{"id":15025,"date":"2018-02-08T08:58:38","date_gmt":"2018-02-08T13:58:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/catholicpreaching.com\/?p=15025"},"modified":"2018-02-08T08:58:38","modified_gmt":"2018-02-08T13:58:38","slug":"perseverance-in-faith-rather-than-allowing-the-gift-to-be-corrupted-5th-thursday-ii-february-8-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/catholicpreaching.com\/wp\/perseverance-in-faith-rather-than-allowing-the-gift-to-be-corrupted-5th-thursday-ii-february-8-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"Perseverance in Faith rather than Allowing the Gift to be Corrupted, 5th Thursday (II), February 8, 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Fr. Roger J. Landry<br \/>\nVisitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan<br \/>\nThursday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time, Year II<br \/>\nFebruary 8, 2018<br \/>\n1 Kings 11:4-13, Ps 106, Mk 7:24-30<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>To listen to an audio recording of today\u2019s homily, please click below:\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-15025-1\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"https:\/\/catholicpreaching.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/2.8.18-Homily-1.mp3?_=1\" \/><a href=\"https:\/\/catholicpreaching.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/2.8.18-Homily-1.mp3\">https:\/\/catholicpreaching.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/2.8.18-Homily-1.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>The following points were attempted in the homily:\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Today there is a huge contrast in the readings between perseverance and growth in faith on the one hand and the lack of perseverance, corruption and the idolatry to which it leads on the other. Insofar as there are no plateaus in the spiritual life, that we\u2019re either going up hill with Jesus following the Way of the Cross or sliding downhill, it\u2019s key for us to understand both paths. St. Paul once told St. Timothy that the real choice in life is between perseverance and denial, between faith each day and infidelity (2 Tim 2:12-13). Today we can enter into what God reveals to us in Sacred Scripture so that we may more resolutely walk the path of faith.<\/li>\n<li>\u00a0The scene in the Gospel is one of the most touching in all of Sacred Scripture. Jesus went into the heart of pagan territory to escape from the crowds. But a pagan mother got word that he was there and came to beg him with desperation to exorcise the demons from her daughter. St. Matthew\u2019s version of the scene gives us the most details. \u00a0She first fell at his feet and begged, \u201cHave pity on me, Lord, Son of David! My daughter is tormented by a demon.\u201d But Jesus at first gave her no answer at all. But she didn\u2019t quit. Second, as she turned to the apostles and begged for their intervention, they came came and told him, \u201cSend her away, for she keeps calling out after us.\u201d So he said to her, \u201cI was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.\u201d But she still didn\u2019t quit. She came to him now that he was speaking to her, fell down before him in homage, and said, \u201cLord, help me!\u201d And Jesus, to help her to continue to grow in faith, told her with the typical vocabulary with which Jews and Gentiles would refer to each other, \u201cIt is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.\u201d But she still didn\u2019t give up. She reminded him that he was the Good Shepherd even of puppies. \u201cPlease, Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters.\u201d Jesus was amazed at her persevering faith and gave her the greatest compliment in Sacred Scripture: \u201cO woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish!\u201d And at that moment her daughter was healed. She had been helped to become great in faith precisely by Jesus&#8217; testing.<\/li>\n<li>That perseverance in faith is contrasted with what we see in the first reading with King Solomon. Solomon, as we saw last Saturday, had been blessed by God with the gift of wisdom, of an understanding heart so that he could properly discern, judge and guide his people. He became famous across the ancient world for the wisdom with which he had been blessed. But eventually his \u00a0understanding heart became a lustful heart, then a corrupt heart and finally an idolatrous one. It began with his entering into political alliances, which in the ancient world was normally sealed by intermarriage. The Lord had precisely forbidden the Israelites to intermarry because, he said, they would \u201cturn your hearts to their gods.\u201d But Solomon not only intermarried, but fell in love with them, as we see in the verse immediately before today\u2019s first reading begins, \u201che\u00a0had seven hundred wives of princely rank and three hundred concubines, and his wives turned his heart.