Fr. Roger J. LandryVisitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, ManhattanTuesday of the 27th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of St. Faustina Kowalska, Bl. Francis Xavier Seelos, Bl. Bartolo LongoOctober 5, 2021Jon 3:1-10, Ps 130, Lk 10:38-42

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.5.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

In today’s first reading, we have the famous scene of the preaching of Jonah in Nineveh, a frightening thing for him that, as we saw yesterday, got him to try to flee to the most western part of the known planet. The image was a powerful reminder to the post-exilic Jews about the rebuilding not merely of the Temple but of the faith of the Jews after the return from Babylon, which is one of the reasons why Jesus used the story of Jonah to refer to his own death and resurrection. When Jonah began to preach, there was extraordinary response. People converted on day one of hearing him say, “Forty more days and Nineveh will be destroyed.” It spread immediately through a city it would take three days to traverse, and every creature, from the King to the animals, repented in sackcloth and ashes. We should remember, when we’re intimidated to proclaim the Gospel to others, that while some may refuse and reject it, others may respond in ways far greater than we could have ever imagined. As we contemplate this scene, we should also remember how Jesus used it in the Gospel with regard to the cities of Chorazin, Capernaum and Bethsaida, reminding them that “There is a greater than Jonah here,” and summoning them to a conversion even more profound.

That leads us to today’s Gospel, as the Lord gently brings Martha to conversion. On July 29 each year — now finally together with her siblings Mary and Lazarus! — we celebrate Saint Martha’s feast day, but she still needed conversion. While she was seeking to love the Lord, working hard to prepare a meal for him, she was “anxious and worried about many things.” Jesus reminded her, “Only one thing is necessary,” and then told her to choose that “better part” as her sister Mary had done. It’s an illustration of what Jesus affirmed in yesterday’s Gospel to the Scribe, when the Scribe said that the most important thing we have to do is to love God with all our mind, heart, soul and strength. Often we are worried and anxious about many good things, but we have to choose the one thing necessary and better, namely, to do everything for, with, through, and in Jesus, beginning by letting him do what he wants to do in us. What Mary grasped that Martha didn’t is that Jesus had come to their home primarily to feed and not to be fed, to serve rather than to be served, and it was Mary who grasped that and sat at his feet as he not only fed her with the nourishment of his word and presence. Similarly as we look at our day and all the good things we need to do, Jesus, the-greater-than-Jonah, is calling us to remember the “one thing” and choose it. He’s calling us to unity of life. He’s summoning us to keep our attention on him, rather than on all of the other good things we we think we have to do, if we really have to do them. For all of us in our Christian lives, we are interiorly drawn and quartered by so many different aims, projects, tasks, hopes, etc. Jesus is calling us to convert to simplicity, to know that he cares for us, to know that his Father provides, to know that whatever we do, in word or in deed, we’re called to do in his name.

* Today the Church marks the feast of three people who are signs and divine instruments to us of that call to conversion and about how the Greater-than-Jonah comes to feed us with his mercy and grace so that we may be able to choose the better part.