A HOUSEHOLD THAT BELONGED ENTIRELY TO GOD
MASS Diléctio Dei
LESSON Wisdom 5:16-20
GOSPEL St Luke 6:17-23
PROPER LAST GOSPEL St Matthew 22:34-46
HOMILIST Mt Revd Jerome Lloyd OSJV
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind.”
There is a word in that commandment which leaves us nowhere to hide: whole.
Not part of the heart. Not the religious corner of the heart. Not whatever remains after ambition, comfort, reputation and human affection have taken their share. God asks for the whole heart because He is the sovereign Good, the source of every lesser good and the end for which man was created.
Today the Church places before us a family who obeyed that commandment to its furthest earthly consequence: St Eustace, his wife Theopista, and their sons Agapius and Theopistus. The Roman tradition remembers them not merely as four individuals who happened to die together, but as a Christian household which passed together through suffering into glory.
The setting is imperial Rome in the opening decades of the second century. Eustace—then called Placidus—was, according to the tradition received by the Church, a distinguished Roman commander under the Emperor Trajan, who reigned from AD 98 until 117. After Trajan’s death, Hadrian succeeded him. It was at Rome, traditionally about AD 118, that Eustace and his family were condemned for refusing to sacrifice to the pagan gods. Thus we stand near the beginning of the second Christian century, in the capital of the empire, where loyalty to Christ could be judged treason against the religious claims of Caesar.
Placidus possessed what men commonly desire: honour, authority, ability, family and position. Yet grace reached him amid those very things. While hunting, he beheld between the antlers of a stag the image of Christ crucified and heard the summons of the Saviour.
The hunter discovered that he himself was being hunted by divine mercy.
He received Baptism with his wife and children, taking the name Eustace. But his conversion was not followed by immediate prosperity. Almost everything upon which natural security depended was taken from him. His wealth disappeared. His position was lost. His family was separated. He passed from command to humiliation and from abundance to want.
This is where romantic accounts of conversion so often cease to resemble the Christian life. We imagine that once a man has found God, Providence ought immediately to make everything easier. But the saints teach us that grace does not always remove the Cross. Frequently it enables us to carry the Cross without abandoning God.
Eustace had been able to command soldiers; now he had to learn how to obey Providence. He had known how to conquer enemies in battle; now he had to conquer fear, grief, bewilderment and the temptation to accuse God. The first victory belonged to the Roman officer. The greater victory belonged to the Christian.
In time, his family was restored to him and his former dignity recovered. Yet the final trial remained. When commanded to offer sacrifice to the false gods in thanksgiving for military victory, Eustace refused. He knew that success in battle did not belong to the idols. He would not purchase imperial favour by an act of apostasy.
His wife and sons stood with him. The Roman Martyrology records that they were first condemned to the beasts, which would not harm them, and were then enclosed within a burning brazen bull. The persecutor intended that instrument to become the tomb of a Christian household. God made it the gate of their common triumph.
The Epistle of the feast tells us how heaven judges such a scene: “The souls of the just are in the hand of God, and the torment of death shall not touch them.” To the eyes of the foolish they appeared to die. To the eyes of Rome, the emperor had destroyed them. To the eyes of faith, they had been proved like gold in the furnace and found worthy of God.
The fire could touch their bodies, but it could not reach the supernatural life of their souls. The emperor could close the doors of the brazen bull, but he could not close the doors of heaven. He could extinguish the household upon earth, but he could not prevent its reunion before the throne of God.
Here the feast meets perfectly the Gospel of the Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost. Our Lord commands the love of God above all things and the love of neighbour as oneself. Eustace loved God above life; and because he loved his family rightly, he would not preserve their mortal lives by teaching them to betray the Faith.
That is the order of charity.
St Augustine teaches that holiness requires us to love things according to their proper order: God for His own sake, and ourselves and our neighbour in relation to God. St Thomas Aquinas explains that martyrdom is an act of fortitude, but receives its perfection from charity. A man may endure pain through pride, obstinacy or desperation. The martyr endures it because he loves God more than he fears suffering.
This explains why Eustace’s love for his family was not contradicted by their common martyrdom. Had he bowed before the idols in order to save them, he would have preferred their bodily survival to their eternal good. He would have kept them beside him for a few more years at the cost of encouraging them to deny the One for whom they had been created.
True love desires heaven for the beloved.
