{"id":15204,"date":"2018-03-07T09:31:23","date_gmt":"2018-03-07T14:31:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/catholicpreaching.com\/?p=15204"},"modified":"2018-03-16T09:52:59","modified_gmt":"2018-03-16T13:52:59","slug":"the-greatness-of-the-gift-we-have-3rd-wednesday-of-lent-march-7-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/catholicpreaching.com\/wp\/the-greatness-of-the-gift-we-have-3rd-wednesday-of-lent-march-7-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"The Greatness of the Gift We Have, 3rd Wednesday of Lent, March 7, 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Fr. Roger J. Landry<br \/>\nVisitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan<br \/>\nWednesday of the Third Week of Lent<br \/>\nMemorial of SS. Perpetual and Felicity<br \/>\nMarch 7, 2018<br \/>\nDeut 4:1.5-9, Ps 147, Mt 5:17-19<\/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-15204-1\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"https:\/\/catholicpreaching.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/3.7.18-Homily-1.mp3?_=1\" \/><a href=\"https:\/\/catholicpreaching.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/3.7.18-Homily-1.mp3\">https:\/\/catholicpreaching.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/3.7.18-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>In\u00a0this second phase of Lent, from the third Sunday through the fourth Friday, we ponder the meaning of baptism, to help the \u201celect\u201d prepare for this great Sacrament and help all the baptized grow to full maturity in response to baptismal graces. And we remember what happened to us on the day of our baptism. The priest, bishop or deacon blessed our ears and said, \u201cThe Lord Jesus made the deaf hear and the dumb speak. May he soon touch your ears to receive his Word and your lips to proclaim his faith to the praise and glory of God the Father.\u201d God gave us ears fundamentally to hear his Truth and lips fundamentally to proclaim it to others to God\u2019s praise and glory. This phase of Lent is meant to help us to prepare elect, and help the baptized, to learn how to \u201clive the truth in love\u201d (Eph 4:15). We prayed in today\u2019s Opening Collect, \u201cGrant, we pray, O Lord, that, schooled through Lenten observance and nourished by your word, \u2026 we may be devoted to you with all our heart.\u201d Lent is a school in which we learn anew how to be like God,\u00a0to become holy as God is holy, perfect as he is perfect, and merciful as he is mercy. Lent is a season in which we recognize that in his mercy God gives us that formation. In the Gospel, we see that Jesus\u2019 heart was moved with pity for the crowds, he was \u201csick to his stomach\u201d (<em>splanchnizomai<\/em>) several times, and in response to that he taught. St. Mark\u00a0tells us, \u201cWhen Jesus\u00a0disembarked and saw the vast crowd, his heart was moved with pity for them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things\u201d (Mk 6:34). In his mercy, God teaches us, and Jesus came to astonish and amaze us with his teaching, he came to give us his sermons, his parables, his example. He came to to proclaim the Gospel, to give witness to the truth, and to\u00a0enflesh that truth in such a way that he could say to us, \u201cFollow me!\u201d As we focus in Lent on our almsgiving, we remember that this involves not so much the giving of material goods but giving God and ourselves together with him. And among the most important ways we do that is through the spiritual works of mercy by\u00a0which we\u00a0pay forward the gift of truth we\u2019ve received, by \u201cinstructing the ignorant,\u201d admonishing the sinner,\u201d and \u201ccounseling the doubtful.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>That introduction is a prelude to the importance of what God teaches us about the gift of his teaching in today\u2019s readings.\u00a0In the first reading from the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses exclaims about the care God\u00a0has given us in his teaching: \u201cFor what great nation is there\u00a0that has gods so close to it as the Lord, our God, is to us\u00a0whenever we call upon him?\u00a0Or what great nation has statutes and decrees\u00a0that are as just as this whole law\u00a0that I am setting before you today?\u201d God has drawn close to us precisely in his statutes and decrees, which train us in the nitty gritty of life how to love God and others and provide the means for us to remain in a communion of life and love with him and others. Rather than the god of deists who creates and world and then abandons it, the God of Israel showed himself to be a God concerned about bringing the Israelites into communion in every part of their daily life. And that\u2019s what he did, providing guidance through his teaching. The Responsorial Psalm continues the joy at the privilege of God\u2019s law: \u201cHe has proclaimed his word to Jacob,\u00a0his statutes and his ordinances to Israel.