The Word of God and Holiness, 27th Saturday (II), October 12, 2024

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Shrine of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, Washington Heights, New York
Retreat for Columbia University Students
Saturday of the 27th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of Blessed Carlo Acutis
October 12, 2024
Gal 3:22-29, Ps 105, Lk 11:27-28

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Every retreat is ultimately about helping us become saints. It seeks to reinvigorate the call we received at our baptism to become holy as God is holy. Here at the Shrine of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, the first American saint, with her body exposed underneath the altar, we have a powerful reminder that God is calling each of us, here in America, to a similar sanctity. October 12 is the feast of the first millennial saint, Blessed Carlo Acutis, who died on this day in 2006 at the age of 15. He will be canonized by Pope Francis next year. He shows us that even great holiness is attainable even for young people, provided that one responds with maturity to the gifts God gives to help us become like him. And every Saturday, like today, the Church has us remember and seek the intercession of the holiest disciple of all time, the woman God the Father chose for his Son and that Son on Calvary chose for us. Today we’re able to focus on all three of these great holy ones to inspire and help us on our journey, and we can examine in particular how the Word of God helped all three achieve the purpose for which they were made.
• In today’s Gospel, we see the importance of the Word of God in the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the conversation between Jesus and an anonymous woman from the crowd who sought to praise his mother.“Blessed is the womb that carried you and the breasts at which you nursed!,” the unnamed woman called out. If any womb was blessed, it was the immaculate womb of Mary of Nazareth that tabernacled for nine months the Creator and Savior of the world! If any breasts were blessed, it would have been those that nursed and fed the one through whom God the Father gives us each day our daily bread! But Jesus wasn’t going to limit the praise of the mother whom he daily honored to her inimitable physical bonds to him as the Son of God made man. He replied to the woman by highlighting a far greater source of Mary’s blessing, something that each and every one of us not only can emulate but is called to emulate: “Rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it.” As I’ve mentioned many times in the past, in Hebrew there is no distinction between the verb “to hear” and “to obey.” If we hear the Word of God as it’s supposed to be heard, we hear it as a word to be done. A similar distinction is found in Latin. The word to hear is “audire” and the word to obey is “ob-audire,” an intensified listening, almost like eavesdropping. There is meant to be no disconnect between what we hear and what we do, but sin invades, trying to help us not to listen attentively and not to do what we hear. Jesus praises his mother for the way she approaches the Word of God. Her whole life can be summarized by how she responded to the Archangel Gabriel at the Annunciation: “let it be done to me according to your word.” Her whole life developed according to the Word and the will of God. St. Athanasius described that before Mary had ever conceived the Word of God in her womb, she had already conceived Him in her heart through faith. So many medieval depictions of the Annunciation and of the miraculous virginal conception of Jesus in the Incarnation show the Holy Spirit entering through Mary’s ears, to highlight this form of faithful listening. In a parallel scene, when Mary had come to see him together with many of his cousins from Nazareth, they told Jesus inside a crowded house where he was teaching and healing that his mother and relatives were outside waiting for him. Taking advantage of the teaching moment, he replied, “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?” And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my heavenly Father is my brother, and sister, and mother” (Mt 12:46-50). Mary is the paradigm of all those who do the will of God the Father, who hear what he asks and who act on it. To be a true brother or sister of Jesus in the family he came from heaven to earth to found, it’s not really enough just to be baptized, although that’s an essential start. We also have to listen to him as he describes for us the will of God and then, just as he did, say, mean and lovingly do the words “Thy will be done!” That’s what Mary shows us. That’s what all the saints show us. St. Gregory the Great wrote 1600 years ago, vita bonorum, viva lectio: the life of the good (of the holy ones) is a living reading of the Word of God. They allow their whole life to develop according to God’s word, just like Mary did.
• In the first reading, Saint Paul describes how the entire Old Testament, the Covenant God made with the Jews, was meant to train them not just to hear and observe the Word of God but to come to Jesus, the Word made flesh. “The law was our disciplinarian for Christ,” he says, “that we might be justified by faith.” The word “disciplinarian” in English is the word “pedagogos” in Greek. A pedagogue was a tutor who generally lived with the family of the student, supervised his homework and lessons, and took him to class with the master. The law prepared us, St. Paul was suggesting, to meet Jesus the Master, to hear what he was saying and to put it into practice. So many times throughout the Hebrew Bible we hear God say to the Jews through Moses or the Prophets, “If you hear my voice and observe the commandments I am giving you today….” All of God’s revelation was to prepare us to hear and obey.
• We see that response in the lives of the saints. Pope Benedict focused on this connection in his apostolic exhortation on the Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church, Verbum Domini. He wrote, “The interpretation of sacred Scripture would remain incomplete were it not to include listening to those who have truly lived the word of God: namely, the saints. … The most profound interpretation of Scripture comes precisely from those who let themselves be shaped by the word of God through listening, reading and assiduous meditation.” We see that in St. Frances Xavier Cabrini. We see in the beautiful mosaic on the wall of the sanctuary, “The Word of God is my mission,” because the Word of God summarized her whole life and work, which was a living reading, a compelling commentary, on St. Paul’s words to the Philippians, “I can do all things in him who strengthens me” (Phil 4:3). She sought to help her religious sisters in the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart to have a similar confidence in Christ the Master flowing from basing their whole life on the Rock of his Word. Blessed Carlo Acutis has a similar confidence in the Word of God. He read the Bible every day, together with the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and urged his catechetical students similarly to try to read a small part of the Word of God each day. He called the Bible his “compass.” Because of his love for the Word of God, his heart began to burn each day at Mass, like the burning hearts of the disciples on the Road to Emmaus, making him recognize and hunger increasingly for Jesus in the “Breaking of Bread” each day. It’s what fueled his prayer and inspired his charity. If, as he famously said, “The Eucharist is My Highway to Heaven,” the Word of God was his onramp to the highway and his GPS for the journey, as he listened to the Master, hungered to receive him, and then was filled with a woe to proclaim the astounding reality of Christ’s presence among us to his peers and then to the whole world.
• Today, on his feast day, as we approach the altar enshrining the relics of St. Frances Cabrini, Mary, the Queen of Saints, is praying for us to echo her and their, “Let it be done to me according to your word!” We seek with Mary, Frances and Carlo to act on the Word that has been announced to us, by lovingly obeying it and allowing it to lead us to Jesus the Master. If Mary’s wombs and breasts were lauded because of their physical connection with Jesus, what will people say about our hands and mouths, our whole being? Jesus wants to help make us like Him and does so through the Word of God and the Word made flesh. We see in Mary’s, Frances Cabrini’s and Carlo Acutis’ lives what happens when we cooperate fully, as we prepare to hear Jesus words, “This is my Body!,” “This is the chalice of my Blood,” and “Do this in memory of me,” observe them, and let our whole existence develop according to them!

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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