February 25, 2025

Sunday 23 February 2025

7th Sunday During the Year – Year C

Homily by Father Emmanuel Schwab

1st reading: 1 Samuel 26, 2.7-9.12-13.22-23

Psalm: 102 (103), 1-2, 3-4, 8.10, 12-13

2th reading: 1 Corinthians 15, 45-49

Gospel: Luke 6, 27-38

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In a note from 1946, which is the first text of the little book “The Joy of Believing”, Madeleine Delbrêl writes this:

The Gospel of Jesus has passages that are almost completely mysterious. We do not know how to pass them through in our lives. But there are others that are mercilessly clear.

It is a candid fidelity to what we understand that will lead us to understand what remains mysterious.

If we are called to simplify what seems complicated to us, we are, on the other hand, never called to complicate what is simple.

I think that if I asked those who have not understood this Sunday's Gospel to raise their hands, not a single hand would be raised... We have all understood very well what the Lord says, and we are all faced with the question: how am I going to do it? And the risk is not to complicate what is simple, but to water down what is demanding.

We have already heard how, 1000 years before Jesus, a man is capable of mercy. How David, who could kill the one who had made himself his mortal enemy since Saul had tried to kill David, renounces killing his enemy and goes so far as to show him that he could have done so. By taking Saul's spear and showing it to him from a reasonable distance, he shows Saul that he could have killed him and that he did not.

How much more can we, who have been saved from sin and death by Baptism, filled with the power of the Holy Spirit who unfolds in our hearts the charity of God in the sacrament of Confirmation and who, through the other sacraments of the Church, see this gift of the Holy Spirit continually renewed, how much more can we live what the Lord asks! Not by our own strength, but by our union with him. As we heard in the second reading, we are beings molded from clay coming from the earth, but we have been redeemed and renewed to become like him who comes from Heaven: “As Adam is made of clay, so men are made of clay; as Christ is from heaven, so men will be from heaven"

It is simply for us to live on this earth as citizens of Heaven. And it is a question, among men who do not know God, of living as children of God by adopting God's way of life, by imitating God as beloved children, as Paul says to the Ephesians (5,1:XNUMX). We can live like God because the Holy Spirit is given to us. But the gifts of God are not only punctual, in the sense that we were baptized on a day of time, in the sense that we received the sacrament of confirmation on a day of time, in the sense that we received the sacrament of marriage on a day of time, in the sense that we received the sacrament of orders on a day of time... What was initiated on a day of time continues to be given; but do we continue to receive it? How do we seek to be "plugged" into Jesus permanently? This is the secret of the Christian life. It is not to stretch one's will to do bitten what the Lord says; it is to constantly welcome the loving and merciful presence of the Savior Jesus, to constantly welcome the grace of the Holy Spirit that he gives, to desire, from the depths of our heart, that what the Lord says to us, he realizes in us.

Thérèse comments quite extensively in manuscript C on this passage of the Gospel. I will only read you the beginning to give you a taste for reading the rest. It is at the end of folio 15 and at the beginning of folio 16, I quote:

"If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For sinners also love those who love them." St. Luke, VI. And it is not enough to love, it must be proven. We are naturally happy to give a gift to a friend, we especially like to give surprises, but that is not charity because sinners do it too. Here is what Jesus teaches me again: "Give to everyone who asks you; and if someone takes what is yours, do not ask it back." Giving to all those who ask is less sweet than offering oneself by the movement of one's heart; even when one asks kindly it does not hurt to give, but if unfortunately one does not use words delicate enough, the soul immediately rebels if it is not strengthened in charity. She finds a thousand reasons to refuse [16r°] what is asked of her and it is only after having convinced the requester of her indelicacy that she finally gives her by grace what she asks, or that she renders her a small service which would have required twenty times less time to fulfill than it took to assert imaginary rights. MsC 15v-16r Saint Therese takes the word of the Lord seriously because she understands - she says it in a letter to Céline - that in fact, keeping the word of Jesus is keeping Jesus himself in the depths of the heart; for Jesus, who is the Word of God, the Word made flesh, is entirely present in his word. We are not the disciples of a book whose maxims we would try to live. We are the disciples of a Living One, the resurrected Jesus, who never ceases to speak to us. And the Holy Scriptures are the substratum of this word that he addresses to us here and now. We must therefore let this word sink into the depths of our hearts.

In 10 days, we will enter Lent. We have three different liturgical years: the year in which we read Saint Matthew, in which we read Saint Mark, in which we read Saint Luke. And then the date of Easter varies, which means that the Sundays before Lent are not the same each year. And I say to myself: why not receive, in the two or three Sundays before Lent, through the readings, indications of what the Lord wants us to travel as a path during Lent?

We could take up this Gospel again, meditate on it to ask ourselves what the Lord expects of me. What does he want to reform in my life, so that I may be more like his Son?

Not only did Teresa take these words seriously for herself, but she encouraged her sisters to do so. Sister Martha of Jesus, who was a co-novice of Teresa, wrote this in the preparatory notes for the beatification process:

When I was in the kitchen, if I refused to do a service for my sisters, or if I seemed sad, they would go and complain to Sr Thérèse of the EJ, and a moment later, I would see her arrive with her kind smile, and she would reprimand me very gently: "How sad you make me," she would say to me, "to see you so unvirtuous! If a sister comes to ask you for a service, do everything in your power to do it even if it costs you a lot, but never say no. If you see the good Lord in each of your sisters, you would never refuse anything, on the contrary you would go to meet what she desires, that is true charity.

She continues:

During the eight years that I had the happiness of spending with the servant of God. I never heard her lack charity. On the contrary, she always excused her sisters and found only good things to say about them, always highlighting their virtue and merit. When I told her about the struggles that some of them gave me, she was careful not to agree with me. But attributed it to my lack of virtue. If I complained to Sister Thérèse of the Child Jesus, that I could not bear such a sister because I felt that she did not love me because she always found fault with everything I did. She answered me where is your virtue? If you only love those who love you, what do you do more than sinners, they also love those who love them. (Preparatory notes for the Trial of Sister Marthe de Jésus)

Saint Therese takes seriously what the Lord says, as a living word spoken here and now. And because she seeks to love Jesus, she seeks to do what pleases him in an extremely concrete way.

One last point, brothers and sisters. The celebration of the Eucharist is one: what we eat with our ears, our intelligence and our heart at the table of the Word is the same food that we receive at the table of the Holy Sacrifice. For what purpose do we come to commune, to receive Christ who gives himself as food? For the purpose of living what we have heard.

Let us remember this later when we come to receive communion, and we will respond, not by murmuring without unclenching our teeth, but by answering aloud: Amen!

We will say “Amen” to the fact that it is indeed the Body of Christ that we receive as food.

We will say “Amen” to the fact that we are indeed in communion with the whole Church.

And we will also say “Amen” to the fact that we want to be ONE with Jesus to live what he asks of us.

By coming to take communion shortly, we will express our determination to effectively live the Gospel that we have just heard.

Amen

Father Emmanuel Schwab, Rector of the Shrine