Working Out Our Salvation as Christ’s Prudent Disciples, 31st Wednesday (II), November 4, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Wednesday of the 31st Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of St. Charles Borromeo
November 7, 2018
Phil 2:12-18, Ps 27, Lk 14:25-33

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today the readings help us to focus on something far more important than the US Presidential election. Throughout the month of November, the Church has us ponder with special attention the last things. Today in the readings, the Church has us think about salvation to stoke up our desire for it and move us to make the choices that will secure it.
• In the first reading, St. Paul tells the Philippians and us to “work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” The word for “work” in Greek used here means to “complete the work” or to “finish the job” of your salvation; the word for “fear” is the Greek word for “reverential awe.” We’re not supposed to be afraid of God but with a holy awe to grasp the gift of God and make sure we allow him to bring to completion the work of salvation he has begun in us. The “trembling” buttresses the holy awe. If someone had a winning lotto ticket worth hundreds of millions of dollars, we can imagine how the person would take care of the ticket, making sure it wouldn’t be accidentally dropped or lost, while bringing the ticket to lottery officials to obtain the treasure. We’re supposed to treat our salvation as something far more valuable as we seek to reap God’s eternal gift.
• St. Paul tells us that in this “completing the work,” God gives us his help. “For God is the one who, for his good purpose, works in you both to desire and to work.” God both fills us with the desire for salvation and then gives us his grace to act on that desire. We see the desire described in the Responsorial Psalm when the inspired author says, “One thing I ask of the Lord, this I seek: to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, that I may gave on the loveliness of the Lord and contemplate his temple.” God has implanted within us this desire for salvation, for him, for his house, for his kingdom, for his glory, for his love. He always implants within us a desire to seek and ask for what he desires to give us. But we have to act on that desire and God helps us with that as well,  to “complete the work” that the fulfillment of that desire requires. Jesus describes that work in today’s Gospel.
• To complete the work of salvation, he says, we need to count the cost and joyfully pay it. We need to grasp that the offer of salvation God gives us through sharing his own eternal life is the pearl of great price, the treasure buried in a field, worth sacrificing everything else to obtain. With a holy awe and trembling, we need to respond to his call to follow him, and he gives us the grace both to desire and to act on that call. He tells us that to follow him as his disciple to salvation, we have to do three things. First, we need to “hate” father and mother, spouse and children, brothers and  sisters. The Hebrew word for “hate” doesn’t mean “detest,” but rather means the opposite of “prefer.” It basically conveys not putting the person or thing we “hate” in first place.” Jesus, after all, calls us to honor our father and mother, not despise them. But we have to make sure that they don’t become gods in our life, that if there is ever a choice between what God is asking of us and what our parents, or husband or wife, or children are asking of us, that we say “God’s will be done” instead of “My loved one’s will be done.” And we need to remember that if we do “hate” them in this way, we actually will love them more because we will love them in God. Second, Jesus says one needs to hate “even his own life,” “carry his own cross” and “follow” Jesus. We need to account Jesus more valuable than our existence, in imitation of him who valued our life more valuable than His. This is the faith that led the martyrs directly to heaven. If we love our comforts, our life in this world more than we love God, then we won’t be completing the work of salvation because Jesus clearly taught us that to save our life we must lose it and that unless we fall to the ground and die like a grain of wheat we won’t bear the fruit of salvation. Third, Jesus says one must “renounce all his possessions.” We must renounce the stuff that possesses us and then as good stewards use everything we have and are for God and his service, giving of ourselves together with our things for God and others, because if we cling to possessions we will not be able to fit through the eye of the needle to salvation.
