Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time (C), Vigil
November 16, 2019
To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below:
The following text guided the homily:
- This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy to have a chance to ponder with you the consequential conversation Jesus wants to have with us this Sunday, … when people will ask Jesus about when the end of the world will happen and what the signs will be given before it will take place.
- They asked, presumably so that they could be prepared. Jesus didn’t answer their question directly, not only because the time of the second coming was known, he said, only to God the Father, but also, and perhaps more importantly, because he wanted them to be prepared for it always. If he had given some date weeks, decades or centuries later, the temptation would have been just to go on with life as normal. But Jesus had come to establish a totally new normal, a norm of faith, a norm of vigilant expectation, a norm of full-time Christian behavior. He wanted the day of the Lord to be a perpetual state, so that each day would be the Lord’s day, a day in which we exclaim, “This is the day the Lord has made!”
- The signs of the day of the Lord he gives us help us to maintain this awareness are in fact events we see in every age. Jesus describes how the house of God will be attacked, how there will be imposters claiming to be speaking for God and asking us to follow them, how there will be wars, insurrections, earthquakes, famines, plagues, persecutions, hatred, betrayals by family members and friends, and how even some of his disciples will be put to death.
- But at the same time Jesus says something seemingly contradictory. He assures us that not a hair on their head will be destroyed. He describes God’s protection at the same time he mentions martyrdom. We’re not dealing with a contradiction, but it’s a hard truth all the same, one that we must view with faith. God permits these evils in order to help us become better disciples and better apostles, more fervent followers of him and more passionate proclaimers of his salvation, so that we might come to eternity with every follicle in tact. God permits what we have to endure so to help us become more faithful and bring other people to faith. He tells us in the Gospel that all of these things “will lead to your giving testimony” — and not just any testimony. He tells us that he will give us the grace of “a wisdom in speaking that all your adversaries will be powerless to resist or refute.” Such adversities are occasions for witness. Rather than distance us from the Lord, they rather impel us to abandon ourselves even more to Him.
- Jesus says at the end of the passage, “By your perseverance you will secure your lives.” Our salvation will come up not principally by surviving these frightening occurrences, but through growing our Christian character by means of them, through placing our faith, hope and love in God through all of all of them. When we’re brought to our knees by natural disasters or man-made hatred, it provides the opportunity for us to pray far more devoutly, to grow in faith, and to be proven like gold in a crucible. When we’re tested more severely in the faith, God always comes to our aid, he always sends us himself, to help us pass those tests, provided that we open ourselves up to his presence during trial and respond to him. And that type of faith is the greatest means to bring others to faith.
- We’ve seen since the early days of the Church that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of Christians (sanguis martyrum semen Christianorum). So many have converted when they see the way Christians suffer even martyrdom with peace, serenity, joy and chants, how we forgive our enemies, how we pray for our persecutors, how we freely lay down our loves in love for Him who freely laid down his life out of love to save our own. But we also see it on a lesser scale when Christians, having suffered natural disasters like the rest, rush unselfishly to help others before thinking of themselves, how so many far from the catastrophes sacrifice in Christ’s name as Good Samaritans to help people rebuild.
- Just as Jesus’ betrayal, suffering and martyrdom strengthened his own adhesion to the Father’s will — “Not my will, but yours be done!” he cried to the Father three times in the Garden of Gethsemane — and just as it led to his giving the most powerful testimony of all from the Cross of God the Father’s merciful and saving will, so when we suffer it’s to enable us to give the greatest possible testimony of faith. It’s a chance for us to show that we Christians live, suffer and even die differently than the rest, because we know, as St. Paul wrote to the Romans, that neither persecution, famine or the sword, neither near not life, nor anything in all creation can separated us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom 8:31-39). When we remain faithful under duress, it teaches others that Jesus is worth living and worth dying for. That type of witness can’t help but move people.
- And so we need to think of our own sufferings and how God has given them as an opportunity for us to grow in faith and to share the faith. Suffering and persecution are tests, tests that with God’s grace we can pass with flying colors, but tests that we can also flunk. When the difficulties arrive, we know that God will be present with his help, but we must receive that help and respond courageously. And the way we prepare to pass with God’s assistance the greatest tests is by passing faithfully the pop quizzes that come up every day, in living faithfully, in working honestly, in forgiving those who have hurt us, in caring for those who need our help, in loving always.
- One of the reasons why Jesus allows persecutions, natural disasters, betrayals and other objective evils that he wants to convert into moral and apostolic goods is because they wake us up and help us no longer take our faith for granted. But we don’t have to wait for a persecution or hurricane or personal disaster in order for God to wake us up. Every day is meant to be a day of the Lord. Every day the Lord sends us his Holy Spirit to strengthen our faith and help us to give witness to our faith by words and deeds. Every day is an opportunity for us to live differently than the rest, to live more like Christ. The more we in our day-to-day exams unite ourselves with Christ and his mission, the more we unite ourselves to him in our work and in our daily prayer, the more prepared we will be to remain united with him in the supreme hour.
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