided the homily: 

• In today’s first reading, the Prophet Zephaniah, after telling the seventh century people of Judah about the consequences of their sinful behavior that would result in the exile, gives them a message of hope, promising to “leave as a remnant in your midst a people humble and lowly, who shall take refuge in the name of the Lord.” These would be the people who were not doing evil or speaking lies and deceiving with their tongues, but rather who had been seeking the Lord, observing his law and pursuing justice and humility. The remnant would be the “humble of the earth,” interiorly in terms of how they related to God and exteriorly in terms of the way the world related to them. It would not just be the few that survive the exile to worship on God’s holy mountain, but ultimately those to whom Jesus would address the Good News when he came, in fulfillment of the Messianic prophecies, to proclaim the Gospel to the poor. The remnant is, therefore, an image of the Kingdom of God, of the Church, that would begin as a lowly mustard seed and by the power of the Holy Spirit grow.
• Paul picks up on this theme of the humble, lowly and virtuous remnant in today’s passage from his First Letter to the Corinthians, when he tells us, “Consider your own calling, brothers and sisters. Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. Rather God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise, and God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong, and God chose the lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something, so that no human being might boast before God.” The remnant would be those whom the world considers foolish, weak, lowly and despised. It would include a young girl from Nazareth and a hardworking yet impoverished builder who were able to secure only a stable for childbirth and the indigent offering of pair of turtledoves at the presentation. It would include a fisherman whose first words were that he was a sinful man, a despised tax collector, a woman who had had seven demons, as well as the sick, crippled, blind, lame, and formerly possessed. It would ultimately include you and me. God chose us in our lowliness to help others become humble, in our dependence on God’s wisdom to help others learn to accept and live by it, in our low social rank and the disdain we get from the opinion makers of the age to help others to help others learn not to boast before God but to boast in the Lord and his goodness.
• This is the proper introduction to understand the moral revolution Jesus introduces in today’s Gospel at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, in which Jesus teaches us the principles of how we as his followers, in contrast both to the Scribes and Pharisees and the Gentiles, are supposed to live. Jesus presents to us the way to follow him to happiness, holiness, and heaven. The path he charts stands in stark contrast to the path that the vast majority of people in the world — especially the worldly wise, strong, noble, rich and influential — believe will make us happy. St. Paul told the Corinthians in today’s second reading that “Christ Jesus … became for us wisdom from God, as well as righteousness, sanctification and redemption,” and so let’s listen to God’s wisdom, justice, holiness and salvation incarnate as if we’re hearing him for the first time. It’s through the beatitudes that the faithful remnant will be revealed. It’s through living them that those “foolish” enough to follow Christ will shame the wise, “weak” enough to depend on him will shame the strong, and “lowly and despised” enough will shame the proud.
  • The world tells us that to be happy, we have to be rich. Jesus says, rather, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they will inherit the kingdom of heaven.”
  • The world tells us we’re happy when we don’t have a concern in the world. Jesus says, on the other hand, “Blessed are those” who are so concerned with others that “they mourn” over their own and others’ miseries, “for they will be comforted” by him eternally.
  • Worldly know-it-alls say, “You have to be strong and powerful to be happy.” Jesus, in contrast, retorts, “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.”
  • The spiritually worldly shout increasingly more each day, “To be happy, you’ve got to have all your sexual fantasies fulfilled” and our culture promotes people like Hugh Hefner and promiscuous, Hollywood vixens as those who have it made. Jesus, however, says “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.”
  • The world preaches, “You’re happy when you accept yourself,” espouses an “I’m okay, you’re okay,” brand of moral relativism, and advocates a culture of comfort. Jesus says, though, “Blessed are those who hungerand thirst for holiness, for his grace and justification, for they will be filled.”
  • The world says, “You’re happy when you don’t start a fight, but finish it” and people from professional wrestlers, to boxers, to generals, to armchair or back-seat presidents shout “No mercy,” Jesus says “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy” and “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”
  • Our American culture increasingly says, “You’re happy when everyone considers you nice, when you don’t have an enemy in the world.” Jesus says, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake” and “blessed are you when people revile you, persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account,” “for their reward will be the kingdom of heaven.
• Jesus exalts those whom the world generally regards as weak. As St. John Paul II once said to young people on the Mount of the Beatitudes, Jesus basically says to us, “Blessed are you who seem to be losers, because you are the real winners: the kingdom of heaven is yours!”
• In doing this, Jesus, the wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption of God, is essentially beckoning us to become like him, who ultimately through his Incarnation became the Remnant who would seek justice and humility, who would do no wrong and speak no lies, who would pasture and couch his flock with none to disturb him. He would be the one who by his birth, hidden life, preaching, passion, death and resurrection would shame the wise, strong, and somethings of the world.
  • Jesus was poor, so poor he didn’t even have a place to lay his head (Lk 9:58). And this physical poverty featured the richness of true poverty in spirit, in which he treasured God the Father and his kingdom as his greatest gift.
  • Jesus mourned. He wept over Jerusalem (Lk 19:41), which failed to recognize the path to true peace and whose residents so often killed those God sent to indicate that path to them (Mt 23:37).
  • Jesus was meek. He identified himself as “meek and humble of heart” and told us to learn him in his meekness and humility (Mt 11:29).
  • Jesus hungered and thirsted for righteousness, saying that his very hunger, his very “food [was] to do the will of him who sent me and complete his work” (Jn 4:34).
