HOMILY WEEK 20 05 – Year II
Optional Memorial of St. John Eudes
(Ezk 37:1-14; Ps 107; Mt 22:34-40)
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The reflection from The Word Among Us for today begins with the sentence, “Breathe into these slain that they may come to life.”
It continues to ask if one has heard of free-diving? A swimmer dives into the open water without an oxygen tank and holds his or her breath for long periods of time. When the swimmer surfaces, they are gasping for air because they desperately need the oxygen to breathed.
In today’s first reading, we see the need for a different kind of oxygen – the breath of the Holy Spirit. The prophet Ezekiel, speaking to the Jewish exiles in Babylon, depicts the desolation and loss of hope they are experiencing through the image of dry, lifeless bones. But God wants to breathe God’s Spirit into them so that they come back to life. And what is that spirit or breath? The Holy Spirit.
Did you know that the Hebrew word for breath, wind and spirit is the same? It’s ruach. Like oxygen, the breath of God is fundamental to our existence. We see this in the opening verses of Scripture, when the Spirit of God hovers over the waters. In the New Testament, after Jesus rises from the dead, he breathes the Spirit into his disciples and sends them out to proclaim the gospel. With the Holy Spirit working through them, the disciples evangelized and spread the good news around the world.
We have all received the Holy Spirit in baptism and confirmation. The Holy Spirit lives in each one of us, but maybe we aren’t experiencing its presence right now. We may be feeling like those dry bones in Ezekiel’s vision, “lost” and cut off” from God. Or maybe we are struggling with disappointment or weariness and feel as if we are running out of air. If so, know that the Spirit is always there, ready to revive and refresh us again and again.
And we don’t even have to wait until we are completely depleted! Every day – every moment of every day – we can ask the Spirit to come and fill us with her life-giving power and grace.
As you pray today, take a deep breath. Imagine the Holy Spirit filling you in the way that air is filling your lungs. Keep asking the Spirit to fill you. We all need the breath of God. We can’t survive without it, and the Holy Spirit is delighted to fill us.
In the Gospel, the religious leaders, characterized by a lack of the Holy Spirit in their lives, attempt to test Jesus with a question about which is the greatest commandment. Jesus, himself filled with the Spirit, is unfazed by that trick question. He reminds them of the Great Shema of Judaism, to love God with our whole being, then reaches deep into the Old Testament, Leviticus 19:18, and retrieves one of the often overlooked laws buried there – the commandment to love others as we love ourselves.
From now on, then, it is just as important to love other people as we love ourselves, as it is to love God with our whole being. In fact, perhaps the best way to love God is precisely to love others, as we love ourselves. And living out this commandment of Jesus is made possible by the Holy Spirit dwelling within us. As the Holy Spirit helped put flesh on the dry bones of Ezekiel’s image, so the Holy Spirit will help us put flesh to our faith by keeping that great commandment to love.
Today the Church honors St. John Eudes, who lived these readings. Born at Ri, Normandy, France on November 14, 1601, into a farming family, John Eudes joined the Congregation of the Oratory (Oratorians) in Paris in 1623 and was ordained in 1625. Twice during outbreaks of the plague John tended the sick and dying. He also spent years preaching missions, hearing confessions and opposing Jansenism (a belief that only a predetermined few are saved and everyone else damned). In 1641, he helped found a refuge for women with Madeleine Lamy under the direction of the Visitandines, who evolved into a new religious order for women, the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of the Refuge, with a branch in Canada, the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd.
Seeing the urgent need for clerical reform, John left the Oratorians in 1643 to found the Congregation of Jesus and Mary (the Eudists) at Caen, composed of secular priests not bound by vows but dedicated to upgrading the clergy by establishing effective seminaries and to preaching missions. John also founded seminaries at Lisieux in 1653 and Rouen in 1659. He shared with St. Mary Margaret Alacoque the honor of initiating devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus (he composed the Mass for the Sacred Heart in 1668) and to the Holy Heart of Mary, popularizing those devotions.
John died at Caen on August 19th, 1680. In the decree of his beatification in 1908, Pope Pius X declared John Eudes to be the father, doctor and apostle of devotions to the Sacred Heart and to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. He was canonized in 1925. In the context of a corrupt church (higher clergy were rich and guarded their privileges, and the country was run and wars waged by a cardinal), setting up seminaries to ensure proper education of priests became itself a revolutionary act and the encouragement of devotion to the Sacred heart became not a sweet pious platitude but a defiant proclamation that the center of God’s essence is his love, not condemnation.
The Eucharist we celebrate now is our best way of loving God with our whole being. May it empower us to put flesh to our faith by living out the commandments to love with the help of the Holy Spirit.