\u00a0He has not done thus for any other nation;\u00a0his ordinances he has not made known to them.\u201d Many times we\u2019re tempted to look at the law of the Lord as a burden, but God wants us to look at it as an incredible blessing. It\u2019s a sign of God\u2019s love, God\u2019s nearness, God\u2019s mercy, God\u2019s predilection that he has opened for us the owner\u2019s manual for ourselves, the world he created and the way we\u2019re supposed to connect with Him. It\u2019s a great blessing to receive this gift.\u00a0That\u2019s why it\u2019s essential for us to live in that gift and pass it on to others. Moses commands, \u201cTake care and be earnestly on your guard\u00a0not to forget the things which your own eyes have seen,\u00a0nor let them slip from your memory as long as you live,\u00a0but teach them to your children and to your children\u2019s children.\u201d When we pass on the teaching to the next generations, we are giving them the privilege, with us, to draw close to God, to experience his merciful teaching and to be blessed in manifold ways through it. If we fail to do so, we\u2019re distancing ourselves from that communion with God, from his mercy, and dragging others with us.<\/li>\n<li>Jesus spoke about how he was fulfilling this blessing of God through his teaching\u00a0in the Gospel. He said, \u201cDo not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.\u201d He would fulfill the law in three ways. First, by allowing the seeds planted in the Old Covenant to flourish in the New. St. Paul would say that many parts of the Mosaic law were pedagogical starting points, not end points. Jesus would come to fulfill them. He would contrast himself to what Moses taught not by contradicting it but by taking it deeper. Whereas Moses taught the limitation of violence, \u201cAn eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,\u201d Jesus brought it to fulfillment when he called us to love our enemies, pray for our persecutors, to do good to those who hate us, to forgive 70 times 7 times. Whereas Moses taught us not to commit adultery in the flesh, Jesus fulfilled it by teaching us not to commit adultery in the heart either. Whereas Moses taught us not to kill, Jesus fulfilled it by teaching us not to hate, not to insult, not to murder people in our thoughts and words. In today\u2019s Gospel, Jesus says, \u201cAmen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place.\u201d None of it would pass away, but all of it would be fulfilled. That brings us to the second way Jesus brings it to completion, by linking the whole law to its purpose. Later in St. Matthew\u2019s Gospel, Jesus would say, in response to a lawyer\u2019s question about the greatest commandment of all 613 in the Mosaic Law, \u201cYou shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.\u201d Then he added: \u201cThe whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.\u201d Everything is meant to help us to love God and love others, something that those who look at the law as a burden don\u2019t grasp.\u00a0Since Jesus\u2019 kingdom is a kingdom of love, that\u2019s why he would add:\u00a0\u201cTherefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments\u00a0and teaches others to do so\u00a0will be called least in the Kingdom of heaven.\u00a0But whoever obeys and teaches these commandments\u00a0will be called greatest in the Kingdom of heaven.\u201d The greatest in the kingdom loves and teaches others to love. The least is one who doesn\u2019t and sets a scandalous example for others. And we know that God\u2019s love for us is, and our love for others must always be, merciful.<\/li>\n<li>The third way I&#8217;ll get to in a minute, but I want to stop to incorporate how the\u00a0two saints we celebrate today were great in the way Jesus describes. SS. Perpetua\u2019s and Felicity\u2019s stories are particularly relevant for the Sisters of Life, because they were both young mothers, martyred in the northern African city of Carthage. But they were spiritual mothers, too, for the early Church and still for us today, breastfeeding us on their heroic faith. The account of their martyrdom is one of the great hagiological treasures of the early Church, because Perpetua wrote of their sufferings in detail the day before their death, and eyewitness accounts of their martyrdom were immediately spread around the early Church. These accounts were so highly regarded by the early Christians that St. Augustine needed to remind them that they should not be treated during Mass with the same reverence as the readings from Sacred Scriptures. Perpetua was a 22 year-old newlywed and mother of a small child and Felicity was a young married slave pregnant with her first child. They were arrested as catechumens and baptized in prison awaiting execution. They both knew that to profess Christianity was a \u201ccrime\u201d punishable by death, but they were undeterred.