The Vocation to Reverence and Mercy in Living the Gospel of Life, Second Friday (II), January 19, 2024

Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Patrick’s Church, Washington, DC
Friday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Votive Mass of Thanksgiving for the Gift of Human Life
January 19, 2024
1 Sam 24:3-21, Ps 57, Mk 3:13-19

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today, as we celebrate this Votive Mass of Thanksgiving to God for the Gift of Human Life after having participated in the March for Life, the readings of this Mass help us to focus powerfully on our vocation to be apostles proclaiming and living the Gospel of Life. In the Gospel passage we just heard, we ponder the calling of the apostles by name. Jesus, we know from St. Luke’s account, had prayed all night before, asking his Father for light on who should be chosen and then, the following day, called the twelve by name. Jesus has likewise prayed about and for us before calling us by name. It was not we who chose him but he who chose us and appointed us to bear fruit that will last. Today we thank God for the gift of our Christian vocation, our vocation to life, our vocation to protect and enhance the sacredness of every human life, our vocation to holiness, and whatever calling within those callings he has given us, the vocation to marriage, priesthood, religious life, or whatever ecclesial vocation he has given us.
• But it’s not enough to be called. Jesus wants to form us to live out our vocation to the full. In today’s Gospel we see an essential description of the formation Jesus gave the apostles and wants to give each of us.  Jesus called Simon, James, John, Andrew, Philip, the others, and each of us to be “with him” and so that “he might send [us] forth to preach and to have authority to drive out demons.” The first criterion is that we are supposed to be with him. Our first priority tis to spend time with him. This points obviously to our prayer, to the need to set aside the necessary time to be with the Lord, to converse with him, to listen to him, to pour out our needs and the needs of those we serve, our thanks, our praise and our sorrow. This call to be “with Jesus,” however, goes well beyond prayer. We need to develop a living awareness that, thanks to our baptism, we have become ontologically united with Christ: that who we are, and everything we do, is in mysterious and wondrous communion with him, something that is enhanced and intensified by our Eucharistic communion. No matter how many activities we engage in over the course of a day, year or lifetime, they are all meant to be part of our Christian vocation to be together with Christ, to be yoked to him in daily life, to act as an instrument in essential communion with him. The second essential aspect of our formation is that he wants to send us out — united with him — to preach and drive out demons. Every vocation contains a mission and the mission is to continue Jesus’ mission. One essential aspect of our vocation to live in the kingdom is its exorcistic dimension, to reject Satan, his evil works and empty promises, as we seek together with the Church to expel Satan and his stranglehold on ourselves, on others, and on the culture.
• Today, as together with hundreds of thousands of others we march for life here in Washington, DC, we ponder just how much we need to be with Jesus and to go forth as salt, light and leaven to overturn the diabolical culture of death and destruction, that permits those made in God’s image and likeness to be rejected and eliminated at the earliest days of life, that refuses love to women in need, that preaches pride rather than repentance and mercy for abortions had.
• In today’s first reading, Saul was for the second time trying to kill David and David was presented with a chance to take Saul’s life before Saul would take his. But David refused to lay a hand on the “Lord’s anointed.” So great was his reverence for God that he would never seriously countenance doing anything against someone in an intimate relationship with God, regardless of that person’s sins against God or against him. That’s part of the message we preach and love: doing no harm, in fact loving, those in intimate relationship with God — loving children, their mothers, their fathers, even those who make themselves the enemies of the unborn. If we are with Christ as he sends us out, we will.
• And we will seek to love them with the mercy Christ brought into the world. In today’s Psalm, we cried out repeatedly, “Have mercy, O God, have mercy.” We proclaimed that we have taken refuge in him who is merciful and faithful and we rejoiced that his mercy towers to the heavens and his faithfulness to the skies. Many times in the Gospel, the evangelists mention that Jesus’ “heart was moved with pity” for the crowds — literally his innards were bursting with compassion, he was sick to his stomach at their situation. In response, they mention five actions Jesus did. Each of the five is highly relevant to forming a culture of mercy in advance of the culture of life.
  • The first thing Jesus did was teach. Likewise, united with and sent out by him, we need to pass on the truth with charity. The truth about the humanity and dignity of the child. The truth about the real good of women. The truth about what is really happening. The abortion industry is full of lies and euphemisms: “choice,” “freedom,” “women’s rights” “women’s health” “blob of tissue” “better for the fetus” etc. This culture of the lie, coming from the father of lies, needs to be opposed by passing on with love what God has revealed and what human reason can see.
  • The second thing Jesus did was to heal. Similarly, we need to bring that healing. How important it is for women who have had abortions to experience hope and healing! For seven years I served as chaplain to the Sisters of Life in Manhattan and one of their essential apostolates is “hope and healing” for those women who have suffered abortion. The healing isn’t quick or easy, but it can and does happen, with patient accompaniment, prayer, and the grace of the sacraments. We need to offer that to all people however wounded by the culture of death.
  • The third thing Jesus did was to feed. Likewise, there are often so many material needs that can conduce a vulnerable woman toward abortion. With mercy we need to try to help meet those needs for food, clothing, housing, work, legal help.
  • The fourth work of mercy Jesus did was to forgive. The Church must carry on this crucial work of forgiveness. The first way is to help those who have chosen, facilitated, promoted or tolerated abortion to experience the forgiveness of Christ in the way Christ himself established. Their consciences, once they begin to function appropriately, lead them to recognize the gravity of what they’ve done, but often they are like Lady MacBeth, trying to wash the stain away, not realizing that there’s no detergent in the world powerful enough; only God can do that, and he does in the Sacrament of his Mercy. Part of living the Gospel of Life is to be like friends of the paralyzed man bringing those we know, who might be emotionally crippled, to God working through his priests so that they might receive the mercy Jesus sent the apostles, their successors and their priest collaborators to bring to the world. It’s also necessary for all of us to be merciful and forgive those who have made themselves the enemies of the pro-life movement and done harm at various levels to us and other pro-lifers.
  • The fifth form of mercy relates to today’s Gospel. In St. Matthew’s version of the scene, Jesus, looking with compassion on the mangled and abandoned shepherd-less sheep, asks everyone to pray for laborers to take in the harvest that is already ripe. And after they have prayed, Jesus immediately calls 12, the 12 we encounter in today’s Gospel from St. Mark. Out of mercy, Jesus gets us to pray for more laborers and then calls us to continue his mission by becoming those laborers. We’re all Christians because of 2,000 years of prayers to the Harvest Master, and we’re allied diligently to go to the world to seek to perpetuate Jesus’ work. We also need to be praying and calling others to join us in the fields. How beautiful and hopeful it is to see how young the March for Life is, because the Church has been praying for these young people to join us in the fight and we’re happy that they’re responding, in some way, to that call.
• Today as we thank God for the gift of human life, as we remember our personal summons to be his disciple and apostle, we we pray for a greater sense of reverence for every human being, we pray,  “Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy!,” We ask God to “send his mercy and his faithfulness” and he responds by sending his Son, the true Anointed One, the Messiah, the Christ, who revealed himself to St. Faustina as “Mercy Incarnate.” He is the one who calls us to be with him here at Mass. He is the one who, at the end of Mass, sends us out to preach and oppose the devil. He is the one who teaches us how to treat, and form others to treat, those with whom he is in relationship from the womb with reverence, not only never laying a hand on them to do harm, but embracing them with love.

The readings for today’s Mass were:

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