• In buttressing the conditions of the completion of the work of our salvation, Jesus employs two analogies that point to the cost of discipleship. He says that to build a tower, we need to calculate the cost and get the proper supplies lest we not finish what we began. Likewise, to win a battle, we have to know whether we have the resources to defeat the enemy. In building the tower toward heaven, we have to have the “supplies” of detachment from ourselves, our loved ones, our possessions and our life. In fighting against the twenty thousand troops of the evil one, we have to divest ourselves of whatever will hinder us in battle, whatever earthly desires the devil can use against us, and put on the armor of God, as we heard last week, and let the Lord be our buckler and shield, his salvation our helmet, his truth our cincture, his holiness our breastplate, his Gospel our sandals, his word our sword, and faith in him our body shield. We won’t be able to finish what’s been started unless we count the cost and pay it, knowing that in the biggest picture of all, this is the wisest and greatest deal in life, the pearl and treasure worth more than everything else.
• And as we pay that price with God’s help, acting on that desire by the God-assisted work of building and fighting, we’re supposed to do it with a particularly Christian attitude. St. Paul describes what that attitude needs to be in the second half of today’s first reading.
  • First, it’s to be done “without grumbling or questioning.” We remembered how the Jews grumbled in the desert having been freed by God from slavery in Egypt. We know how they questioned Moses and essentially questioned God. Sometimes we can grumble at the cost the Lord asks of us, as if salvation is cheap, as if we should be able to have God and have our idols, too. Rather than murmuring and doubting we need to respond with gratitude and faith.
  • Second, we should do so in a “blameless and innocent” way, as “children of God without blemish.” God wants us to become pure and he’ll give us the help to live without sin. This does not mean that we will never be tempted or never fall. He’s established, however, the Sacrament of his mercy precisely to help us to live as his beloved children in a way that removes the blemishes.
  • Third, we should complete the work of our salvation “as lights in the world” in the midst of a “crooked and perverse generation.” The path to salvation is not meant to be a secret that we keep to ourselves. The Christian life is meant to illumine and warm others, drawing them out of darkness toward the same path and same Source of light. The light of the world, Jesus himself, called us to be the light of the world, reflecting his light the way the moon reflects the sun’s — not hiding that light under a bushel basket. We’re supposed to share that light with others so that they may walk with us as children of light. There are two ways we need to do that, St. Paul says. The first is to “hold on to the word of life,” by treasuring God’s word, knowing it, enfleshing it, and sharing it. God’s word is a lamp in the darkness to the upright (Ps 119:105) and we need to live by that lamp and help others to do so. Second, one of the most important colors of the bright light of Christians is supposed to be joy. St. Paul says, after describing his own joy, “In the same way you also should rejoice and share your joy with me.”
• Today we celebrate a saint who illustrates all of these lessons. He was one who preferred Jesus to his family, to his wealth, to his own comfort and life. He was one who helped the whole Church know, desire and complete the work of salvation with awe and trembling after the Protestant Reformation had taught that we are saved by faith alone apart from the works that flow from faith. He did his work without grumbling or complaining. He did it in a blameless way. And the light of Christ that shone through his life became a light for his contemporaries and for Christians ever since. We prayed at the beginning of Mass that the Lord would preserve among us the spirit with which he filled Saint Charles so that the Church “may be constantly renewed and, by conforming herself to the likeness of Christ, may show his face to the world.” Christ calls us to conform ourselves to him through the triple renunciation he articulates, the three-fold work to complete salvation, and Saint Charles shows us how. Born of the Medici family, he was thrust into positions of responsibility at 22 because his uncle was Pope Pius IV and made him a Cardinal at that age without ordination. God brought good out of this nepotism, however, because St. Charles — even at a ridiculously young age — quickly became the principal figure in reforming the Church after the Protestant Reformation through helping to bring to a conclusion the Council of Trent. When his elder brother died, his family expected him to resign his offices and return to run the family estate, but he preferred God to them and he made the definitive choice for Holy Orders. He had been appointed Administrator of the Archdiocese of Milan as a benefice, but as soon as his Pius IV had died and the Council completed, he was able to be ordained subdeacon, deacon, priest and bishop and take up the charge as Archbishop. There he encountered a very corrupt situation throughout, where people weren’t focused on salvation at all, including priests and religious. He sought to reform his clergy to model their lives on the