Homily for Mass in Celebration of Jubilarians in Consecrated Life
4th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year “A”
Introduction
If we take a long walk through the history of God’s people going back to ancient times and up today, we can see that the consistent story of God’s people is one of the repeated need for purification. Purification necessarily brings with it a message of judgment, and so we often hear from the prophets of old a proclamation of God’s judgment against His people. But it is a message of judgment that is coupled with one of hope, which underscores the whole point of purification: that God’s people may be restored to friendship with Him.
Purification
Such is the case with the prophet Zephaniah, from whom we hear in our first reading for Mass today. Zephaniah received the call to be God’s prophet in the kingdom of Judah (in the south) at the end of the seventh century BC, when Israel to the north had been invaded and occupied by their powerful neighbors to the east, Assyria. Judah itself, though, was feeling the pressure, and had become subservient to its powerful neighbor and had succumbed to the pagan worship of their false gods.
The passage we heard in the first reading is the end of a long message of judgment: first against the enemies of God’s Chosen People, and then against God’s people themselves, and specifically against Jerusalem, for living in violation of the covenant their God had made with them. And then comes the message of hope, as we heard today: God will leave a remnant, “a people humble and lowly, who… shall do no wrong and speak no lies.”
And so it would come to pass: about forty years later Jerusalem would indeed be invaded and conquered by the Babylonians, the whole city razed to the ground and all that was sacred profaned. The remnant left behind would be the poor ones, those whom the conquerors deemed not worthy to be deported and brought into their own country. They were in such a condition that they could not but know and understand their utter dependence upon God. These are the ones who are the “humble of the earth, who… seek God’s justice and seek humility.” These are the poor ones, the remnant of which Zephaniah speaks, the anawim, as they are named in the Hebrew Bible. They are the hope for the rebuilding of Jerusalem.
Poor in Spirit
From this we can understand what our Lord means to teach us as he begins the proclamation of the Beatitudes. Remember that they are called “Beatitudes” because they are the virtues, or holy habits, that make for a blessed life, a life of the happiness that God wishes us to have with Him. The first Beatitude is first because it is key to all the rest: “poor in spirit.” The word for “poor” here, ftochoí, is the same Greek word used to translate the Hebrew word anawim in the Greek version of the Old Testament. It is not material poverty referred to here, then, but rather the spiritual disposition which material poverty make more readily achievable for those wise enough to learn from it: the recognition of one’s utter dependence upon God.
The poor in spirit are the ones who make themselves poor in this sense, and so open themselves to the grace God gives to enable us to acquire the virtues that make for a happy life, virtues such as meekness, mourning over one’s sins (that is, repentance), living according to God’s truth and seeking justice, showing mercy, purity and single-hearted love for God, serving as God’s instruments of peace, and bearing suffering for the sake of Christ.
Now, while the whole history of God’s people is marked by the need of judgment in order to bring about repentance and restore hope, God does not abandon His people and leave them to fend for themselves. In every age He sends points of light, prophets and saints who serve as little directional signs, you might say, to guide His people into the right way of living, the way of beatitude that leads to communion with Him.
Gratitude to the Religious
Which brings us to what we are about today: honoring those who are celebrating milestone jubilarian anniversaries in the consecrated life. These are the ones who have freely chosen to make themselves poor in spirit, abandoning self-interest and shirking any worldly pursuit and comfort in order to live with utter dependence on God and single-hearted devotion to fulfilling what God calls them to do with their lives. That spiritual disposition allows God to work unimaginable great and holy works of mercy and justice in our midst, such as:
- Angela Merici (whose feast day we just celebrated a few days ago), foundress of the Ursuline sisters, who already around the year 1600 pioneered education for poor girls, something that hitherto had been unavailable to them and something no one had thought of;
- Madeline Sophie Barat who, in the wake of the chaos and persecution of the Church during the French Revolution and its aftermath in the nineteenth century, founded the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary for the education of young women, pioneering the idea of higher education for women – institutions of higher education for women, founded by women and run by women, more of what the true revolution was at that time in the world;
- Jean Jugan who, in the same post-revolutionary France, took in a poor woman living on the streets into her apartment, which eventually led her to found the Little Sisters of the Poor, women who make themselves poor in order to live with and serve the elderly poor.
Closer to home, congregations of consecrated religious women have been an integral and indispensable part of the life of this Archdiocese from the very beginning. The Archdiocese of San Francisco would not be what it is today without them. If you think about what the first Archbishop of San Francisco, Joseph Sadoc Alemany, faced when he came here in 1853, you can appreciate the daunting challenge before him. It is thanks to congregations of women religious who accepted his invitation and came to the rescue in assisting him with addressing the widespread disease, poverty and depravity that marked this area at that time. In addition to those congregations I already mentioned, there were Dominican Sisters, Notre Dame de Namur Sisters, Daughters of Charity, Presentation Sisters, Mercy Sisters, the Archdiocesan-founded Sisters of the Holy Family, and more recently the Missionaries of Charity sisters – among many others – who formed the safety net of social services and built a continuing legacy of Catholic education
These were joined by congregations of men as well, most notably the De La Salle Christian Brothers and orders of priests and friars such at the Dominican, the Jesuits, the Franciscans, the Salesians and the Paulists. And while this legacy continues to this day, these congregations continue to come to the rescue in facing the new challenges of our own time, such as providing care for those who are unhoused, hospice care for those suffering from HIV-AIDS, and working to abolish the horrendous scourge of human trafficking.
Conclusion
Perhaps it is ironic that we honor them, for they did not accept this vocation from God in order to be honored, but, on the contrary, to make themselves poor in spirit, seeking the righteousness of God with meekness and humility. To our beloved religious I say: we want to honor you, anyway, because it gives us great joy to do so! It is just a very small and – albeit sincere – nonetheless woefully inadequate expression of our thanks for all you do and, even more, all you are for us.
You are the directional sign posts that God gives us to point us in the right direction, the direction that leads to the life of beatitude. Thanks to you the Beatitudes do not remain just an abstract concept, but through you we see them lived out in the concrete circumstances of life. We pray that many young people may follow your example and accept this extraordinary vocation to become anawim. And that each of us will follow your example by living out the virtues of the blessed life, in accordance with our own vocation and state in life.
With gratitude in our hearts, then, we now proceed to the rite of renewal of vows for our jubilarian religious present with us today.
Photo: Mark Wilson
