27 October 2005 HOMILY
Thursday of the 30 th Week in Ordinary Time
Readings: Rom 8:31b-39; Lk 13:31-35

The late Jaime Cardinal Sin of Manila loved to tell the story of his priestly vocation and Mary's decisive role in it. When he was a young seminarian, the Vincentian Fathers who were his teachers were about to send him home because he was frequently sick. One day he prayed to the Blessed Mother and promised that if he would remain healthy and would become a priest, throughout his life he would have a special devotion to her under the title of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal. As a sign of this promise he wrote a note and slipped it under her statue. Up to the time of his death last July, Cardinal Sin kept that note and remained a loyal devotee to our Lady. He believed he had become a priest through Mary's intercession. For him that note was a sign of the special grace he received.

I am sure we also have our own stories of Mary's ‘miraculous' intercession. We have mementos of this in places like the chapel of the Apparitions in rue du Bac, shrines in Philadelphia, Perryville, Madrid, Zakopane Olcza, and other cities. Mementos, signs – that point to something unusual, significant, and miraculous that has happened in our lives.

In today's Gospel passage, Jesus speaks also about signs: casting out of demons and healings (Lk 13:31). For him, these signs, together with the release of prisoners, the restoration of sight to the blind, the evangelization of the poor, etc. (Lk 4:18-19), are intimately linked to the “ day of the Lord ”. They point unmistakably to the dawning of the Reign of God in the world, the saving presence of God on earth, the supreme and ultimate sign of which is none other than Jesus Christ himself, the one “ who comes in the name of the Lord (Lk 13:35).”

And yet these signs seemed not convincing enough for some of Jesus' contemporaries. The Pharisees and other religious leaders in Jerusalem did not read these signs in the same way that Jesus' followers did. In fact, and this is what Jesus bemoaned in the Gospel today, instead of believing, the leaders of Jerusalem “ killed the prophets and stoned those sent by God .” Jerusalem not only ignored these signs from God but sought to eliminate them. This was how Jesus knew beforehand what his own fate would be and he knew that no amount of fleeing would spare him from the hands of those who sought to kill him. We know, of course, that, yes, they did put Jesus to death, but, try as they did, they could not eliminate the message he came to preach – God's love become flesh. Such was the power of God's love for us that no earthly king, no Herod, could diminish or extinguish it.

This much St. Paul proclaims to the Christians of Rome then and to us now: “ neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. ” (Rom 8:39). In short, Paul says, there is no power greater than the love God has for us.

I am convinced that Mary gave us the ‘miraculous' medal as a sign of such powerful and enduring love. But I am sure also that for us the medal is not a talisman, a magical object that works wonders independent of God and Mary's intercession. Precisely the medal points to Mary's willingness to intercede on our behalf, to mediate for us the graces and blessings that come from the bosom of God our Father. In the language of the Gospels, the medal is a sign of God's kingdom.

Being such a sign, the medal cannot simply be ‘miraculous' in the magical sense, in the sense of extra-normal. It has to be ‘miraculous' in the sense of the Gospel, that is, miracles as signs pointing to the presence of God's kingdom in our midst. And this presence, Jesus tells us, is to be found in concrete forms: the poor have the Gospel preached to them, the blind recover their sight, prisoners their freedom, the sick their health, etc.

Mary herself was not unfamiliar with this. In the “Magnificat,” the longest statement attributed to Mary in the Gospels, she recognizes the ways by which God becomes present in people's lives: “he has cast down the mighty from their thrones . . he has filled the hungry. . . he has lifted up the lowly. (Lk 1:45-56)” Mary understood very well the extent of God's involvement in human history.

When we view the medal, Mary's legacy to us, from this same perspective, our mission as members of the Association of the Miraculous Medal becomes clearer and all the more understandable. It does not consist simply in propagating devotion to Mary as our Lady of the Miraculous Medal, or in promoting only the “spiritual”. It involves equally working for the liberation of the poor, caring for the sick, opening people's eyes to God's presence and love, etc. In our visits to families, prisoners, and the elderly, in our clinics and other social services, in our work with the poor, it is our mission to proclaim God's mercies (Ps 109) and the wonderful things he has done for us, and often these come about through our work for justice, equality, and freedom.

When I was visiting the Vincentian Family in Tanzania last September, I was shown a place near the capital, Dar Es Salaam, where the confreres plan to built a shrine to our Lady of the Miraculous Medal, similar to the great shrines in France, the U.S., Spain, the Philippines, etc. It is on a hill overlooking the western side of the Indian Ocean. I could already imagine pilgrims from all over East Africa going to this site, imploring Mary's intercession for their needs. For now, it is still a dream. One thing, though, stuck in my mind. The confrere told me that the devotion to our Lady of the Miraculous Medal would fit quite well among Tanzanians because of their strong belief in the “miraculous”. It is my hope that he meant miraculous not simply in the magical sense but in the sense of the Gospel – a sign that heals, liberates, and transforms hearts and spirits, peoples and nations, the rich and the poor.

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