Homily by Father Emmanuel Schwab

3rd Sunday During the Year – Year B

1st reading: Jonah 3,1-5.10

Psalm: 24 (25), 4-5ab, 6-7bc, 8-9

2rd reading: 1 Corinthians 7,29-31

Gospel: Mark 1, 14-20

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Is Jonah a blessing to Nineveh? Is Jonah's proclamation to Nineveh a word of blessing? Yes ! Yes, we see it through the effects on the people of Nineveh: “Immediately the people of Nineveh believed in God. They announced a fast, and everyone, from the greatest to the smallest, dressed in sackcloth. Seeing their reaction, and how they turned away from their evil behavior, God renounced the punishment with which he had threatened them.

Bless, in Latin bene-dicere means “to speak well”. It is not a question of saying good things about the person we bless or the situation we bless, it is a question of remembering the good that God wants for people and for relationships. And sometimes, words of blessing are words of truth that disturb, that alert. The blessing of God is not a soothing word which would consist of approving everything that man does: the word of blessing of God is a word which speaks true good, which speaks the truth about man and which always calls man to conversion. “Forty more days, and Nineveh will be destroyed! » is a word of blessing. Following Jonah, Jesus will call for conversion from the beginning of his ministry. In fact, he repeats John's proclamation: “Repent, the Kingdom of God has come near, convert and believe in the gospel.” The Greek word for conversion, metanoia – μετάνοια, means the change of nous – νοῦς, that is to say the change of intelligence, the change of the spirit, the change of outlook. It is first of all a matter of learning to look at things as God sees them, to think of the world as God thinks it. And this conversion leads us to believe in the Gospel. But the Gospel is not primarily writings, it is primarily the event Jesus Christ. It is the presence in our midst of the Word made flesh, the one whose Nativity we celebrated four weeks ago. It is this presence in our midst of the Word made flesh which is the Gospel, which is the good news of salvation. And to believe in the Gospel is to follow Jesus, it is to believe Jesus, it is to take him as master and guide.

Immediately after this call, Jesus will associate two brothers twice, undoubtedly to signify how Jesus already comes to heal the wounded brotherhood from the beginning of Genesis where Cain kills his brother Abel (Cf. Gen 4) and how Jesus comes to call humanity to enter into a new fraternity. He calls these men to make them “fishers of men”, that is to say to help him, Jesus, to seek out humanity to bring it into this Kingdom of God, this reign of God who came near in Jesus.

This theme of becoming a fisher of men has marked the Church since its origins. It would be wrong to think, because these four will become apostles, that being a fisher of men is reserved only for the apostles and their successors, the bishops. As proof, I want the one who is the cause of this basilica, Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, who very early perceived this vocation to “save souls”, as she said with her vocabulary from the end of the 19th century.rd century. This is a simple translation of the expression “fisher of men”. Thérèse is not part of the group of 12 apostles, she is not a bishop of the Church: no, she is a young woman. And what will trigger this? This is what she saw in July 1887 in the Saint-Pierre church at the end of a mass where an image protruded from her missal; this image represents Jesus on the cross and it sees the arm of Jesus and the hand of Jesus, from which blood is flowing. And she said to herself: but deep down, who is worried about getting this blood to sinners? And Thérèse saw the birth in her of a great desire to give this blood to sinners, that is to say, she felt it growing within her, because of Jesus and because of what she would later call, “this madness that Jesus did for us”, this desire that the work of Jesus truly succeeds and that every man, every woman in the world, can welcome the salvation that Jesus came to give.

And it is basically her love for Jesus and the way in which she understands that Jesus loved her, which makes her understand that Jesus loved in the same way and will love in the same way every human person, and that It is good to help Jesus to make all these people for whom he gave his life welcome his salvation. The salvation of souls is Thérèse’s primary concern. And if she enters Carmel, it is for Jesus and to save souls, that is to say, to cooperate in Jesus' work of evangelization. And even, in her professional note, which she wrote on September 8, 1890 and which she will always carry with her, she ends like this:

Jesus, make me save many souls, that today there is not a single one damned and that all the souls in purgatory are saved.

This is the desire that inhabits him deeply. Brothers and sisters, does this desire reside in us too? This desire that all men be saved, which is the will of God! What Paul says to Timothy in his first Letter to Timothy, chapter 2 verse 4: “God wants all men to be saved and to come to the full knowledge of the truth”. Do I want it too? And do I want to work with Jesus for this?

Thérèse will work on it in her Carmel, offering her life to the Lord and seeking, through all the moments, all the moments of her existence, to do what pleases Jesus, to be with him, to offer her life for the salvation of souls. In a certain way, Thérèse understands that in Jesus, Heaven is present. And she lives her whole life as a preparation for this fullness of life.

A little over a month before her death, Thérèse said:

You will be able to say of me: “It was not in this world that she lived, but in Heaven, where her treasure is. » (CJ August 12, 6).

And there is no denigration of this world in Thérèse. She is fully committed to it and she is particularly committed to concrete service and charity towards those among whom she lives. She's not on cloud nine despising what's going on here. She has her heart filled with Heaven, which allows her to already live in this world of the charity of Heaven.

In this path, the face of Jesus is the expression for her of his presence. She wrote to Céline one day:

The shadows decline and the face of this world passes, soon, yes soon we will see the unknown and beloved face which delights us with its tears. (LT 120 to Céline).

Thérèse is fascinated by the Holy Face, that is to say Jesus who cries over the world and Jesus who has his eyes lowered, his eyelids lowered as if he were closing his eyes to our sins.

And this way of living already in Heaven is not a contempt for earth, but on the contrary it is an expectation of even more. A bit like Guy de Larigaudie would later exclaim in “Star at large” : “The world we live in is not our size and our hearts are heavy, sometimes with all the nostalgia for heaven”. But Thérèse, before, had written to Mother Agnès:

I find nothing on earth that makes me happy; my heart is too big, nothing that we call happiness in this world can satisfy it. My thoughts fly towards Eternity, time is going to end!… my heart is peaceful like a tranquil lake or a serene sky; I do not regret the life of this world, my heart thirsts for the waters of eternal life!… LT 245 to Mother Agnès.

Paul tells us nothing else in this second reading that we heard: “Time is limited. Therefore let those who have wives be as if they had no wives, and those who cry as if they did not weep...", etc. To live this world, completely in this world, in the reality of the world, but having the heart already in Heaven, and with this concern to work with Jesus so that all men know the happiness of Heaven. I end by quoting one of the many stanzas, 13rd, from the long poem Vivre d'amour. :

“To live on Love, what strange madness! »

The world says to me, “Ah! stop singing,

Don't waste your perfumes, your life,

Usefully know how to use them! …”

Loving you, Jesus, what a fruitful loss!…

All my perfumes are yours without return,

I want to sing out of this world:

“I’m dying of Love!” »

Amen