Homily for Memorial of St. Dennis

Homily for the Memorial
of St. Dennis

Oct. 9, 2018

Collect
Don Bosco Cristo Rey, Takoma Park, Md.

Of St. Dennis and his 2 companions, a priest and a deacon, we know only that they were sent into central Gaul as missionaries in the middle of the 3d century.  Perhaps they were sent out from the ancient Christian presence at Lyons in southern Gaul, the mother Church of France.

They arrived at the Roman settlement that grew into Paris, and Dennis is regarded as that city’s 1st bishop and the principal patron of France.  He and his companions preached with some success, but they were swept up in one of the mid-century imperial persecutions, either that of Decius in 250 or that of Valerian in 258, and beheaded.

There’s a medieval legend that after Dennis was beheaded, he picked up his head and carried it some 2 miles from Montmartre (the Mount of the Martyrs) to the spot where, later, a great abbey and church were built in his honor and where the kings of France were entombed. [See illustration above.]

If we ask ourselves how is it that men like Dennis and his companions had such “constancy,” to use the word the Collect uses, 1st to go to a strange land among pagan people to preach the Gospel, and then to die for the Gospel, the answer must be the same that we find in today’s readings.

Paul recounts how the Father had set him apart, called him thru grace, and revealed the Son to him (Gal 1:15-16).  Paul had directly encountered our Lord Jesus, which changed his life and gave him the call and the zeal to preach the Gospel and die for it.

Jesus tells Martha, “Mary has chosen the better part” (10:42).  What part was that?  To contemplate Jesus.

Like Mary, like Paul, Dennis and his companions had contemplated Jesus—not in the flesh and not in a revelation; but in the same manner that you and I can:  in his sacred word, in the sacraments of the Eucharist and Reconciliation, and in prayer.  That contemplation was the source of their constancy in preaching the Gospel and dying for Jesus, and it’s similarly the source for our own strength to live the Gospel “undaunted” (Collect).

Homilist-blogger's note:  I don't care how the Roman Missal spells his name.  This is the usual (tho not universal) way of spelling it in the U.S.