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| A beggar on the streets of Rome. |
(Third Sunday of the Year (A): This homily was given on
January 26, 2020 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond
Suriani. Read Isaiah 8:23-9:3; Psalm
27:1-14; 1 Corinthians 1:10-17; Matthew 4: 12-23.)
[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Third Sunday 2020]
The following is a true story about Pope St. John Paul
II. Some of you, I’m sure, have heard it
before.
A priest from the Archdiocese of New York was visiting
Rome. As he was walking into a church to
pray, he noticed a beggar sitting at the front door—not an unusual sight in
Rome. But something about this
particular beggar bothered him. He
didn’t figure it out until he began to pray: he suddenly realized that he knew
the man from his days in the seminary.
He immediately went back outside and said to him, “Excuse
me, do I know you?” Sure enough, the
beggar had been in the seminary with him many years earlier. He had been ordained a priest, but had [in
his words] “crashed and burned” in his vocation.
The priest from New York was understandably shaken up when
he left the beggar a few minutes later.
That afternoon he was at the Vatican, and had the
opportunity to meet the pope and speak with him. He said to him, “Please, Holy Father, pray
for this particular man. I went to
seminary with him, and he’s now a beggar on the streets of Rome. Please pray for him, because he’s lost.”
The Holy Father instructed the priest to go back to the
beggar.
He found him—once again—in front of the church, and he said
to him, “I have an invitation for the two of us to have dinner with the pope
tonight.” The beggar said, “No, I
can’t.” The priest responded, “You’d
better, because I’m not going to have dinner with the pope any other way.”
So the priest took the beggar to his room, where he
provided him with a razor, a much-needed shower, and some clean clothes.
Then they went to dinner.
About an hour into the meal, the Holy Father asked the priest from New
York to leave the room. He then said to
the beggar, “Would you hear my Confession?”
The beggar said, “I’m not a priest anymore.” The pope replied, “Once a priest, always a
priest.” The beggar said, “But I’m not
in good standing with the Church.” The
pope shot back, “I’m the pope. I’m the
bishop of Rome. I can re-instate you
now.”
The beggar agreed, and Pope John Paul II proceeded to
confess his sins.
The beggar-priest barely got the words of absolution out of
his mouth before he dropped to his knees and tearfully asked, “Holy Father,
will you please hear my
Confession?” He confessed, and was
restored to good graces with our Lord and the Church.
The Holy Father then invited the New York priest back into
the room, and he asked him at what church he had found the beggar. The priest told him. The pope then said to the beggar-priest, “For
your first assignment, I want you to go to the pastor there and report for
duty, because you’ll be an associate at that parish with a special outreach to
the beggars in that area.”
And that’s what he did.
He was restored to God’s grace, and continued his priestly ministry
among the poor of Rome.
Life is full of ups and downs, twists and turns, pleasant
highways and bumpy roads. And because of
the many trials and temptations we face, it’s relatively easy to get
off-track—even when it comes to your vocation.
Something got this priest off-track. We’re not sure what it was, but obviously
something caused him to “crash and burn,” as he put it. Husbands and wives sometimes get off-track in
their relationships with one another, or in their relationships with their
children; young people easily get off-track in their relationships with their
parents; teens sometimes get “off track” by getting into drugs or alcohol or
violence or sexually promiscuous behavior.
To be “on-track” is to be doing God’s will in your life; to
be “off-track” is to be doing your own.
The 4 men we heard about in today’s Gospel story—Peter,
Andrew, James and John—got on-track with Jesus by saying “yes” to the Lord’s
call. They left their fishing
business—and their old way of life—and began to follow Christ as his
apostles. And, for the most part, they
stayed on-track, although they had many temptations to get off-track. One of the biggest occurred at the end of
John 6. Jesus had just given a
magnificent sermon on the Holy Eucharist.
He told the crowds that he intended to give them his flesh and blood to
be their spiritual food and drink. They
responded by “freaking out”—to use the colloquial expression. And the Bible tells us that many of our
Lord’s disciples left him at that moment—people who had been following him for
a long time. They walked away, saying, “This sort of talk is hard to endure. Who can take it seriously?” Jesus then turned to his apostles (realizing
that they were facing the same temptation), and he said, “Do you want to leave me too?”
Peter responded, “Lord, to whom
shall we go? You have the words of
everlasting life.” That kept them
all on-track, at least for the time being.
From these apostles I would say we can learn 3 lessons for
our own lives: we can learn how to get on-track, how to stay on-track, and what
to do if we get off-track for whatever reason.
To get on-track—in other words, to discern what God wants
you to do in this life—you must develop a personal relationship with Jesus, as
they did. (I don’t presume that every
Catholic has a personal relationship with Jesus; although every Catholic should—as
Fr. Najim has reminded us all many times.) In today’s Gospel, we hear how the apostles
were called by our Lord and how they immediately dropped everything to follow
him. That may seem a bit far-fetched,
until you realize that this was probably not the first time these men had
encountered Jesus. If you read John’s
Gospel, it seems they had already met our Lord at least once. So a personal relationship with Jesus had
already begun for these men, such that when he called them in today’s story,
they responded without hesitation. Based
on their previous encounter, they understood that Jesus was anointed of God and
worthy of their trust and
obedience.
We encounter Jesus in many ways, but most of all through
prayer and the sacraments. Consequently,
if we want to be like these apostles by getting and staying on track, then
prayer and the sacraments—especially the Eucharist and Confession—need to be at
the center of our lives.
I think it’s safe to say that from this moment when they
left their fishing business until the end of their lives, Peter, Andrew, James
and John didn’t make any major decision without consulting Jesus—that’s how
deep their personal relationships with Jesus were! How do you make important decisions in your
life? How do you decide the right thing
to do? Do you make an effort to consult
Jesus? Do you take it to prayer and get
spiritual direction when necessary? Or
do you do what “feels” right? Or what
the majority tells you to do? If you
think you’re called to marriage, for example, have you asked Jesus to bring the
right person into your life—the person he
knows you should marry? I hope you have,
because if you haven’t it’s highly likely you’ll get somebody else!
And here’s something else we learn from the apostles about
staying on-track: get the right friends!
The apostles had each other; the beggar priest in Rome had his old
classmate from the seminary who cared enough about him to speak to the pope
about his situation, and he had the pope himself who reached out to him in his
need. Whom do you have? What are your friends like? Friends can either get you off-track and keep
you there, or they can help get you on-track and motivate you to stay
there. St. Paul once said, “Bad company corrupts good morals.” If that’s true (and it is), then the opposite
is also true: Good company inspires good morals.
And what do you do if and when you get off-track?—if and when
you get de-railed?
You do what the apostles did on Easter after their Holy
Week “derailment”—you go back to Jesus!
You don’t listen to Satan by giving up hope and staying away! Peter, for example, who had denied Jesus 3
times, professed his love for Jesus 3 times when the Lord appeared to him at
the Sea of Galilee. The Lord is not
likely to appear to us in that same fashion, but he doesn’t have to! He is just as present to us in the sacrament
of Confession, where he absolves us through the priest who acts in his
person. Sin de-rails us, but Confession
re-rails us. When the de-railed beggar-priest
went to Confession to the Holy Father, he was immediately put back on-track. And so it can be for us.
The bottom line is this: It’s Jesus who gets us on-track;
it’s Jesus working through prayer, the sacraments, and good friends who keeps
us on track; and it’s Jesus in the sacrament of Reconciliation who puts us back
on-track.
So regardless of whether you’re on or off track at the
present time, the answer is the same: Jesus.