\u00a0Perpetua\u2019s father, an old man and a pagan, tried all means imaginable to get his daughter to save her life by saying a prayer and making a small sacrifice to the pagan gods. He first begged her to have mercy on his white hair. As deeply as Perpetua loved her father, Perpetua replied, \u201cI cannot call myself by any other name than what I am \u2014 a Christian.\u201d She knew the faith was a treasure and she wasn&#8217;t going to be ashamed of it. She observed Jesus&#8217; teaching that we must pick up our Cross and follow him, we must become like the grain of wheat and fall to the ground and die, we must &#8220;lose&#8221; our life in order to save it, we must acknowledge Christ before others and he will acknowledge us before the Heavenly Father. Her father in desperation tried violently to shake her, but he wasn\u2019t able to shake her of her fidelity. Finally he brought her much-loved baby boy, saying, \u201cLook upon your son who cannot live after you are gone,\u201d and throwing himself at her feet begged her with tears not to bring such dishonor on their whole family. Perpetua wrote of how much she grieved for her father and family, but entrusted herself to God, whom she knew loved her family even more than she did and would take care of them should she die for love of him. When she was led before the procurator of the province, Hilarian, he tried all the same tactics of the threats of torture, of the pain of her father, of the ruin that would come to her son. But none worked. Upon his query, \u201cAre you a Christian,\u201d she answered resolutely, \u201cYes, I am.\u201d\u00a0 She was sentenced to be killed by wild boars, cows, leopards, bears and gladiators in a spectacle for bloodthirsty soldiers.\u00a0Alongside her on the altar of the arena was Felicity. Because she was pregnant when captured, she feared that she might not be able to give the supreme witness of her love for Christ, because in general Romans did not execute women who were pregnant lest they execute a child for the \u201ccrime\u201d of the mother. She asked some clandestine Christians, however, to pray for an early childbirth and her prayers were answered. She gave birth to a girl whom two of her fellow Christians adopted. As she was being led into the ampitheater, she was singing triumphal psalms and rejoicing that she had so quickly passed \u201cfrom the midwife to the gladiator, to wash after the pangs of childbirth in a second baptism.\u201d She was to be baptized in the same baptism of blood for which Jesus once longed and said, \u201cThere is a baptism with which I must be baptized, and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished!\u201d (Lk 12:50). She was renewing her baptismal commitments as she was heading to the fulfillment of baptism. She was, to quote St. Paul in his letter to the Romans, being baptized into Christ&#8217;s death so as to share in his resurrection. The procurator set a savage cow upon Felicity and Perpetua. The cow violently threw Perpetua down on her back, tearing her tunic and disheveling her hair. Perpetua got up and quickly pinned her hair, since letting one\u2019s hair down in the ancient world was a universal sign of mourning. In the meantime, the cow had gone after Felicity and had brutally tossed her on the ground. Perpetua ran over to her and helped her up the cow ran away. They stood awaiting another attack, but none came. They turned to the crowd and shouted to the Christians among them, as great teachers and observers of the wondrous gift of faith, \u201cStand fast in the faith and love one another, and do not let our sufferings be a stumbling block to you.\u201d They gave each other the kiss of peace, and since the cow wouldn\u2019t kill them, the gladiators were dispatched to pierce them with a sword and send them to God. They then completed their earthly journey of faith soon after their baptism. Their faith came to perfection, as did their hope and love. And they gave the ultimate witness of keeping Christ&#8217;s words and teaching others to do the same.<\/li>\n<li>This leads us to the third way that Jesus seeks to fulfill the law: by enfleshing it and allowing us to enter into communion with the Word-made-flesh as it takes on our flesh as it did in the life of SS. Felicity and Perpetua. God himself entered into the world, precisely so that he could teach us by example how to fulfill the law by following him in fulfilling it. And this incarnation continues in the Eucharist. This is a truth that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger wrote about in a beautiful book of Eucharistic essays called\u00a0<em>God Is Near Us.