Fr. Roger J. Landry

Chapel of the Vincentian Seminary, Krakow, POland

Tertio Millennio Seminar

Wednesday of the 13th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

July 5, 2023

Gen 21:5.8-10, Ps 34, Mt 8:28-34

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/7.5.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* One of the most important things we need to learn as Christians is how to handle rejection. Today’s readings teach us how God seeks to bring good even out of being spurned by those who should accept us.

* We find it first in the banishment of Hagar and Ishmael. Sarah, despite having been blessed miraculously by God with her first son in her nineties, rather than being filled with gratitude was consumed by envy. Seeing her servant Hagar, whom she had given to Abraham as a concubine when she had lost hope that God would fulfill his promise to make Abraham a dad and the father of many nations, and who had become with Abraham the parents of Ishmael, she demanded of Abraham: “Drive out that slave and her son!” Abraham was deeply distressed and we hope would have refused. But God said to him, “Do not be distressed about the boy or about your slave woman. Heed the demands of Sarah, no matter what she is asking of you; for it is through Isaac that descendants shall bear your name. As for the son of the slave woman, I will make a great nation of him also, since he too is your offspring.” God reiterated that promise to the exiled Hagar a little later, when she was afraid for their survival in the desert. God told her, “Don’t be afraid; God has heard the boy’s cry in this plight of his. Arise, lift up the boy and hold him by the hand; for I will make of him a great nation.” Much like God provided a well in the middle of the desert for their survival, so God, Genesis tells us, “was with the boy as he grew up.” Envy exiled the two of them, but God is the Lord of all the earth, and he brought good out of the evil they suffered.

* We see something similar in the Gospel. Jesus entered into the pagan region of the Decapolis on the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee and he is met in the territory of the Gadarenes by two savage demoniacs. They had been banished by their fellows to live among the tombs. The demons within them called Jesus “the Son of God” and asked, “What have you to do with us?” His very presence was tormenting them. Jesus was going to cure them to restore them not only to their self-possession but to the community. The demons, about to be exorcised, begged Jesus at least to allow them to inhabit the swine that was present, which Jesus then commanded. As soon as they invaded the swine, however, all of them were rushed into the Sea of Galilee and drowned, a sign of two things: first how many and how powerful the demons were that were dwelling within the men; and second how they were seeking, as they always do, to destroy the men. After the men were liberated, the whole town came out to meet Jesus, not rejoicing but upset at the loss of their pigs. Rather that ask the Holy One of God to free them from other manifestations of infernal power, rather than thank him for restoring two of their own, rather than inviting him in to get to know him and how he was able to do such a deed, they “begged him to leave their district.” They didn’t want the holiness of God around. They actually preferred their pigs. They preferred their life as it was. They were indeed under the sway of the evil one, though in less savage form than the two demoniacs. In response to the rejection of Jesus by the Gadarenes, Jesus wants us to unite ourselves to him, especially in our rejection. He is the stone rejected by the builders who has become the cornerstone.