Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Chapel of the Sisters of LIfe, Manhattan

Thursday of the First Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Hilary of Poitiers, Bishop and Doctor

January 13, 2022

1 Sam 4:1-11, Ps 44, Mk 1:40-45

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.13.22_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* One of the great dangers in living the faith is the temptation to manipulate God for our own ends. This temptation obviously can affect those with no or very little faith: “If you really exist, then show it by working this miracle I ask of you.” But it can also affect those who have faith, who are very familiar with God. Egocentrism can invade our relationship and rather than truly worshipping God, seeking his will, his kingdom, his glory — and seeking them as our great priorities — we seek our own will, kingdom and glory, and seek God’s really only to the extent that it doesn’t get in the way of our own or seemingly advances our own. It’s important for us always to examine the rectitude of our intention when it comes to God and, as a litmus test, to examine whether we’re actually seeking his will in action with a pure heart. Today’s readings help us to examine this reality in depth.

* In today’s first reading, the Israelites, who were not being faithful to God, were fighting against the Philistines. The Israelites had suffered a defeat but then immediately said, “Let us fetch the ark of the Lord from Shiloh, that it may go into battle among us and save us from the grasp of our enemies.” They wanted to use the Ark of Covenant as a magical object to bring them earthly victory. They essentially wanted to use God for their ends, rather than stopping with reverence to ask what were God’s ends. And when they came to the Temple to “fetch” the Ark, Phinehas and Hophni, the two sons of Eli, just let them take it. They were supposed to be guardians of the Ark, but we know that their presence in the Temple of Shiloh, their proximity to this great reminder and instantiation of God’s saving power in the history of the people of Israel, hadn’t transformed them for the better. They were corrupt: sexually abusing women who had come to adore at the temple and seeking to profit financially from people’s desire to serve God. And so priests and people — in short, almost everyone — were just trying to use God for their own purposes rather than seeking and doing his will. God allowed the Philistines to triumph, we can say, at his own expense, out of a just mercy meant to bring the Israelites to conversion, rather than allow them to persevere in such manipulation. Since the Israelites had brought the Ark into battle, “God” himself was being defeated as 30,000 Israelites were slain and the ark was stolen. But just like on Good Friday, God permitted it in order ultimately to convert and save.

* In the Responsorial Psalm we see the first step of their Redemption, but the prayer still oozes with spiritual subjectivism, with a focus on themselves rather than God. Rather than being crestfallen at how they have dishonored God and sullied his name among the peoples, they were concerned principally about their own: “Now you have cast us off and put us in disgrace, and you go not forth with our armies. You have let us be driven back by our foes; those who hated us plundered us at will. You made us the reproach of our neighbors, the mockery and the scorn of those around us. You made us a byword among the nations, a laughingstock among the peoples. Why do you hide your face, forgetting our woe and our oppression?” They were trying to guilt trip God to act, when it was their own sins that had divided them from the Lord.