\u00a0<\/em>He said, \u201c\u2018What great nation is there that has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is to us, whenever we call upon him? This passage from the Old Testament has found its ultimate depth of meaning in the eucharistic presence of the Lord.\u00a0But its earlier meaning is not thereby abolished, but merely purified and exalted. \u2026 In the chapter of the book of Deuteronomy from which this passage is taken, the marvelous closeness of God is seen above all in the law he has given to Israel through Moses. Through the law he makes himself permanently available, as it were, for the questions of his people. Through the law he can always be spoken with by Israel; she can call on him, and he answers. Through the law he offers Israel the opportunity to build a social and political order that breaks new ground. Through the law he makes Israel wise and shows her the way a man should live, so as to live aright. In the law Israel experiences the close presence of God; he has, as it were, drawn back the veil from the riddles of human life and replied to the obscure questionings of men of all ages: Where do we come from? Where are we going? What must we do? \u2026\u00a0For man, the will of God is not a foreign force of exterior origin, but the actual orientation of his own being. Thus the revelation of God\u2019s will is the revelation of what our own being truly wishes-it is a gift. So we should learn anew to be grateful that in the word of God the will of God and the meaning of our own existence have been communicated to us. God\u2019s presence in the word and his presence in the Eucharist belong together, inseparably. The eucharistic Lord is himself the living Word. Only if we are living in the sphere of God\u2019s Word can we properly comprehend and properly receive the gift of the Eucharist.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>We Christians should be able to say, \u201cWhat people has a God so near it as the Lord is to us in the holy Eucharist?\u201d That we would be able to say with wonder and gratitude to be able to have the Lord with us, for example, in Eucharistic adoration, that we could come to spend time with him and have him, as Cardinal Ratzinger says, reveal the meaning of our existence to us, that we\u2019re that loved. But our wonder and gratitude should go even further. We\u2019re not only able to draw near to God who through the incarnation has come close to us. We can actually receive him on the inside. We can enter into Holy Communion with him. St. John Vianney used to say that if we had been given a thousand wishes by God we should never had asked him to take on our nature, share our life totally, die on the Cross for us, rise from the dead, and give us his own body and blood to consume, but what we would never have dreamed request, he in his loving mercy has in fact done. Not only should we never forget that gift, but, like SS. Perpetua and Felicity, we should seek to live always in conformity with it and teach others to do the same!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>These were the readings for today\u2019s Mass:\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<div>\n<h4>Reading 1<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.usccb.org\/bible\/deuteronomy\/4:1\">DT 4:1, 5-9<\/a><\/h4>\n<div>Moses spoke to the people and said:<br \/>\n\u201cNow, Israel, hear the statutes and decrees<br \/>\nwhich I am teaching you to observe,<br \/>\nthat you may live, and may enter in and take possession of the land<br \/>\nwhich the LORD, the God of your fathers, is giving you.<br \/>\nTherefore, I teach you the statutes and decrees<br \/>\nas the LORD, my God, has commanded me,<br \/>\nthat you may observe them in the land you are entering to occupy.<br \/>\nObserve them carefully,<br \/>\nfor thus will you give evidence<br \/>\nof your wisdom and intelligence to the nations,<br \/>\nwho will hear of all these statutes and say,<br \/>\n\u2018This great nation is truly a wise and intelligent people.\u2019<br \/>\nFor what great nation is there<br \/>\nthat has gods so close to it as the LORD, our God, is to us<br \/>\nwhenever we call upon him?<br \/>\nOr what great nation has statutes and decrees<br \/>\nthat are as just as this whole law<br \/>\nwhich I am setting before you today?<\/div>\n<div>\u201cHowever, take care and be earnestly on your guard<br \/>\nnot to forget the things which your own eyes have seen,<br \/>\nnor let them slip from your memory as long as you live,<br \/>\nbut teach them to your children and to your children\u2019s children.