Fr. Roger J. Landry

Convent of St. Birgit Vikingsborg Retreat House, Darien, CT

Retreat Day for the Teachers and Staff of Regina Pacis Academy

Wednesday of the 20th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of St. Rose of Lima

August 23, 2023

Judges 9:6-15, Ps 21, Mt 20:1-16

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/8.23.23_Homily.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today during this Day of Recollection in preparation for the upcoming school year, we enter more deeply into the school of the Master, who today teaches us a couple of important lessons about his kingdom.

* The first is that we need to desire him to rule. In the first reading from the Book of Judges, we see how when we don’t want the Lord to rule over us, we will be vulnerable to being ruled by rogues and basically even by the devil in disguise. Throughout the desert, God was teaching the Israelites to obey him and let him lead them, but they often resisted, longing to return to Egypt in slavery under Pharaoh rather than trust in the Lord. After they crossed into the Promised Land, they often totally forgot the Lord or rebelled against him. The Lord routinely raised up judges to deliver them, to show them how to obey him anew, to call them to conversion, but as soon as the judges died they rebelled again. After Gideon (as we would have seen yesterday if we didn’t celebrate the Coronation) defeated 135,000 Midianites with 300 soldiers, they asked him to rule over them, but he reminded them that they already had a ruler, God himself. But as soon as he died, his son by a concubine, Abimelech, desirous of being king and knowing that the people wanted someone to rule over them, decided to seize the opportunity and kill all seventy of his half-brothers and assume the throne. He killed 69, with only his youngest half-brother Jotham escaping. And the carnage was just beginning. Later he would burn down the tower with various elders meeting in it, wiping them out in the process. Those who want to rule like a god rather than a servant of God often cannot tolerate any other sources of authority, which is what we’ve seen with tyrants across the centuries and how they’ve persecuted the Church, religious believers in general and all those who follow a conscience rather than their whims. But the people basically accepted Abimelech’s homicidal rule. Eventually Jothan, his half-brother, would come out from hiding, go to the top of Mount Gerizim, and give the parable we hear in today’s first reading. The trees wanted a ruler, but the olive tree, the fig tree, and the vine refused, and so they got the buckthorn, representing Abimelech, who replied, “‘If you wish to anoint me king over you in good faith, come and take refuge in my shadow. Otherwise, let fire come from the buckthorn and devour the cedars of Lebanon.’” It was his shadow, not God’s, and anyone not beholden to him was fit to be burned down and devoured. The same history would take place later with the Jews in the desire for a king. They wanted to be like the other nations rather than singularly the Lord’s special people. Eventually they got Saul who himself would become a paranoid megalomaniac. They were susceptible to getting the leaders they deserved precisely because they were intent not to have the Lord rule them. They wanted to decide. There are still many lessons for us about our own political leaders, especially today when a presidential debate will take place, and what we get when we begin to think not about how individuals can help create the context for everyone to follow God’s lead, but rather about how to take the place of God.

* The second lesson about the kingdom is given in the Gospe...