Join us today as we celebrate Holy Communion for the Third Sunday of Ordinary Time, 1/23/22. To follow along at home, click here and print the Holy Communion Program. Text of today’s homily below.
CLICK HERE TO GET AN EMAIL OF EACH SUNDAY’S SERVICE IN YOUR EMAIL BOX and to receive email updates about the mission of St. Barachiel Chapel.
If you would like to have prayers offered for you, a loved one, a friend, for someone who is suffering, ill or who has departed, please email Archdeacon Mitch at mitch@heritageartsinc.com and we will pray for you. And if you’d like to assist in the beautification, improvement and maintenance of St. Barachiel Chapel, or support our educational mission, please click here to make a donation.
Homily for the Third Sunday of Ordinary Time -- Sunday 1/23/22
Readings: Neh 8:2-4a, 5-6, 8-10, Ps 19:8, 9, 10, 15, 1 Cor 12:12-14, 27, Lk 1:1-4; 4:14-21
Yesterday, brothers and sisters, was the feast day of St. Vincent of Saragossa, and today we’re going to take advantage of our option to celebrate his memorial. St. Vincent was born in the 3rd century and died in the year 304. He was a deacon, an assistant to Bishop Valerius of Spain, who suffered under a speech impediment. St. Vincent was his spokesman. So, when Bishop Valerius was thrown in prison by the Roman governor Dacian during the Christian persecutions ordered by Emperor Diocletian, St. Vincent was taken in as well.
Bishop Valerius was banished, but St. Vincent’s outspoken manner made him the subject of severe torture. His flesh was pierced with iron hooks, he was bound and roasted on a red-hot gridiron, and tossed into a prison cell whose floor was strewn with broken pottery. His demeanor was so calm and unmoved in the face of his extreme suffering that when he died at peace his jailer repented of his sins and was converted to the Christian faith – an occurrence not uncommon in the lives of saints and martyrs by the way.
After his death his body was cast onto a muckheap and would’ve been devoured by vultures had it not been protected by ravens. Dacian then ordered the body interred at sea, where it washed ashore and was taken by the faithful to be interred at Cape St. Vincent on the coast of Portugal which now bears his name. A shrine was built on the spot, and ravens continued to protect his body, so much so that 800 years later, when Spain and Portugal were under Muslim rule, the place was referred to as Kanīsah al-Ghurāb or “The Church of the Raven.”
The raven, of course, is the dire black bird that leads the spirits of the departed toward the afterlife in the old pagan myths. But in Genesis the raven is the first bird Noah released to find dry land after the flood, and in the old art of Alchemy, the raven symbolized the first stage of development in the Great Work – the perfection of the soul in and the manufacture of the heal-all known as the Philosopher’s Stone. The Savior himself references the raven in the Gospel of Luke 12:22-25. Jesus said,
“Therefore I say unto you, Be not anxious for your life, what ye shall eat; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. For the life is more than the food, and the body than the raiment. Consider the ravens, that they sow not, neither reap; which have no store-chamber nor barn; and God feedeth them: of how much more value are ye than the birds! And which of you by being anxious can add a cubit unto the measure of his life? If then ye are not able to do even that which is least, why are ye anxious concerning the rest?” Luke 12:22-25 American Standard Version
I assure you that Jesus Christ, the Word Made Flesh, the Author of Life, did not randomly select the raven – a bird that feeds on waste and carrion and symbolizes death – for use in his sermon. The raven reminds us that every breath may be our last, and if we live their lives steeped in this knowledge, we can live life to the fullest no matter how dark our lives become. Perhaps we can even have the courage of St. Vincent of Saragossa. Let, therefore, the knocks and rattles of the raven’s eerie call be as a proclamation to you. Fear not death. But rather take flight!