Homily for Thursday, 22 June 2017‒ Feast of Sts. John Fisher and Thomas More

Patronal Feast of the Diocese of Rochester (USA)

Thursday of the 11th Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: 1 Peter 4:12-19; Psalm 126:1bc-2ab, 2cd-3, 4-5, 6; Matthew 10:34-39

“I have not come to bring peace but the sword,” Jesus says to us today in Matthew’s Gospel. Does this not challenge our view of a peaceful Jesus, who called us to peace and to love one another and to love God with all our being?

One of the foremost ways of interpreting Jesus’ message here is that he is not calling for us to create divisions unnecessarily or to act with violence, or saying that his mission on earth was to be divisive or violent. Instead, Jesus says that his message will reveal divisions and violence that already exist: In our households, within and between nations, within our Church, in our workplaces, in our political assemblies, in our communities, and within our own hearts.

This interpretation is well and good, but then Jesus goes on to say today: “Whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” And so do we not hear Jesus calling us here not only to avoid violence and unnecessary divisions, but to some form of zeal? Our question we may want to ask ourselves is: “For what (or whom) am I prepared to die”?

We are called, I suggest, to hold two virtues in a difficult balance: On the one hand, the virtue of peace with everybody and, on the other hand, the virtue of zeal; of being prepared even to die for a good enough cause; for God; for our faith in Christ.

Our first reading today, from the first Letter of Peter, calls us to the same balance between peace and zeal. And, like Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel, Peter acknowledges that to live this balance, a Christian balance, will lead us to suffer at least misunderstanding, perhaps ridicule, if not a martyr’s death. Yet Peter says, “Those who suffer in accord with God’s will hand their souls over to a faithful creator as they do good.”

Today we celebrate two saints; two martyrs, St. Thomas More and St. John Fisher, patron saint of this Diocese of Rochester, who gave their lives to maintain this balance between peace and zeal.

This balance to which we are called may rest on a finer line than ever. On the one hand, is it not right to be concerned about too easy a peace, when we fail to confront important evils of our world? This false peace we may call moral relativism. On the other hand, when we too proudly presume that we are right and another is wrong, we fall into a false zeal that is a form of absolutism, relativism’s evil twin, and we forget all the same the greatest virtue of all: Love, or charity.

Charity is the hinge between peace and zeal. It leads us to seek dialogue and to guide with patience those who struggle to understand or live a moral ideal. It leads us to ask questions when we are uncertain of another’s position, instead of shouting down, gossiping, excluding, or posting that biting comment on the internet for all to see. Charity, the hinge between peace and zeal, is the central virtue of a Christian. It is our central virtue, and the central virtue for which Sts. John Fisher, Thomas More, and every saint and martyr through the ages, has died and has lived.