mystery of the Lord’s Cross as they heard at their ordination, something that as we hear in today’s Gospel is necessary to be Jesus’ disciple not just apostle. He built seminaries to train priests well so that they might live “without blemish.” Many of the problems that afflicted lay people had to do with clergy who were setting a scandalous example for the people. Such reform led to his receiving much opposition. One religious community that didn’t want to be reformed actually sent some monks to try to murder him while he was praying in his chapel. Miraculously, however, the bullet that hit him in the back simply fell to the ground. Because of his hard work, however, the Catholics of Milan experienced the fruits of reform. There’s a powerful story from his work in Milan that relates how he lived a cruciform life, was willing to renounce all of his possessions, and fight to win a war against famine and plague. In 1576, when Milan was undergoing mass starvation and the ravages of the plague, the governor, most of his officials, and most of the nobles, all fled. But St. Charles remained and begged the clergy and the religious not to abandon their flock, urging them to prefer a holy death to a late one. He had already been giving most of his earnings to the care of the poor, but to meet this crisis, he exhausted his personal fortune, even taking on large debts. He similarly sold many of the Church’s vessels. Each day he was feeding 60,000 to 70,000 poor and often contagious people daily. He challenged the clergy and religious: “How can those upon whom mercy has been given and liberally poured out be so tightly limited with theirs, and measure it out in accord with temporal and external necessities? The same Son of God, who for the sake of the salvation of all men, including his enemies and the impious, was fixed to the cross and died in the greatest shame and the bitterest torment, invites us to go forward into the danger of a quiet and glorious death for devout brethren. He to whom we owe as much repayment as we could not obtain by dying a thousand times without end, does not even request this pathetic life of ours, but only that we put it at risk. We see many go through these dangers without escaping death. Moreover, we even see many who are free from fear but still die. But if we do not escape it, this will not be death; rather it will be a quicker attainment of blessed glory, which is true life. … It is indeed a desirable time now when without the cruelty of the tyrant, without the rack, without fire, without beasts, and in the complete absence of harsh tortures that are usually the most frightful to human weakness, we can obtain the crown of martyrdom.” Because of all of these ministrations, St. Charles ended up dying basically of exhaustion at 46, but in his few years, he accomplished so much more than most people who have lived far longer.
• St. Paul says toward the end of today’s passage that he was being “poured out as a libation upon the sacrificial service of your faith.” In Roman pagan worship to which most of the Philippians would have been exposed prior to their conversion, a libation was a cup of wine poured as an offering to the gods before and after every meal, something similar to the grace we Christians pray at those same times. St. Paul was saying that he was pouring out his life as a libation as the beginning of their sacrifice to God, as a starter and exclamation point of their completing the work of salvation. He was giving his life in other words to help them to sacrifice their own and obtain the prize of salvation. St. Charles did the same. Both of them learned that type of generosity from Jesus himself who, at Mass, pours out his own blood as a libation so that our sacrifice may be acceptable to God, the Father Almighty, so that we may receive all the help we need to pay the price of faith with joy, to choose the Lord, to complete the work of salvation and come to dwell in the house of the Lord, gazing on God’s loveliness, all our days into eternity. This is the chief means by which God, to his good purpose, works in us both the holy desire for salvation and the trembling and awesome work of completing it. This is the means by which he fills us with his light and salvation and makes us capable of bringing that gift as shining lights to the world.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Gospel lk 14:25-33

Great crowds were traveling with Jesus,
and he turned and addressed them,
“If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother,
wife and children, brothers and sisters,
and even his own life,
he cannot be my disciple.
Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me
cannot be my disciple.
Which of you wishing to construct a tower
does not first sit down and calculate the cost
to see if there is enough for its completion?
Otherwise, after laying the foundation
and finding himself unable to finish the work
the onlookers should laugh at him and say,
‘This one began to build but did not have the resources to finish.’
Or what king marching into battle would not first sit down
and decide whether with ten thousand troops
he can successfully oppose another king
advancing upon him with twenty thousand troops?
But if not, while he is still far away,
he will send a delegation to ask for peace terms.
In the same way,
everyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions
cannot be my disciple.”

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