\u201d He basically had 1,000 wives (in the ancient world concubines were not mistresses as they were wives of a lower social class) who served his vanity and turned his heart from one that sought to please God to one that sought to please them. And then the great builder of the Temple of Jerusalem \u2014 the one who had so praised God for his presence in the Temple \u2014 then began to build temples to pagan gods, including as we see the god of Moloch, before whose image innocent babies would be sacrificed.<\/li>\n<li>What happened? Pope Francis described it very well in a homily four years ago. Solomon lost his faith due to his vanity and lust. When he began to sin, he didn\u2019t repent of it like his father David did; rather he pressed on the gas pedal and became \u201ccorrupt,\u201d an unrepentant sinner. And that led to his idolatry. \u201cHe began to take so much pleasure in his pagan wives and concubines that they diverted his heart to others gods,&#8221; Pope Francis said. &#8220;These women weakened Solomon\u2019s heart slowly. His heart no longer remained wholly with the Lord, like David\u2019s, his father\u2019s. His heart weakened so much that he lost the faith. He lost the faith! The wisest man in the world let himself be led away by indiscreet, indiscriminate love; he let himself be led astray by his passions.\u201d To be faithful is not a thing merely of the mind, but of one\u2019s whole life. To be faithful means to seek to love God with all one\u2019s heart, mind, soul and strength. Solomon had lost faith while retaining knowledge because his heart had been weakened by sin. But it didn\u2019t stop there. Pope Francis continued, \u201cHe was a sinner, like his father David,\u201d but then he went astray even further and was converted from a sinner into someone who was corrupt [an unrepentant sinner]. His heart was corrupted through this idolatry. \u2026 His vanity and passions let him to corruption. It\u2019s in the heart where one loses faith. The evil seed of his passions grew in Solomon\u2019s heart and led him to idolatry.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>What happened to the Syro-Phoenician woman and to Solomon can happen to each of us. I\u2019ve had the joy many times in my priesthood to see people come to Christ late in life, those who came the Lord in prison, those who were once drug addicts and philanderers, deadbeats and even involved in the modern Moloch worship of the abortion industry. Something makes them come to recognize they need the Lord. In some ways the most important thing that happened in the life of the Syro-Phoenician woman was that her daughter got possessed by a demon, probably because of the context in which she was being raised. But that terrible event in the life of her family led her to seek out Jesus, to place persevering faith in him, and to have her life changed forever.\u00a0On the other hand, I have seen seen many people go the way of Solomon. How many Catholic politicians, to take just one class of people, say that they were once altar boys, that they went to Catholic school for 12 or 16 years and then they begin to use their office to advance the destruction of human life, attacks on religious freedom, false ideas of marriage, policies truly injurious to the poor and needy in favor of special treatment for friends. They can go from people who once sought to please God to those who have been thoroughly corrupted. We\u2019ve seen the same thing with some priests, including those who were blessed by God with enormous abilities to teach the faith and bring people to God. Even though they knew the truth, they gave themselves over to vanity and to lust, lost their faith, betrayed their vocations, God and their people, and now live a life of sin.\u00a0We have seen the same thing happen with faithful Catholic husbands and wives. They\u2019ve been great Catholics for decades, but slowly give in to tepidity, give in to temptation, and before you know it, they\u2019ve gone from happily married faithful spouses to adulterers, destroying their marriages, their families, their careers and their souls in the process. We&#8217;ve seen the same thing with religious, when those who were once considered models of the faith become tepid and eventually lose their vocations.\u00a0Faith isn\u2019t a once-and-for-all gift that just grows on its own. It\u2019s a gift of God that grows also in response to acts of faith in response to tests, like we see with the pagan mother today. We need to persevere in faith, to continue to live by God\u2019s wisdom, to continue to inform and follow a conscience well-tuned to God\u2019s voice. We need to recognize that but for the grace of God, we can go the path of Solomon.