Dear Brothers and Sisters:
Junípero Serra will be canonized a saint by Pope Francis in Washington, DC during the Pontiff’s trip to the US in a few weeks. In the Capitol Building there is a hall filled with greater than life size statues of the pioneers who established the United States of America and one of them is a statue of the Franciscan Friar, Junípero Serra. He was one of two people chosen by California to be granted this honor, and is known as the founder of California. He was responsible for establishing the missions in the eighteenth century between San Diego and San Francisco, named always after saints.
He came from Majorca, Spain and decided to be a priest at the age of fifteen at considerable sacrifice to his parents since he was the oldest and only son of two children. Three others had died early on. He was a very good student and later a professor of Philosophy for the Friars and at Lullian University. At the age of thirty-five in 1749 he said, years later: “I have had no other motive but to revive in my soul those intense longings which I have had since my novitiate when I read the lives of the saints. These longings have become deadened because of a preoccupation I had with studies.” And he went off to the Franciscan missions in Mexico and from there to California.
I mention him since he gives us a wonderful example of what St. James refers to in his letter as a “doer of the Word of God.” It even seems that at some point midway in his life he realized that he was not “a doer of the Word” and made a very conscious decision to change. The saints always give us hope that we too can be people who listen to God’s word and transform our life.
For the next five Sundays we will listen to this letter of James, the brother of the Lord (meaning half-brother or cousin). He was the bishop of Jerusalem and was killed there by the Jews. It was probably written at the end of the century as best we can tell and is part of the Catholic Epistles, which were not addressed to a single city or community but to the whole Church or therefore called Universal or Catholic letters. It reads more like a sermon than a letter and a common trait in all of it is that faith is not something abstract but needs to be implemented in every aspect of life. So it is timely for the Church today since a real threat today is the unfruitful practice of Christianity in daily life.
In many ways St. James is spelling out what it means to be a disciple. A true disciple learns in order to do; this is fundamental. I will focus these five weeks on this idea: the steps one needs to take in order to be a disciple. The word disciple implies discipline which is essential to be child of God. Scripture says often it is not those who say Lord, Lord, who will enter the Kingdom of God, but those who do the will of the Father. It is a big difference.
James says, “Anyone who listens to the Word (Logos in Greek and refers to Jesus) and takes no action is like someone who looks in the mirror and goes off immediately and forgets what he has seen. But the one who looks steadily and keeps to it by putting into practice will be blessed in every understanding.”
On the one hand he says those who look in a mirror see himself/herself and the image of God that was put inside of them. If he then runs off and forgets what he has seen he/she is not a “doer of the Word.” In contrast, the person who sees and looks steadily at his image in the law of freedom perseveres, and does not forget. The Law is a norm of conduct, it is not something heavy, you must do this and not do that…Law for the Jew meant it frees me from my self interest and so I can work on this image of God that he wants to see in me. It is not freedom from the Law, but freedom to do the Law, or freedom to do the good, not whatever I feel like doing, but what is good for the poor, the needy around me.
The one who does this is truly a “doer of the Word.” So James also gives us some practical steps to take a look at this week. The one who humbly hears the Word receives it and responds, he or she does not build on sand, but on rock. The rabbis used to say God gave us two ears and only one tongue; the ears are open and exposed, the tongue is behind a wall of teeth. This is a practical first step. Is there some discipline in my life to listen twice as much as I speak? And to leave church with a resolution to put into practice something this week? James tells us two very specific things to do: help those who need it, widows and orphans. Older people and young kids we can say for today AND don’t be contaminated by the world. Ask God what this means for you, and he will show you.