Homily
for the Memorial of
St.
Martin of Tours
Tuesday,
Week 32 of Ordinary Time
Nov.
11, 2025
Wis
2: 23—3: 9
Christian
Brothers, St. Joseph’s Residence, N.R.
“God formed man to be
imperishable” (Wis 2: 23).
We often hear today’s 1st
reading at funerals as well as as an option for All Souls Day. It’s a good reminder that God’s intention for
us is life, not death. Death belongs to
the realm of the Devil.
Realizing that, Martin of
Tours resigned from the Roman army, in which he’d been raised; his father was a
soldier on the Empire’s frontier. Martin
found the army’s purpose incompatible with the affirmation of God-given
life. He probably also found the army’s
formal religious rituals in service of gods and emperor incompatible with
service of Christ.
Young Martin shares his cloak
with a beggar
(Louis Galloche)
The follower of Christ has
a “hope full of immortality” (3:4), a hope based on the resurrection of Christ
and Christ’s gift of life to the just who place themselves in God’s hands (3:1).
That’s what Martin did,
pursuing a monastic vocation rather than a military one and then accepting,
reluctantly, the office of bishop so as to further service to Christ. He changed his way of life twice, as one who
put his trust in God and desired to “abide with him in love” (3:9). That is, he left military service to serve
Christ as a monk, then left the monastery to serve Christ’s faithful as their
bishop and be Christ’s instrument of “care [for] his elect” (3:9).
Martin, then, models for
us an openness to God’s call, to conversion, to a willingness to change our
manner of service in the Church. You
here at St. Joseph have reversed Martin’s course of service, laying
aside—probably reluctantly—a life of public ministry and assuming a more
monastic way of discipleship, a way of prayer for God’s people.
“Neither death
nor life may separate us from [God’s] love” (Collect). “The souls of the just are in the hand of God,”
your souls and the souls you place before God’s “grace and mercy” (3:9).
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