<\/li>\n<li>Today we\u2019re celebrating the feast of a woman great in faith like the Syro-Phoenician woman, one of the most compelling saints of modern times: St. Josephine Bakhita. She was born in the Darfur region of Sudan about 1869 (there were no records and no one knew for sure). When he was only 7, she was kidnapped by Arab Muslim bandits, forced to convert to Islam, and then sold into slavery on five different occasions. As was the custom with Sudanese slaveowners at the time, she was repeatedly beaten as a little girl even if she was prompt in doing what was asked. On one occasion, one or her masters showed up with flour, salt and razor blades to brand her. With the flour, the owner sketched on the black skin of her breasts, belly and arms 114 intricate designs and then with the razor blades cut into her skin according to those patterns. While she was bleeding and in enormous pain, the master then poured salt into the wounds so that they would never heal and she would always be branded. Eventually she was sold to the Italian consul in Khartoum. This was the first time she wasn\u2019t beaten when she was told to do things. When the political situation destabilized, the consul needed to leave the country and he took Bakhita \u2014 a name that means \u201cfortunate,\u201d given to her by one of her owners, because she couldn\u2019t remember the name her parents had given her, so great was the trauma of her capture and her beatings \u2014 with him. He gave her to the service of friends having arrived back in Italy, where she helped to raise a baby as a nanny. When this family was preparing to return to the Sudan after the political situation had improved, they entrusted Bakhita and the little girl to the care of the Canossian Sisters in town.<\/li>\n<li>It was there that Bakhita was really exposed to Christianity for the first time. Her reaction to seeing a bloody Italian crucifix was unforgettable. She recognized that the one whom Christians adored as Lord and Master understood her pain, because he had been lacerated in his scourging just as severely as she had been repeatedly whipped and then sliced up with razor blades. When the family returned from the Sudan to take Bakhita and their daughter with them to Africa, Bakhita refused. A lawsuit followed that both under Italian law and a Sudanese liberation of slaves found her to be free and insofar as she was now over 18, she could stay. She was baptized with the name Josephine Margaret and Confirmed, made her first Communion from the hands of the future St. Pius X, and was eventually accepted as a Canossian Sister, where she served for the next 44 years as a cook, sacristan and portress. She was always so grateful for the teaching of her new true Par\u00f3n or Master and always sought not only to live according to that wisdom by to pass it on to others. Even though she had never received much education, the school girls used to line up at the door of the school just for her to pat them on the head. When people would ask her how she was doing, particularly in times of severe illness and pain, she\u2019d simply respond with a smile, \u201cAs the Master desires.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\n<div>Pope Benedict wrote about her as as an example of hope-filled persevering faith in his 2007 encyclical <em>Spe Salvi<\/em>. \u201cTo come to know God\u2014the true God\u2014means to receive hope. We who have always lived with the Christian concept of God, and have grown accustomed to it, have almost ceased to notice that we possess the hope that ensues from a real encounter with this God. The example of a saint of our time can to some degree help us understand what it means to have a real encounter with this God for the first time. I am thinking of the African Josephine Bakhita, canonized by Pope John Paul II. She was born around 1869\u2026 in Darfur in Sudan. \u2026She was kidnapped by slave-traders, beaten till she bled, and sold five times in the slave-markets of Sudan. Eventually she found herself working as a slave for the mother and the wife of a general, and there she was flogged every day till she bled; as a result of this she bore 144 scars throughout her life. Finally, in 1882, she was bought by an Italian merchant for the Italian consul Callisto Legnani, who returned to Italy as the Mahdists advanced. Here, after the terrifying \u2018masters\u2019\u00a0who had owned her up to that point, Bakhita came to know a totally different kind of \u2018master\u2019\u2014in Venetian dialect, which she was now learning, she used the name \u2018<i>paron\u2019<\/i>\u00a0for the living God, the God of Jesus Christ. Up to that time she had known only masters who despised and maltreated her, or at best considered her a useful slave. Now, however, she heard that there is a \u2018<i>paron\u2019<\/i>\u00a0above all masters, the Lord of all lords, and that this Lord is good, goodness in person. She came to know that this Lord even knew her, that he had created her\u2014that he actually loved her. She too was loved, and by none other than the supreme \u2018<i>Paron,\u2019<\/i>\u00a0before whom all other masters are themselves no more than lowly servants. She was known and loved and she was awaited. What is more, this master had himself accepted the destiny of being flogged and now he was waiting for her \u2018at the Father\u2019s right hand.