HOMILY WEEK 19 01 – Year I
A Religion of the Heart –
Optional Memorial: St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross
(Dt 10:12-22; Ps 147; Mt 17:22-27)
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“Act justly, love tenderly and walk humbly with our God.”
That quote, taken from the prophet Micah, aptly summarizes the message of today’s readings – to walk humbly with our God in an intimate relationship of love.
In the first reading from Deuteronomy, Moses urges the people to respond to God’s liberating love for them by walking in God’s ways. He spells that out: love God and serve God alone; keep God’s commandments; live faith from the heart; be fair and work for justice, and welcome strangers – a message sorely needed in our world today as we harden out hearts against strangers and immigrants.
Moses reminds the people they are chosen by God to be in an intimate relationship of the heart with God – a covenant of love setting them apart from all the other peoples of the world, and making them an icon on earth of who God is. That would demand of them a response of striving to be God-like, of metanoia, of change, radically described in this passage as “Circumscribe, then, the foreskin of your heart, and do not be stubborn any longer.”
Stubborn self-will was the sin of Adam and Eve who wanted to decide for themselves what was right and wrong by eating of the forbidden tree of the “knowledge of good and evil.” Stubborn self-will was also consistently the sin of the chosen people throughout their desert wanderings, with their murmuring in the desert, their complaining to Moses and Aaron, their oft-times desire to return to the misery of Egypt, and especially their lusting after the false gods of money, fame and power, the very things Jesus rejected when he was tempted in the desert.
And stubborn self-will is unfortunately the sin of our society today, also bent on doing its own will, to its own detriment I believe, with such developments as physician-assisted suicide and the ideology of children deciding for themselves what gender they want to be, blithely ignoring any connection with their own God-given physiology. We would do well to listen more closely to the words of Moses and take them to heart.
In the gospel, Jesus spells out walking in God’s ways more fully – we are to follow him through his pattern of passion, death and resurrection. We are to die to our sin, heal of our sinfulness, let go of our defects of character, and rise to a new life lived with him.
St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross
The Church honors today someone who certainly lived these readings – St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. Born Edith Stein in Breslau, Germany (present-day Poland) on October 12, 1891, the youngest child in a large Jewish family, she ultimately gave her life away out of faith in Jesus. Always seeking the truth, she studied philosophy with Edmund Husserl and received her doctorate at age 25. After reading St. Teresa of Avila’s Autobiography, she famously said, “That is the truth.” Drawn to Catholicism, Edith was baptized in 1922 and spent the next 12 years teaching at Catholic institutions.
In 1934 she joined the Carmelites in Cologne, taking the name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. By 1938 anti-Semitism was widespread, and her prioress helped Edith flee the Nazis, escaping to the Netherlands. True to her nature, she refused to go into hiding, since the Dutch were themselves often heroic in resisting Nazism. She continued her writing and studies until August 2, 1942, when she and her sister were arrested by the Gestapo. On August 7, 987 Jews were deported to Auschwitz, and on August 9, Edith Stein, her sister and others died in the gas chambers.
Although a convert to Catholicism, Edith always acknowledged her Jewish heritage. Pope John Paul II declared at her canonization: “A young woman in search of the truth has become a saint and martyr through the silent workings of divine grace. Edith Stein’s youthful work in the field of philosophy is breathtaking. She writes, interestingly, of “empathy,” for example, something that, she points out, we find only in human beings but had almost never been noticed in philosophy. She also launched some serious early critiques of Heidegger’s highly influential Being and Time, remarking that, for all its brilliant analysis, it operates as if we are beings without bodies. She is was a living witness to faith and reason who stayed true to the very end, and warrants being remembered today. Canonized on October 11, 1998, she is co-patron of Europe with Saints Benedict, Cyril and Methodius, Bridget of Sweden, and Catherine of Sienna.
The Eucharist is one of our best ways to follow Jesus and do the will of God. As Ron Rolheiser OMI puts it, the Eucharist is our “one great act of fidelity.” Ever since Jesus took, blessed, broke and shared bread and wine and told us to “do this in memory of him” we have been faithfully doing that for over two thousand years.
May our celebration today deepen our faith in him, and empower us to live those teachings of Moses, seconded by Jesus himself – to walk humbly with our God in an intimate relationship of love, sharing that love with strangers and the poor, as did St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.
