Homily for the 22nd Sunday of the Year

Heroic virtue begins with humility

This coming Wednesday, young people from our parish and St Dominic’s Priory School will receive the Sacrament of Confirmation. And, with it (as we know) a growth in Christian maturity. Receiving the seven-fold gifts of the Spirit, they will be made more perfectly ready to be witnesses to the truth. In the early Church, this responsibility to be a witness – in Greek, a martyr – often called the initiate to prove their loyalty through opposition, persecution and even threat of death: it was as though through the roboratur (the “strengthening”, as Irenaeus called it) received in Confirmation, the neophyte was made ready to die for Christ. In the older Roman Rite, though it is still practiced in some places, the bishop would give each confirmand a light slap on the cheek, called the alapa. This gentle tap came right after the words “Pax tecum” (“Peace be with you”) and symbolised that the newly confirmed was now a soldier of Christ, ready to endure hardship, opposition, or even martyrdom for the faith. Being faithful to Christ will bring difficulties in world that is often so opposed to truth.

Even without the immediate or constant threat of martyrdom, there are challenges against a rightly-ordered self-love, against our love of neighbour and our love of God. They are especially prevalent in the lives of young people, but no-one is really exempt from them. In Our Lord and Our Lady, we find the perfection of virtues – even the source and dispenser of them all; we can turn again and again to the saints for inspiration and prayers. This is because the saints show us what the Church calls heroic virtue: they lived, as Pope Benedict XIV defined it, a life so transformed by the virtues that even the ordinary moments of daily life became habitually conformed to grace. It is in heroic virtue that the Lord nurtures His Own good gifts to us, and keeps them safe to a superlative degree.

Let’s consider then, in the lives of three saints, what price a rightly-ordered love of self, of God and of neighbour could be.

(a) A rightly-ordered self-love in St Lucy

When St Lucy (whose name we will hear in the Eucharistic Prayer) was tempted to give up her purity to a pagan suitor who demanded it, she reaffirmed the exclusive orientation of her body to God. She consecrated her purity to Him, and she would not compromise in this. She understood that her own self-love didn’t revolve around her own choices about her body; her body, not her choice – but God’s will, and her choice in union with Him. And so she chooses a heavenly vision of her body, rather than an earthly one – and she receives the martyr’s palm.

(b) A rightly-ordered love of God in St Tarcisius

 A century before, when the Offering of Holy Mass is still a crime in the Empire, saw many opportunities for suffering for a rightly-ordered love of God. The Roman teenager Tarcisius was not immune to this summons. He displayed so great a devotion to the Holy Eucharist that he was asked to carry (in secret) the Blessed Sacrament through the streets to bring the Divine Physician to the sick of the city. Thinking the bag around his neck was an earthly treasure, some mobsters attack him, demanding that he yield over what he carried with devotion; he refused, treating his custody of the Treasure of the Altar seriously. He will not lose the Lord; he prefers to lose his life for love of Him instead. And so he is beaten to death for love of God, present in the Most Holy Eucharist. His supernaturally inspired love of the Bridegroom-made-present exceeds the natural love of self; he is strong enough, even though so young, to defend the Sacred Mysteries with his own life.

(c) A rightly-ordered love of others in St Maximilian Kolbe

Just recently, on the eve of the traditional date of the Assumption, we celebrated the feast of the Martyr of Auschwitz, whose own devotion to Our Lady and the Blessed Sacrament would have been sufficient proofs of his holiness. Nonetheless, under an evil regime, he is imprisoned in the concentration camp; here, his love for God is concentrated in a single moment of self-sacrifice, taking the place of another prisoner for love of God: “Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends”. His rightly-ordered love of neighbour drove St Maximilian to choose the other over himself.

But where do they gain the strength to live this way?