\u2019 Now she had \u2018hope\u2019 \u2014no longer simply the modest hope of finding masters who would be less cruel, but the great hope: \u2018I am definitively loved and whatever happens to me\u2014I am awaited by this Love. And so my life is good.\u2019 Through the knowledge of this hope she was \u2018redeemed,\u2019 no longer a slave, but a free child of God. \u2026\u00a0Hence, when she was about to be taken back to Sudan, Bakhita refused; she did not wish to be separated again from her \u2018<i>Paron.\u2019\u00a0<\/i>On 9 January 1890, she was baptized and confirmed and received her first Holy Communion from the hands of the Patriarch of Venice. On 8 December 1896, in Verona, she took her vows in the Congregation of the Canossian Sisters and from that time onwards, besides her work in the sacristy and in the porter\u2019s lodge at the convent, <em>she made several journeys round Italy in order to promote the missions: the liberation that she had received through her encounter with the God of Jesus Christ, she felt she had to extend, it had to be handed on to others, to the greatest possible number of peopl<\/em>e. The hope born in her which had \u2018redeemed\u2019 her she could not keep to herself; this hope had to reach many, to reach everybody.\u201d She wanted to help others to learn to live by faith too.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>The Canaanite woman begged Jesus just to let her and her daughter eat the crumbs that fell from the Master\u2019s table. Today Jesus is going to let us have far more than crumbs, he\u2019s about to give his whole body, blood, soul and divinity, in order to build us into a temple where the one, true God is worshipped rather than any idols. This is the means by which we will be able to grow into the types of persons like St. Josephine who today, tomorrow and increasingly each day, he will be able to say to us, O Woman, O Man, \u201cgreat is your faith!\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>The readings for today\u2019s Mass were:\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<div id=\"cs_control_3684\">\n<div>\n<h4>Reading 1<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.usccb.org\/bible\/1kings\/11:4\">1 KGS 11:4-13<\/a><\/h4>\n<div>When Solomon was old his wives had turned his heart to strange gods,<br \/>\nand his heart was not entirely with the LORD, his God,<br \/>\nas the heart of his father David had been.<br \/>\nBy adoring Astarte, the goddess of the Sidonians,<br \/>\nand Milcom, the idol of the Ammonites,<br \/>\nSolomon did evil in the sight of the LORD;<br \/>\nhe did not follow him unreservedly as his father David had done.<br \/>\nSolomon then built a high place to Chemosh, the idol of Moab,<br \/>\nand to Molech, the idol of the Ammonites,<br \/>\non the hill opposite Jerusalem.<br \/>\nHe did the same for all his foreign wives<br \/>\nwho burned incense and sacrificed to their gods.<br \/>\nThe LORD, therefore, became angry with Solomon,<br \/>\nbecause his heart was turned away from the LORD, the God of Israel,<br \/>\nwho had appeared to him twice<br \/>\n(for though the LORD had forbidden him<br \/>\nthis very act of following strange gods,<br \/>\nSolomon had not obeyed him).<\/div>\n<div>So the LORD said to Solomon: \u201cSince this is what you want,<br \/>\nand you have not kept my covenant and my statutes<br \/>\nwhich I enjoined on you,<br \/>\nI will deprive you of the kingdom and give it to your servant.<br \/>\nI will not do this during your lifetime, however,<br \/>\nfor the sake of your father David;<br \/>\nit is your son whom I will deprive.<br \/>\nNor will I take away the whole kingdom.<br \/>\nI will leave your son one tribe for the sake of my servant David<br \/>\nand of Jerusalem, which I have chosen.\u201d<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<h4>Responsorial Psalm<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.usccb.org\/bible\/psalms\/106:3\">PS 106:3-4, 35-36, 37 AND 40<\/a><\/h4>\n<div>R. (4a)\u00a0Remember us, O Lord, as you favor your people.<br \/>\nBlessed are they who observe what is right,<br \/>\nwho do always what is just.<br \/>\nRemember us, O LORD, as you favor your people;<br \/>\nvisit us with your saving help.<br \/>\nR.\u00a0Remember us, O Lord, as you favor your people.<br \/>\nBut they mingled with the nations<br \/>\nand learned their works.