\u201d<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<h4>Responsorial Psalm<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.usccb.org\/bible\/psalms\/147:12\">PS 147:12-13, 15-16, 19-20<\/a><\/h4>\n<div>R. (12a)\u00a0Praise the Lord, Jerusalem.<br \/>\nGlorify the LORD, O Jerusalem;<br \/>\npraise your God, O Zion.<br \/>\nFor he has strengthened the bars of your gates;<br \/>\nhe has blessed your children within you.<br \/>\nR.\u00a0Praise the Lord, Jerusalem.<br \/>\nHe sends forth his command to the earth;<br \/>\nswiftly runs his word!<br \/>\nHe spreads snow like wool;<br \/>\nfrost he strews like ashes.<br \/>\nR.\u00a0Praise the Lord, Jerusalem.<br \/>\nHe has proclaimed his word to Jacob,<br \/>\nhis statutes and his ordinances to Israel.<br \/>\nHe has not done thus for any other nation;<br \/>\nhis ordinances he has not made known to them.<br \/>\nR.\u00a0Praise the Lord, Jerusalem.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<h4>Gospel<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.usccb.org\/bible\/matthew\/5:17\">MT 5:17-19<\/a><\/h4>\n<div>Jesus said to his disciples:<br \/>\n\u201cDo not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.<br \/>\nI have come not to abolish but to fulfill.<br \/>\nAmen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away,<br \/>\nnot the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter<br \/>\nwill pass from the law,<br \/>\nuntil all things have taken place.<br \/>\nTherefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments<br \/>\nand teaches others to do so<br \/>\nwill be called least in the Kingdom of heaven.<br \/>\nBut whoever obeys and teaches these commandments<br \/>\nwill be called greatest in the Kingdom of heaven.\u201d<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/catholicpreaching.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/12987648725_7f373077b8_b.jpg?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-15205\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/catholicpreaching.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/12987648725_7f373077b8_b.jpg?resize=225%2C300&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fr. Roger J. Landry Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan Wednesday of the Third Week of Lent Memorial of SS. Perpetual and Felicity March 7, 2018 Deut 4:1.5-9, Ps 147, Mt 5:17-19 &nbsp; To listen to an audio recording of today\u2019s homily, please click below:\u00a0 &nbsp; The following points were attempted in the [&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":[242,3467,5180,5183,5184,7954,5182,5181,7955,316,1743,2093,9408,1500,1761,2234,10856,1710,7956,5185,2105],"class_list":["post-15204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2017-2018-year-ii","category-audio-homily","category-homily","category-year-ii","tag-baptism","tag-cardinal-ratzinger","tag-deut-41-5-9","tag-gift-of-gods-word","tag-god-is-with-us","tag-greatest-in-the-kingdom","tag-greatness-in-gods-kingdom","tag-law","tag-least-in-the-kingdom","tag-lent","tag-martyrdom","tag-moses","tag-mt-2234-39","tag-mt-517-19","tag-pope-benedict","tag-ps-147","tag-ss-perpetual-and-felicity","tag-st-john-vianney","tag-teach-me-your-ways-o-lord","tag-teaching-others","tag-the-eucharist"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Greatness of the Gift We Have, 3rd Wednesday of Lent, March 7, 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\/the-greatness-of-the-gift-we-have-3rd-wednesday-of-lent-march-7-2018\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Greatness of the Gift We Have, 3rd Wednesday of Lent, March 7, 2018 - Catholic Preaching\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Fr. Roger J. Landry Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan Wednesday of the Third Week of Lent Memorial of SS. Perpetual and Felicity March 7, 2018 Deut 4:1.5-9, Ps 147, Mt 5:17-19 &nbsp; To listen to an audio recording of today\u2019s homily, please click below:\u00a0 &nbsp; The following points were attempted in the [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/catholicpreaching.com\/wp\/the-greatness-of-the-gift-we-have-3rd-wednesday-of-lent-march-7-2018\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Catholic Preaching\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2018-03-07T14:31:23+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2018-03-16T13:52:59+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/catholicpreaching.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/12987648725_7f373077b8_b-225x300.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Fr. 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