  • Jesus was merciful, as we see in the episode with the woman caught in adultery (Jn 8:3ff), with Peter after Resurrection (Jn 21), with the sinner who washed his feet with her tears (Lk 7:44), with the Samaritan woman (Jn 4), with the paralyzed man lowered through the roof by friends (Mt 9:2), with the centurion whose son was dying (Mt 8:5), with the Syrophoenician woman whose daughter was ill (Mt 15:22) and so many more.
  • Jesus was pure in heart. Jesus taught that out of our heart flows our thoughts and our deeds. Out of the good tree of a good heart flows good fruit. On the contrary, he added, “it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come (Mk 7:21-22). A pure heart, like that of Jesus, sees and loves God the Father and his will in every situation.
  • Jesus was a peacemaker. He was, in fact, the “Prince of Peace” (Is 9:6), who effectuated the definitive peace treaty between God and man and signed it in his own blood. During the Last Supper he said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you” (Jn 14:27). And he sent out his apostles to be true peacemakers, announcing this peace — his peace — to the world (Lk 10:5).
  • Jesus was persecuted for the sake of righteousness. From the scribes and Pharisees, to those in his hometown of Nazareth, to the false witnesses at his trial, to the Roman soldiers, to the passersby on Calvary, to Herod, to Pilate, to the thief on his left, so many reviled him, persecuted him and uttered all kinds of evil against him falsely. But he rejoiced, because this was the path of our salvation and it made possible a great reward for us in heaven.
• So Jesus teaches us the way of the Beatitudes, the path of happiness, holiness and heaven, not just by his words, but by his actions and very person. In this, as in everything else he taught, he never says merely, “do what I say,” but always “follow me!” Jesus does not merely preach the beatitudes. Nor does he merely practice what he preaches, by living them. As Pope John Paul II said once in a homily to young people, Jesus is the beatitudes. “Looking at Him,” the Holy Father says, “you will see what it means to be poor in spirit, gentle and merciful, to mourn, to care for what is right, to be pure in heart, to make peace, even to be blessed while persecuted. This is why he has the right to say, ‘Come, follow me!’”
• Yet, while Jesus beckons us to follow him, we have to ask whether we trust him enough to do so. To believe in Jesus means to believe in what he says and to trust that following him along the path of the beatitudes will truly lead us to the happiness Jesus promises and for which our hearts long. It means to put that faith into action and follow Jesus along a challenging and rather sparsely trod itinerary. Later in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says that the road is broad and crowded that leads to destruction but the road to life is narrow and few, indeed a small remnant, find it. Just like the devil tempted Adam and Eve in the garden and tried to tempt Jesus in the desert, so he wants to tempt us toward another path than the one Jesus indicates. The devil strives to convince us that Jesus doesn’t know what he’s talking about, that he’s not in touch with the real world, that Jesus’ principles will in fact lead us down an unfulfilling dead end. And he has gotten so many of us to bite on the fruit of the “counterfeit beatitudes” and seek to be rich, the life of the party, strong and powerful, satiated, a sexual tiger, feared, praised and not to be crossed. But this is just one more lie from the father of lies. Despite seeming to promise happiness, they inexorably lead — whether gradually or quickly — to sadness and despair.
  • Those who are rich in spirit, who think that money will bring them happiness, realize, often toward the end of their life, that that is one thing money cannot buy. And if the pursuit of money has made them greedy and materialistic, they will be among the most spiritually impoverished of people.
  • Those who are impure of heart, addicted to porn or physical pleasures, experience an agonizing form of slavery and frequently look back on their deeds with enormous sorrow, seeing just how much pain they have caused to others by using or betraying them to satisfy their own appetites.
  • Those who are not peacemakers, but who quarrel, nag, and harp on others’ defects, recognize one day to their dismay that they have alienated even those who were closest to them and that, in making their points and supposedly winning their arguments, they have lost what is far more important: others, including those who loved them the most.
  • Those who fail to show mercy, because of their unwillingness to forgive, experience an inner spiritual cancer that slowly eats them alive and self-alienates them even from God’s mercy.
  • Finally those who are not willing to suffer for the sake of Christ, who, out of a fear of upsetting others, fail to give witness to the faith, often discover a deep sense of emptiness for betraying Christ, which is a pain worse than that of betraying a friend or a spouse. That remorse is compounded by seeing the pain in others whose suffering might have been avoided had someone had the guts to preach the Gospel before they went down destructive paths of sin.
• If we’re bold enough to challenge the devil’s bogus beatitudes by our own experience, we recognize that all they deliver is a sham and shallow form of pleasure, which, when finally exposed, leads to sadness and even despair. It is Christ, and Christ alone, who has the words of eternal life. And it is Christ and Christ alone, God’s wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption, who shows us the path to the happiness for which our hearts long, for which he made them to long. It is Christ and Christ alone who leads his faithful remnant of poor, lowly, foolish, weak and despised nobodies on that beatific path.
• Today, at St. Paul’s behest, we “consider our calling” and thank God for the gift of our vocation to be in that remnant that, in becoming like Jesus, will continue his mission of helping the world become meek and humble like him. Here at Mass he seeks to help us become truly united to him so that through imitating his beatific virtues we may come with him to eternal beatitude. Jesus in the Eucharist is the treasure of the poor in spirit, the comfort of those who mourn, the inheritance of the meek, and the nourishment of those who hunger and thirst for holiness. He is Mercy Incarnate for those who are merciful, the Lamb of God whom the pure of heart behold, the Prince of Peace whom the children of God embrace. He is the great reward of those who are insulted, calumniated and persecuted on account of him. Though him, with him and in him, we boast!

The readings for this Sunday’s Mass were: 

But I will leave as a remnant in your midst
a people humble and lowly,
who shall take refuge in the name of the LORD:
the remnant of Israel.
They shall do no wrong
and speak no lies;
nor shall there be found in their mouths
a deceitful tongue;
they shall pasture and couch their flocks
with none to disturb them.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download