Seeking The Company Of The Saints – Sermon by Father Levine

Fr. Joseph Levine; Holy Family Catholic Church and Missions, Burns, Oregon; November 1, 2024

One way to consider prayer is to see it as the presentation of our desires to God, that he might set them in proper order. Indeed, the Lord’s Prayer teaches us the right order of desire before God. We come to God with a bundle of desires, that are often quite confused and conflicting. When we bring them to God we should present our desires sincerely before him, but also question our own desires. Is this something that I should be asking of God? Well, I should not be asking him to fulfill my sinful desires. Or, maybe it is appropriate to ask this of God, but perhaps I have my priorities wrong; maybe I should be seeking something more earnestly than what at the moment seems to me a matter of such great concern.

Now, in today’s 1^st reading, we find a reference to a time of great distress. We might not be living in the final time of great distress before the end of the world, but we are certainly living in a time of great distress.

In this same reading, we hear about 144,000 (a symbolic number) who are sealed by the angels and so protected from the distress – that doesn’t mean they will not suffer, rather it means they will not be separated from God by the distress. Well, the 144,000 might seem like a rather select group of saints, but we are certainly right to beg God in prayer to protect us from the distress that presently afflicts the world, that neither we nor our children be separated from him, but rather that we be able to draw nearer to him in the midst of this distress.

We also heard about a countless multitude – that sounds much more encouraging – who survive the time of distress, having washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb. That also points in the direction of what we need to do to pass through the distress, namely wash our “robes”, seek the renewal of our baptismal innocence, through repentance which opens us to the mercy of God, given to us through the Blood of the Lamb. Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us!

Now, let us consider something rather more mundane. The Los Angeles Dodgers just won the World Series. They have entered into “baseball heaven.” It will not last long. Soon it will be a fading memory. There is also a baseball “heaven of the heavens” called the “Hall of Fame.” Yet, what does an aged hall of famer have but fading memories? If he plays in an “old-timers” game he shows that the athletic skill of his youth has perished.

Yet, devoted baseball fans – here we have two words, “devoted” and “fan,” that properly belong to the vocabulary of religion, “fan” is related to “fanatic”, the root meaning would mean something like “a temple guard” – idolize the World Series heroes and the Hall of Famers. Those heroes and idols of baseball, however, have little knowledge and little care for their fans. They will not give them help and guidance in their lives. They certainly will not pay their bills. And if there is a little boy who idolizes Freddie Freeman and wants to grow up to be like him, he will get no help from Freddie Freeman and the chances of his ever entering baseball heaven are very slim indeed.

As for the real saints who have passed through the distress of this world and now live in the real heaven, matters are very different indeed. They have already received an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading (cf. 1 Pe 1:4). They have become like God, the eternal and immortal one, and behold his face. They are filled with life and joy that shall never be taken from them. They wait only for the resurrection of their body, the completion of their inheritance.

The saints also know us, care for us, and pray for us, even without our asking. Heaven is gracious and generous. They desire that we join their company. Yet, the power of their prayer for us will be multiplied exponentially if we recognize them and ask for their prayers. Just as God wants us to seek his help in prayer and will give certain things only to those who ask, so also he wants to glorify his saints, and bestows his grace in greater abundance the more we seek the intercession of the saints.

The saints, who behold the face of God, want us to join their company and we should want the same. It is true that the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to heaven (cf. Mt 7:14) but if we ask, seek, and knock (cf. Mt 7:7-8) with earnestness and sincerity, we will surely reach the goal. The narrowness and the difficulty comes precisely from our stubborn refusal to leave aside our own will and our own plans to seek God’s will and his kingdom. Yes, we have to be willing to do and to suffer whatever it takes, but just think of all the doing and suffering required for the very uncertain event of winning a World Series.

For a youth to aspire to be a World Series champion is to aspire to what is nearly impossible; for a youth to aspire to holiness is to aspire to something very difficult, impossible indeed to human strength, but, with God’s help, very possible. (cf. Mt 19:26; Lk 1:37)

In the 16^th century there was a gallant young man who aspired to great knightly exploits and honor in the court of the King of Spain. Alas, during a battle his leg met up with a cannon ball and he found himself convalescing in his brother’s house. Having nothing to do he asked for books of knightly adventure and romance, the sort that Don Quixote liked to read; his rather pious brother did not keep such books in the house and offered instead a Life of Christ and a book of the Lives of the Saints. Reading the lives of the saints the young man began to ask himself, why cannot I do as they did and be like them? His conversion was begun. Today we can call upon him for help, seeking the prayers of St. Ignatius of Loyola.

It will also help if we learn to call “blessed” what Jesus calls “blessed” rather than what the world calls “blessed.”

There is an interesting passage from the Psalms that I think is usually mistranslated.
The Psalmist begins, Rescue me from the cruel sword, and deliver me from the hand of foreigners; whose mouth speaks lies: and whose right hand is sworn to falsehood. (Ps 144[143]:11) Then, without any warning the Psalmist switches to a description of prosperity, it is often translated as a prayer for prosperity, but it could read as a mere description: Their sons are as new plants in their youth: Their daughters decked out, adorned round about after the likeness of a temple. Their storehouses full and overflowing. Their sheep fruitful in young, abounding in their goings forth: Their oxen fat. There is no breach of wall, nor passage, nor crying out in their streets. (Ps 144[143]:12-14) No great distress here.

A typical modern translation concludes, in a way that does not fit with today’s Gospel: Happy the people to whom such blessings fall! Happy the people whose God is the Lord! (Ps 144[143]:15 RSV) As though there had been described the blessings that God bestows on those who love him.  

St. Augustine, who I believe reads the Psalm rightly, following the ancient Latin version, has: They have called the people happy, that has these things. Rather happy is that people whose God is the Lord.  (Ps 144[143]:15 Septuagint and Vulgate) The whole description of the blessed prosperity was a sample of the lies of the world, known today at times as “the prosperity Gospel.”

True happiness is found in belonging to God. In another passage from the Psalms, in which the Psalmist struggles in the face of the prosperity of wicked, we find the answer learned: For me it is good to be near God or even better to be united to God. (Ps 73[72]:28 – The Septuagint has the same verb as in Genesis 2:24, the man will be joined to his wife)

Happy is that people whose God is the Lord. The Lord is Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, whom we worship in the Holy Eucharist. He is our God, God among us, Emmanuel. He leads us to union with God by way of the beatitudes that we have heard today, beginning with the poverty of spirit at attains the kingdom of heaven and reaching to the purity of heart that sees God, to the peace of the children of God, the interior peace that the world for all its hatred and persecution cannot take away, the interior peace that will withstand even the greatest distress.