February 20, 2025

Sunday 16 February 2025

6th Sunday During the Year – Year C

Homily by Father Emmanuel Schwab

1st reading: Jeremiah 17,5-8

Psalm: 1, -2, 3, 4.6

2th reading: 1 Corinthians 15,12.16-20

Gospel: Luke 6,17.20:26-XNUMX

Click here to download and print the text in pdf

In Saint Therese, we find little mention of the resurrection of Jesus or of the risen Christ. This is probably because Therese never ceases to dialogue with him, and her faith in the risen Christ constantly shines through in her way of living with Jesus on a daily basis. The exchange that Therese constantly maintains with the Lord Jesus is the exchange between two living beings. I would almost want to say: Jesus is so risen in Therese's eyes that he is truly her traveling companion, even if, on many occasions, his presence is silent and even hidden from Therese's eyes. It is by faith that she lives with him. It is by faith that Jesus has become her treasure, and one could even say her only treasure.

In the Gospel of Luke, the version of what we call the Beatitudes is different from that of Saint Matthew. It is probably originally the same teaching of the Lord that is reported to us in two different ways. The translation that we have heard adds a little word that gives an interpretation of the first of the Beatitudes and that seems to me to limit its meaning; for we have heard “blessed you the poor”. This is not what the original Greek text says, nor its Latin translation, which is almost the official translation in the Latin church: it simply says “blessed are the poor”… “Blessed are the poor, for the kingdom of God is yours”; that is to say: since God has given you the Kingdom, blessed are those who are poor and who therefore have room within themselves to welcome it. But “woe to you who are rich, for you have your consolation”. The announcement is that the Kingdom is given to us! The question that is asked of us is: is there space in my life to welcome this Kingdom? If everything is occupied in my heart, if I am rich in myself, in my possessions, in my friendships… there is no room for the Lord, for the Kingdom and certainly no room in the centre for the Lord.

Saint Therese, very early on, had the experience that the goods of this world, that the logic of this world could not fill her heart. She wrote in manuscript A: The good Lord has given me the grace to know the world only enough to despise it and distance myself from it.

She will return to Alençon where she was born, where she lived until Zélie's death when she was four and a half years old, before arriving in Lisieux; she returns to Alençon for a fortnight when she is about ten years old; she says:

I could say that it was during my stay in Alençon that I made my first entrance into the world. All was joy, happiness around me, I was celebrated, pampered, admired; in a word, my life for fifteen days was sown only with flowers… I admit that this life had charms for me. Wisdom is right to say: “Let the bewitchment of the trifles of the world seduce the mind even far removed from evil.” At ten years old the heart is easily dazzled, so I consider it a great grace not to have stayed in Alençon; the friends we had there were too worldly, they knew too well how to combine the joys of the earth with the service of the Good Lord. They did not think enough about death and yet death came to visit a great number of people I knew, young, rich and happy!!! I like to return in thought to the enchanting places where they lived, to wonder where they are, what is theirs from the castles and parks where I saw them enjoying the comforts of life? ... And I see that all is vanity and affliction of spirit under the Sun... that the only good is to love God with all one's heart and to be poor in spirit here below...

She adds:

Perhaps Jesus wanted to show me the world before the first visit He was to make to me so that I might choose more freely the path I was to promise Him to follow. The time of my first Communion has remained engraved in my heart, like a cloudless memory, it seems to me that I could not have been better disposed than I was and then my soul's sorrows left me for almost a year. Jesus wanted me to taste a joy as perfect as is possible in this valley of tears... (Ms A32v)

Perhaps Thérèse's words seem excessive to us, but let us remember what the Lord says: “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Mt 6,21:XNUMX).

The Kingdom of God is yours, so blessed are the poor!

There is certainly the question of material poverty. We talk a lot today about happy sobriety. I think there is something right in this idea. The consumer society in which we live has filled our cupboards with obsolete things that we no longer use, and we rack our brains every time there is a birthday or a celebration to know what useless thing we are going to be able to offer. I am not exaggerating… This is what we experience, very often! — Perhaps not the wisest among us — So there is surely something to do, to review, in our way of life, an examination of conscience to do on our relationship with the good of this world.

Where is my treasure? What am I attached to? What do I do from time to time to detach myself from this spirit of possession?

But there is something else in this poverty: there is also spiritual poverty. In Saint Matthew, the beatitude is: "Blessed are the poor in spirit." Thérèse lives very strongly this spiritual poverty that I would translate as this awareness that, by myself, I cannot respond to the love of God, to the height of God. I cannot save myself. I cannot do what God asks of me without the help of God... I am too poor and I constantly need to be healed, to be cared for, to be strengthened by the merciful love of God that I can only receive here and now. My relationship with God is not a relationship that can be satisfied with dotted lines: I went to mass on Sunday, that's enough for me for the whole week... Just as my doctor asked me to take a vial of vitamin D every month. I take one, it lasts a month. Does it work the same with the good Lord? I went to Mass, does it last a week? No! The relationship with God is a relationship between living and living. It is a relationship here and now, and it is therefore constantly that I need to open my poverty to the richness of God's merciful love. This is what Thérèse teaches us, and this is why she will exclaim, in the letter she writes to her sister Marie du Sacré-Cœur, in commentary on what is called manuscript B:

Dear Sister, how can you say […] that my desires are the mark of my love?… Ah! I feel well that it is not that at all that pleases the Good Lord in my little soul, what pleases Him is to see me love my smallness and my poverty, it is the blind hope that I have in His mercy… That is my only treasure. (LT 197 to Sr Marie du Sacré-Cœur – September 17, 1896)

To love my smallness and my poverty. The Virgin Mary's response to the Annunciation is to say to God: "Let it be done to me according to your word." Mary does not say: don't worry, I understand your plan, I will take care of it... "Do in me what you say." It is this poverty of heart, this humility that makes us capable of constantly welcoming the grace of God. And the temptation we have is to mask this poverty, this smallness, by letting ourselves be swallowed up by the possession of the goods of this world.

In a letter to Father Béllière, who is one of the seminarians she accompanies by mail, two months before she dies, Thérèse writes him this - of course, she is addressing a priest, but deep down, this morning, I tell myself that we can each receive these words as if they were addressed to us here and now by Thérèse:

Ah! your soul is too great to attach itself to any consolation here below. It is in heaven that you must live in advance, for it is said: "Where your treasure is, there is also your heart." Your only Treasure, is it not Jesus? Since He is in Heaven, that is where your heart must dwell, I tell you quite simply, my dear little brother, it seems to me that it will be easier for you to live with Jesus when I am near Him forever. (LT 261 to Father Bellière – July 26, 97)

Amen

Father Emmanuel Schwab, Rector of the Shrine