A father does not love his children merely by keeping them comfortable. A mother does not love them merely by shielding them from every difficulty. Parents love their children most deeply when they teach them that God is true, that Christ is Lord, that sin is evil, that the soul is immortal, and that no earthly advantage can compensate for the loss of sanctifying grace.
The Christian household is not merely a place where people who happen to be related eat, sleep and organise their separate lives. It is meant to be a domestic church: a school of prayer, sacrifice, truth and rightly ordered affection. Its members should help one another reach heaven.
That duty has not disappeared because our persecutors usually employ subtler instruments than brazen bulls. The modern world seldom begins by demanding incense before a visible idol. It asks for small acts of surrender. Keep silent about the truth to avoid embarrassment. Permit what God forbids so that nobody becomes upset. Neglect Mass because the family has something more convenient planned. Allow children to be formed by screens, fashions and institutions, while giving God whatever fragments of attention remain.
The idol is no less an idol because it bears a fashionable name.
The Collect of the Seventeenth Sunday asks God to enable His people to avoid “the contagions of the devil” and to follow Him, the only God, with a pure mind. Contagion is exactly the word. Error spreads. Cowardice spreads. Worldliness spreads. What one generation tolerates, the next accepts, and the third defends as though it were a sacred right.
But fidelity also spreads.
Children who see their parents kneel learn that there is Someone greater than their parents. Children who hear their father speak the truth when speaking it has a cost learn that truth is not merely a matter of convenience. Children who see their mother forgive, pray and remain faithful in sorrow learn that Christianity is not an ornament for easy days. A household which organises its life around the altar silently declares that Christ is not one interest among many, but Lord.
St Paul, in the Sunday Epistle, speaks of “one body and one spirit”, “one Lord, one faith, one baptism”. Those words could be written over the household of St Eustace. They possessed one Faith, received one Baptism, confessed one Lord and entered together into one victory.
Their unity was not merely emotional. They did not remain united by avoiding the question of truth. They were one because they belonged to Christ.
Many families today appear united only so long as nobody speaks seriously about God, morality, vocation, confession or death. But silence is not unity, and the avoidance of conflict is not peace. A family is not saved by agreeing never to discuss the things upon which salvation depends.
Christian unity is unity in truth and charity under one Lord.
Our Lord concludes the Sunday Gospel with the question: “What think you of Christ? Whose son is He?” The Pharisees can answer that the Messias is the son of David, but they cannot explain why David calls Him Lord. Christ is truly the son of David according to His humanity, yet He is David’s Lord according to His divinity.
That is the question placed before every soul and every household: “What think you of Christ?”
Is He an admired teacher whose difficult words may be set aside? Is He a family tradition retained for Christmas, funerals and moments of distress? Is He permitted to console us but not to command us? Or is He truly Lord—Lord of the mind, the body, the home, the calendar, the marriage, the upbringing of children, the use of money, the acceptance of suffering and the hour of death?
St Eustace answered not merely with his lips but with his life: Christ is Lord. Theopista answered: Christ is Lord. Agapius and Theopistus answered: Christ is Lord. The flames could not alter their answer.
Most of us will not be asked to enter a brazen furnace. But every one of us must decide what we are unwilling to surrender to God. There is always some guarded chamber of the heart: a resentment we will not relinquish, a sin we will not confess, a comfort we will not sacrifice, an opinion we will not submit to Revelation, a human approval we fear to lose.
Yet whole admits no private reservation.
At this altar, the same Christ whom the martyrs confessed will make present His Sacrifice. He held nothing back. His Sacred Heart was opened. His Precious Blood was poured out. His whole humanity was offered in perfect obedience and charity.
When we receive Him, we cannot fittingly answer a total Gift with a divided heart.
Let us therefore ask, through the intercession of St Eustace and his Companions, for households which belong entirely to God: fathers who lead without cowardice, mothers who love without compromise, children formed for holiness rather than mere success, and families whose common destination is heaven.
The world may call such fidelity foolishness. It called the martyrs defeated. But the Church answers with the words of Wisdom: “The souls of the just are in the hand of God.”
There the emperor could not reach them.
There the flames could not harm them.
There the family separated by suffering was united for ever.
And there every household which has loved one Lord, guarded one Faith and lived one Baptism shall discover that nothing surrendered for Christ has truly been lost. It has only been sent ahead into eternity.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
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