‘Useless Servants’ Eager to Do What Is Good, 32nd Tuesday (II), November 10, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Tuesday of the 32nd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of St. Leo the Great
November 10, 2020
Ti 2:1-8.11-14, Ps 37, Lk 17:7-10

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today, Jesus teaches us about a fundamental Christian attitude. Yesterday, if we didn’t have proper readings for the Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran, we would have pondered Jesus’ words about setting good example rather than scandal and of forgiving continuously when someone repents, which led his apostles, because of the difficulty they foresaw, to say, “Lord, increase our faith!” Jesus described for them the power of faith the size of a mustard seed, that that amount of faith is enough to translocate mountain ranges, and so, even with a little faith, persevering in good example and forgiveness ought to be easy in comparison! That leads Jesus today to talk about the perseverance, humility and gratitude that flow from faith, describing the situation of a servant who has just come in from the fields. Such a servant would never expect his boss to have him sit down at table and serve him as some type of reward for doing what he was supposed to do; rather he would expect him to continue serving. “So should it be with you,” Jesus draws the lesson. “When you have done all you have been commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do.’” Jesus wants us to go on continuing to work in his vineyard, to set good Christian example, to be merciful like he is merciful, to live by faith. There’s no point at which we should say, “I’ve forgiven enough, now I can stop.” There’s no time when we should think, “I set a good example earlier. Now I can do my own thing.” Jesus wants us to persevere with gratitude for the gift of faith and like him continue serving others with love as he loved and served us to the end.
• In today’s first reading, St. Paul describes various traits that we should have in order to set that good Christian example. He talks about various classes of people — senior men, senior women, young people, even Titus himself. While at certain times of life various virtues may be more important, we should aspire to all of these virtues “so that the word of God may not be discredited” and so that critics “will be put to shame without anything bad to say about us.”
  • Say what is consistent with sound doctrine — We all have a duty to speak in a way that’s consistent with the truth that God has revealed. If we teach contrary to the truth — whether we consciously or unconsciously know that it contradicts what God has taught through revelation and through the Church — we can draw people to follow us down a wrong path. We need to know sound doctrine and have the love for God and for others to pass it on.
  • Temperate — This means “sober” in terms of food and drink. With the passing of time, we should learn what our limits are, what are true pleasures, and how not to over-indulge. Drunks and gluttons are a sad scandal.
  • Dignified — This means that one is “serious” about one’s origin and destiny in God, about one’s divine filiation, and lives accordingly.
  • Self-controlled — The word means “prudent,” someone that has things under control, who doesn’t give in to flights of anger or passion.
  • Sound in faith, love and endurance — We must be “healthy” in our total self-entrustment to God and what he teaches, in sacrificing ourselves for God and others, and for perseverance until the end.
  • Reverent — We must learn how to revere God and the things of God, especially others. To be reverent means to be conscious that one is dealing with sacred things.
  • Not slanderers — Gossip is a truly ugly scandal. Pope Francis says that it is slaying our brother Abel with our tongue.
  • Not addicted to drink — How sad it is to see someone who is addicted to anyone or anything other than God! An elderly lady addicted to drink is a sign that not even with the passage of years has one learned basic human lessons.
  • Teaching what is good — We can’t keep goodness to ourselves. Bonum diffusivum sui, the good spreads itself. We need to teach what is good.
  • Chaste — We must be capable of white hot, unselfish love, which chastity makes possible.
  • Good homemakers — Women in particular must know the art of filling a house with the warmth and love so as to make a home.
  • Control themselves — If one has no self-discipline, then one can’t discipline — or make disciples of — others.
  • Model of good deeds — To know what they should do, others should be able to copy our actions, which is the most powerful teaching of all.
  • Integrity in teaching, dignity and sound speech — We need to have an integrity to follow what we teach on behalf of Christ, to carry ourselves as a Christian and to speak as a Christian ought.
  • Reject godless ways and earthly desires — We have to make a choice for Christ which means that we likewise have to make a firm choice to separate ourselves from the things that are not of God and from spiritual worldliness. To believe in God we have to reject Satan, all his evil works and all his empty promises.
  • Just — We need to give God and others what they deserve, which is whole-hearted loving service until the end.