What is it that causes the saints to choose a rightly-ordered love of self, of God and of neighbour? Despite the many opportunities that exist in a selfish world today for being “self-made”, a rags-to-riches influencer, or being the “greatest of all time”, the First Reading reminds us that a humble, honest submission of our own weakness before God, Who is more than a giver of gifts, will bring us to find favour with God. And what will that favour bring? The Psalmist sees the orphan familied, the widow defended, the homeless sheltered and captives set free: God’s favour, His grace, brings about substantial change for those who rely on Him for help. It’s Our Lord’s Own words that recall to us what God demands: we take the lowest place, not trusting in our own goodness, and God summons us to a greater exercise of perfection: “Friend, ascend higher”. Friend: lean into grace, and do more; friend: forget your own weakness, lowness, insufficiency and let Me guide you to something more; let Me guide you to Myself.

And where will the Lord take us? Here, to Mount Sion, to what we hardly can bring ourselves to touch even with consecrated hands, made present not in fire, but in a blaze of prayer – the very Presence of God in the Holy Eucharist. Against this gift, no worldly reality can dare to compete: even the great phenomena of the world are humbled by the majesty of what we are invited to witness with countless angels in this festal gathering: to see Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, made present amongst us. The same Jesus, Who reorders of self-love, Who is the God we adore, and Who commands us to lay down our lives for others.

But how will we get to this place? We can’t be heroes without humility; we can’t have access to the feast at Jerusalem without coming first to the Golgotha; we can’t be a witness to the Truth, while still bearing the burden of a lie. The hero’s humility is grown in the confessional – there, being honest about our weaknesses and failings, with heroic honesty, the Lord Who has called us to go higher takes us there Himself through the words of absolution. We lower ourselves; He raises us up. He readies us there for Wedding Feast, in which He is both Host and servant, Priest and Victim, the True Hero Who chose the Cross for us.

Can we be heroes too?

And us? In response to such great love, can we choose to live heroically, after coming humbly to God for help? Will we go often to Confession, where God is preparing our hearts to be the witnesses of this great miracle of the Heavenly Jerusalem here on an earthly altar? With St Lucy, are we willing to die rather than commit an act of impurity? With St Tarcisius, are we willing to lose ourselves rather than lose even a crumb of the Sacred Host, in which is contained our salvation? With St Maximilian, can we willingly choose the other, above ourselves, even to the point of laying down our lives, just as the Lord has done so for us?

We could if we were humble enough to know we can’t achieve that without God’s help. And so in that school of humility, the Lord will make us heroes.

We might say that those examples are too extreme. This may be true, though they have been achieved. We can be consoled in knowing there is also heroic virtue even in simple things of life. Less Netflix, more prayer, pausing even at a cliffhanger to make our nightly examination of conscience before bed. We elect the Divine Office over the parish office; we choose the parish office over our own recreation during working hours. We sacrifice our time on Saturday afternoon to Adoration, preferring it even to the sport on television. In these choices, we’re invited to display what can feel like heroic virtue.

We choose to patient, with less (or no!) cursing, especially in traffic. As children, we’re patient with our forgetful parents, who ask too many times for us to do chores; as parents, we’re patient with the children, even after the hundredth time of asking. We choose to invest our time and gifts where they’re most needed, like the formation of priests; let’s pray ardently for priests to be faithful, and for God to soften the hearts of young men to hear His call to be conformed to Christ, the Great High Priest. To pray for the needs of others, especially when we have so much to ask of the Lord, can be heroic, too.

Be heroic. Be humble. Orient all things to God, Who brings real and substantial change in hearts that are opened to Him. Here, we will aim to be more than examples or witnesses; here, we allow the Lord to make us saints.

Let’s pray for our young people, soon to receive the Sacrament of Confirmation, for their teachers, and for each of us – to be humble heroes, after the example of the saints, who imitate the Lord in His love. May our Blessed Lady, the icon of humility and an obedient hero in the history of salvation, pray for us who want to be heirs of heaven – God’s heroes and saints. Amen.