<br \/>\nThey served their idols,<br \/>\nwhich became a snare for them.<br \/>\nR.\u00a0Remember us, O Lord, as you favor your people.<br \/>\nThey sacrificed their sons<br \/>\nand their daughters to demons.<br \/>\nAnd the LORD grew angry with his people,<br \/>\nand abhorred his inheritance.<br \/>\nR.\u00a0Remember us, O Lord, as you favor your people.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<h4>Gospel<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.usccb.org\/bible\/mark\/7:24\">MK 7:24-30<\/a><\/h4>\n<div>Jesus went to the district of Tyre.<br \/>\nHe entered a house and wanted no one to know about it,<br \/>\nbut he could not escape notice.<br \/>\nSoon a woman whose daughter had an unclean spirit heard about him.<br \/>\nShe came and fell at his feet.<br \/>\nThe woman was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by birth,<br \/>\nand she begged him to drive the demon out of her daughter.<br \/>\nHe said to her, \u201cLet the children be fed first.<br \/>\nFor it is not right to take the food of the children<br \/>\nand throw it to the dogs.\u201d<br \/>\nShe replied and said to him,<br \/>\n\u201cLord, even the dogs under the table eat the children\u2019s scraps.\u201d<br \/>\nThen he said to her, \u201cFor saying this, you may go.<br \/>\nThe demon has gone out of your daughter.\u201d<br \/>\nWhen the woman went home, she found the child lying in bed<br \/>\nand the demon gone.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/catholicpreaching.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/st-josephine-bakhita-1.jpg?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-15027\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/catholicpreaching.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/st-josephine-bakhita-1.jpg?resize=225%2C300&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/catholicpreaching.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/st-josephine-bakhita-1.jpg?resize=225%2C300&amp;ssl=1 225w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/catholicpreaching.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/st-josephine-bakhita-1.jpg?resize=300%2C400&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/catholicpreaching.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/st-josephine-bakhita-1.jpg?w=360&amp;ssl=1 360w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fr. Roger J. Landry Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan Thursday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time, Year II February 8, 2018 1 Kings 11:4-13, Ps 106, Mk 7:24-30 &nbsp; To listen to an audio recording of today\u2019s homily, please click below:\u00a0 &nbsp; The following points were attempted in the homily:\u00a0 Today [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10723,1063,3,4],"tags":[4658,4251,3587,4661,2108,4662,1622,4660,4659,2900,1700,2289,2786,4606,2208],"class_list":["post-15025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2017-2018-year-ii","category-audio-homily","category-homily","category-year-ii","tag-1-kings-114-13","tag-corruption","tag-great-is-your-faith","tag-growing-in-faith","tag-idolatry","tag-losing-faith","tag-mk-724-30","tag-moloch","tag-pagan","tag-perseverance","tag-pope-francis","tag-ps-106","tag-solomon","tag-st-josephine-bakhita","tag-syro-phoenician-woman"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Perseverance in Faith rather than Allowing the Gift to be Corrupted, 5th Thursday (II), February 8, 2018 - Catholic Preaching<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/catholicpreaching.com\/wp\/perseverance-in-faith-rather-than-allowing-the-gift-to-be-corrupted-5th-thursday-ii-february-8-2018\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Perseverance in Faith rather than Allowing the Gift to be Corrupted, 5th Thursday (II), February 8, 2018 - Catholic Preaching\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Fr. Roger J. Landry Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan Thursday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time, Year II February 8, 2018 1 Kings 11:4-13, Ps 106, Mk 7:24-30 &nbsp; To listen to an audio recording of today\u2019s homily, please click below:\u00a0 &nbsp; The following points were attempted in the homily:\u00a0 Today [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/catholicpreaching.com\/wp\/perseverance-in-faith-rather-than-allowing-the-gift-to-be-corrupted-5th-thursday-ii-february-8-2018\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Catholic Preaching\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2018-02-08T13:58:38+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/catholicpreaching.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/st-josephine-bakhita-1-225x300.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Fr. 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