  • Devout — Devout means de voto, or from an vow or commitment that we’ve made to God and to others. It points to something that comes from the heart with love.
• These are the standard Christian virtues that set a good, rather than a scandalous, example for others. It might sound like a long list, as if St. Paul is proposing to us an unmeetable standard. But after summoning us to that style of life, he reminds us of God’s help to meet it, saying, “the grace of God has appeared, saving all and training us to reject godless ways and worldly desires and to live temperately, justly and devoutly in this age.” God gives us what we need.
• Someone who lived with these virtues, who taught with sound doctrine, who persevered in the service of the Lord until the end, and who led the Church through some very difficult decades in the Church and in the political sphere, is Pope St. Leo the Great (d. 461), whom we fête today. He is such a huge figure inside the Church. As a deacon of the Church in Rome, for example, he taught sound doctrine regarding baptism: his famous baptismal verses teaching the meaning of the Sacrament still adorn the octagonal baldachin over the Lateran baptistery. He taught sound Marian doctrine, being the Archdeacon under Pope Sixtus III charged with building St. Mary Major Basilica to enshrine the Church’s teaching that Mary is Mother of God, which had just been infallibly defined at the Council of Ephesus in 431. He taught sound Christological doctrine, writing as Pope his famous Tome against Eutyches, who claimed that Jesus only had a human body and soul but not a human intellectual spirit, which would not make him fully human. His Tome was decisive at the Council of Ephesus. He taught soundly about the incarnation: Leo’s Christmas homilies were also very formative to help people to grasp the meaning of the incarnation. He was also a huge figure outside the Church, showing himself such a model of good deeds and integrity that even the fiercest opponents were put to shame without anything bad to say. His bravery than led him to confront Attila the Hun in 452 and divert Attila from his plans to pillage Rome the same way he and his armies had despoiled so many other cities in northern Italy. He fought against the Goths the following year. He fought against the ecclesiastically and socially dissociative heresies of Arianism, Pelagianism, Manichaeism, Priscillianism, Nestorianism and Eutychism precisely because he was fighting for Church and social unity. And he was able to fight because he knew he wasn’t fighting alone, that the incarnate Lord, the true King, was with him, that the “glory of the great God and of our savior Jesus Christ” had appeared.
• Today as we prepare for the release of the results of the investigation into how former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick kept getting elevated to and within the episcopacy, I think to the wisdom of Pope Leo in this regard. At some point early in his papacy, as he thought about the weight of the office, he began to become somewhat frightened about all of his mistakes, failings, and sins. He prayed for 40 days to the Lord at the tomb of his predecessor St. Peter begging the Lord for mercy. At the end of the lengthy novena, St. Peter appeared to him in a vision and said that the Lord would be very merciful to him, except those sins “committed by you in conferring holy orders: of these you still remain charged to give a rigorous account.” The experience deeply affected Leo and always left him with a sense of his duties to assure the worthiness of any priest or bishop on whom he would lay hands. He would even lay down a rule for the primitive canon law of the time “not to lay hands upon any one suddenly, according to the precept of the apostle, [and] not to raise to the honor of the priesthood any who have not been thoroughly tried, or before a mature age, a competent time of trial, the merit of labor in the service of the church, and sufficient proofs given of their obedience to rule, their love of discipline and zeal for its observance.” The Lord wanted bishops to live consistent with sound doctrine, temperate, dignified, self-controlled, faithful, loving, persevering, chaste, and model of good deeds in every respect.
• At Mass the mystery of the incarnation about which St. Leo wrote so much is perpetuated in a way that awesomely fulfills today’s Gospel. Even though according to human logic, no slave would ever be invited in from working the fields in order to be served by the Master, yet that’s exactly what Jesus does here. Just as Jesus put on an apron and washed the feet of the apostles during the Last Supper, so Jesus serves us here, going beyond that humble ministration to feed us with his body and blood. And this is a foretaste, an embryonic participation in what he wants to do for us at the eternal wedding banquet, where he promises he will sit us at table, gird himself with an apron and proceed to wait on all those who have been vigilant in awaiting his coming and doing his work as they wait (Lk 12:37). This is where God gives us the grace to “await the blessed hope, the appearance of the glory of the great God and of our savior Jesus Christ.”

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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