HOMILY WEEK 02 03 – Year II
Balancing Mercy and Faith, Law and Love:
Memorial of St. Anthony
(1 Sm 17:32-51; Ps 144; Mk 3:1-6)
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Why was Goliath so surprised when David struck him with a stone from his sling? Such a thing had never entered his head before!
The readings today, on this memorial of St. Anthony, provide us with three distinct yet related messages: mercy, faith and living a balanced life.
Regarding mercy, the Dalai Lamai taught his followers to “Learn the law very well so that you know how to disobey it properly.” That saying applies to Jesus in today’s gospel, as he breaks the Sabbath law by healing the man with a withered hand. So often, pious acts seem more meritorious than messy, concrete acts of love. In this incident, Jesus is very clear that the law of mercy trumps the law of ritual. How ironic it is that this very act of mercy infuriates the Pharisees to the point that they want to kill Jesus, to even break one of the commandments, in the name of God because he broke the Sabbath law! Is this incident not a reminder of Pope Francis with his insistence that, for God, mercy is the core of love?
A second lesson is very obvious, and that is faith and trust in God. We need to be like David and place our complete trust and faith in God’s ability to do for us, what we cannot do for ourselves. Like the man with the withered hand, we need to listen to the Words of Jesus and come to him for forgiveness and healing. We need to trust that Jesus hears our every plea, and will answer our prayers, in his own mysterious way and with God’s own mysterious timing. Above all, we need to trust that God will always draw good out of every painful situation that besets us. Faith empowers us to allow our suffering to make us better, not bitter.
Finally, we learn the importance of balancing faith with human effort. God wants us to learn the combination of faith and action that both the man with the withered hand and David showed, that balance between God’s grace and our work that can lead us into victory. David’s words to Goliath, “Today the Lord shall deliver you into my hand,” show how much he placed his confidence in the Lord. But even as he spoke these words, he picked up a stone, took aim, and fired that accurate shot. The man with the withered hand obeyed Jesus’ command and stretched out his hand, which he probably usually kept covered out of shame or shyness. Jesus calls us to do the same, to stretch out our hand, however withered and inadequate it may seem, to do our best to be the answer to our own prayers.
We can ask ourselves how often do we rely too much on God and neglect the work that God calls us to do, whether in evangelization or in our own growth in holiness? On the other hand, how often do we rely solely on our own strength, doing the “work of the Lord” but neglecting the “Lord of the work?” Both approaches are risky. The first one can leave us feeling fruitless and frustrated. The second one can leave us full of ourselves or worn out and dispirited. But the middle way – the way of cooperation between divine grace and human work – brings not only fruitfulness but refreshment and joy as well. We need to learn both the art of being still and knowing that God is God, and how to step out of the boat onto the surging waters of life. How can we step out in faith, trusting in God’s power as we fling our first stone?
Bishop Robert Barron asserts healings like this one signified the arrival of the kingdom of God. When Jesus began to preach, his theme was that the kingdom of God is at hand. In his own person an entirely new way of ordering things was on offer. Then – in his love and nonviolence, in his challenging of the Pharisees and the religious establishment, in his healing and teaching – Jesus was demonstrating precisely what the reign of the God of Israel looks like.
This way of life inevitably awakened the opposition of the powers that be. At the climax of his ministry, Jesus faced down the resistance of “the world,” to use the typical New Testament term, meaning that whole congeries of cruelty, betrayal, denial, violence, corruption, and hatred by which human affairs are typically ordered.
He permitted all of that darkness to wash over him, to crush him, to snuff him out. But then, on the third day, he rose again from the dead in the power of the Holy Spirit, and thereby outflanked, outmaneuvered, and swallowed up the darkness.
St. Anthony, whom the church honours today, had a profound influence on the history of monasticism. Anthony was born into a wealthy Christian family in Upper Egypt about 251. Both his parents died while he was a teenager, leaving him with only a younger sister whom he cared for and also looked after their home. Not six months after the death of his parents, as he was on his way to church, he began to think of how the apostles left everything and followed the Savior, and of those who in the book of Acts who had sold their possessions and distributed the money to the needy.
Inspired by the gospel, gave the poor all that he had left, after placing his sister in the care of some trustworthy persons and arranging for her to be brought up in a convent. Then he gave himself up the ascetic life, not far from his own home. Seeing the kind of life he lived, the villagers and all the good people he knew called him a friend of God, and loved him as both son and brother. This was the beginning of Christian monastic life soon taking root elsewhere. In 311, Anthony went to Alexandria to encourage the Christians who were being persecuted. In 355, he returned to Alexandria to help his close friend Bishop Antanasius in the struggle against Arianism. Anthony died on January 17, 356, well known for his holiness, wisdom and asceticism.
The Eucharist is an act of faith and mercy, and our sling shot – our weapon against evil in the world and in our lives – that sends us out into the world, forgiven and healed, to balance faith in God with selfless acts of mercy and compassion.
