Homily for 4th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the
4th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Jan. 31, 2021
1 Cor 7: 32-35
Mark 1:21-28
Holy Name of Jesus, New Rochelle, N.Y.                                

“I should like you to be free of anxieties” (1 Cor 7: 32).

One of our prayers before Holy Communion echoes St. Paul’s thought.  We ask the Father to grant us peace, and keep us free from sin and safe from all distress.  The translation of the missal that we used before 2011 didn’t say “distress”; it said “anxiety.”  The prayer links anxiety or distress with sin, and it seeks the Lord’s peace to save us from these—from anxiety and from sin.

Today we hear some of Paul’s thoughts on marriage.  All of his teaching, on marriage and everything else, is based on our relationship with Christ.  If one is to be anxious, he says, he or she ought to be anxious to please the Lord.  In this regard, it doesn’t matter whether one’s married or not.

Paul does see some danger in marriage.  The danger is in losing focus:  one becomes anxious about pleasing one’s spouse.  Of course, a husband should want to please his wife, and a wife her husband.  Each must care about the other’s welfare and happiness—or it’s not an authentic marriage but an arrangement for self-gratification.  Yet a married couple has many legitimate anxieties concerning their children and all sorts of practical matters like home, health, safety, education, meals, even vacations and entertainment.  As if I needed to tell you!  These aren’t frivolities, and Paul wouldn’t tell you they are.

What is he telling us?  Not to be divided, “for the sake of propriety and adherence to the Lord without distraction.”  Stick to the Lord without distraction.  St. Matthew quotes Jesus as telling his disciples, “Don’t think that I’ve come to bring peace upon the earth.  I’ve come to bring not peace but the sword,” by which he means compelling us to make a decision for him or for others.  “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me.” (Matt 10:34-38).  These are hard words.

Regardless of our state of life—married, single, celibate, or widowed—we are to live for the Lord, to put Jesus at the center of lives:  our family life, our professional life, our leisure life.  I recall a couple of scenes in the portrayal of St. Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons.  In one scene, his old friend the duke of Norfolk urges him to swear Henry VIII’s oath for the sake of their friendship, to come along for friendship’s sake, rather than being so obstinate and angering the king.  More asks Norfolk whether, when he’s condemned to hell for violating his conscience, Norfolk will come along with him for the sake of friendship.  In another scene, More’s wife Alice comes to him in prison and pleads for him to yield to the king and come home to her and his children.  He gently tries to explain to her that he can’t surrender his own self, by which we know he means his faithfulness to Christ.

In the gospel story we heard (Mark 1:21-28), the demon who possessed the unfortunate man in the synagog challenged Jesus:  “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?” (Mark 1:23).  “What do you want from us?”  “Why are you bothering us?”  We might note that the unclean spirit uses the plural us.  The devils are many and powerful.  But not against our Lord Jesus.  Their question is related to Paul’s teaching.  What does Jesus want of us, married, single, celibate, or widowed? 

But they needn’t turn us away from the people we love.  When we find ourselves feeling anxious, we need to ask why?  Is the anxiety the result of our concern to please someone other than Christ?  Does what distresses us involve sin in some way?  Is the shortcoming in ourselves, in some form of selfishness?  Or does the anxiety flow from our genuine, loving concern for someone, and if so, have we turned that anxiety over to the Lord in prayer?

We love the people we love for the sake of Jesus, and we point them toward Jesus, we try to model the words and behavior of Jesus.  In the sacrament of matrimony, husband and wife aim to love each other the way Christ loves the Church—tenderly, compassionately, sacrificially, totally.  There’s no division in that, and if there’s anxiety it’s not between spouses but for the sake of one’s spouse or children—how to provide for them, keep them safe, and so on.

“What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?”  Christ wants our total selves.  He wants our hearts.  And we’ll experience all kinds of anxiety or distress until we surrender to him, let him cleanse our sins, resolve to live for him.  In the immortal words of St. Augustine:  “You have created us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”