Touched and Transformed by God’s Spousal Love, 14th Monday (II), July 9, 2018

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Monday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of Saint Augustine Zhao Rong and Companions, Martyrs of China
July 9, 2018
Hos 2:16-18.21-22, Ps 145, Mt 9:18-26

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• God reveals his love in Hosea and Isaiah as spousal, a thing of choice, as a willing forgiveness of adultery. Our relationship with God should be marked not just with reverence for a Creator, God and Lord, but also by spousal affection for someone who has chosen us to be his despite our unworthiness. Our whole Christian life must be marked by the sense of being loved by God and loving him back.
• We see the particular love of God incarnate in Jesus Christ in his care for Jairus, for his daughter, and for the woman with the hemorrhage. They were not just other people, but ones loved particularly. Jesus responded immediately to Jairus’ petition. He called the little girl by name and gave her a foretaste of his resurrection. He asked that she be given something to eat. With the anonymous woman, he wanted to meet her so that he could give her the gift of salvation by faith. He loved them all individually.
• We see that spousal love in the Chinese Martyrs. They were not just giving witness to the truth about God but were responding with love to his love: no one has any greater love than to lay down one’s life for his friends, and just as Jesus spousally died for them, they were willing to die for him. Altogether we mark today 120 martyrs, St. Augustine Zhao Rong and his 119 companions, some of the thousands of martyrs in China from 1648 to 2000. Whenever the Church beatifies or canonizes large groups of martyrs, they always look for one who will be the “lead” name. It’s almost always a native son rather than a missionary (and today we celebrate 87 Chinese —  children, parents, catechists or laborers, ranging from nine years of age to 72 and four Chinese diocesan priests — and 33 missionaries to China, priests and women religious, especially from the Order of Preachers, the Paris Foreign Mission Society, the Friars Minor, Jesuits, Salesians and Franciscan Missionaries of Mary) and one who, in a sense, summarizes and synthesizes the beauty of the faith, hope and love of all of them. There were so many candidates for the Chinese martyrs. There would have been great fittingness in my opinion if the Vatican had selected St. Chi Zhuzi, an 18 year-old boy who had been preparing to receive the sacrament of Baptism when he was caught on the road one night and ordered to worship idols. He refused to do so, revealing his belief in Christ. His right arm was cut off and he was tortured, but he would not deny his faith. Rather, he fearlessly pronounced to his captors, before being flayed alive, “Every piece of my flesh, every drop of my blood will tell you that I am Christian.” But the Vatican chose St. Augustine Zhao Rong, who was the first native born Chinese priest to be martyred. And the story of his ascent to the altars on earth, as a priest and as a saint, is one of the most memorable in hagiography. In 1815, he was a 30 year old soldier escorting French Missionary Bishop Saint John Gabriel-Taurin Dufresse on an infamous Chinese death march from Chendu to Beijing where he would be martyred. He was so moved by the bishop’s patience, his forgiving those who struck him with blows, whipped him with cords and pushed him to the ground, his prayer and his joy along the death march that after the journey, he asked what he needed to do to become a Christian. Once baptized, he asked who would be able to celebrate the sacraments for the people after so many missionary priests had been killed. When he realized that people might live and die without the sacraments, he asked to go to the seminary, even though to be a priest was to basically live under a death sentence. He journeyed to Macao, where they gave him an expedited course and, because the few bishops left who could ordain priests could be arrested and killed at any moment, he was ordained right away, intending that he would continue to learn what he needed on the fly. But he was soon himself arrested after he had begun his priestly ministrations, and then tortured and martyred. He had gone from pagan soldier to baptized Christian to priest to martyr within three months, such was the power of Bishop Dufresse’s faith on the death march, which the bishop transformed into the way to the eternal Jerusalem; such was also the love of God that made Bishop Dufresne so courageous, the contagious love that captivated Zhao Rong. And his own conversion and example of love for God inspired many other Chinese people to come to the faith after him. It’s an incredible love story.
• The Mass is the consummation of the spousal union between Christ the Bridegroom and his Bride the Church as we become one flesh with the Lord. This is the means by which God each day not only reminds us of his love but fills us with it. This is the place where we come to love him back, with all our mind, heart, soul and strength, and unite with him in loving our neighbor.

The readings for today’s Mass were: