LAMBS AMONG WOLVES

 A SERMON FOR THE FEAST OF ST. MARK THE EVANGELIST

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  The authors of the four Gospels.  The Latin name for Gospel is Evangelium, hence we call the authors “Evangelists.”  Two of the Evangelists were also Apostles, St. Matthew and St. John.  Two of them were not, St. Luke, and St. Mark whose feastday we celebrate today.  

In the Epistle, we read the prophecy of Ezekiel, in which he describes his vision of four living creatures.  He presents quite an impressive picture: Each of them had four wings, two of which covered their bodies, and two of which were joined to each other, thereby showing the unity of the four Gospels.  “Their appearance,” he says, “was like burning coals of fire, and like the appearance of lamps: it went up and down among the living creatures; and the fire was bright, and out of the fire went forth lightning.”  Indeed, the effect of the words of the four Holy Gospels was like lightning bolts on the world, electrifying mankind with their account of the presence of the Son of God dwelling amongst us, living, dying, and rising from the dead.

The prophet Ezekiel describes the these living creatures as having four faces: the face of a man, the face of a lion, the face of an ox, and the face of an eagle.  These are the symbols of the four Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  It’s an amazing factor of this prophecy that the four Gospels fit exactly into these symbols described by Ezekiel, so many centuries before.  St. Matthew’s Gospel begins with the human genealogy of Christ, starting with Abraham all the way down the family tree to “Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.”  What better symbol than the face of a man to represent our Lord’s human ancestry?  St. Mark’s Gospel starts with the “voice crying in the wilderness,” a wilderness known for the fierce and mighty lions who dwelled there.  And so we have the lion to represent St. Mark.  We’re left with the ox and the eagle.  The ox represents St. Luke, whose Gospel opens with the father of St. John Baptist, the priest Zacharias, burning incense in the temple of Jerusalem, where the sacrifice of oxen was made on a daily basis.  And finally, St. John, who starts his Gospel by immediately soaring like an eagle into the heavenly realm of the divine, describing our blessed Lord with the famous words, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

Once you know this, you’ll start to recognize these four figures all over the Catholic world, in paintings, murals, the architecture of the great cathedrals, everywhere that man wanted to portray the importance of the four Gospels in the life of the Church.  Today’s saint, St. Mark, is known, for example, as the patron saint of Venice in Italy, and if you ever go to Venice, you’ll see the image of the lion wherever you walk.  Down by the Cathedral of St. Mark in Venice, close to the Grand Canal and the Doge’s Palace, for instance, there’s a great pillar, on which stands the roaring lion of St. Mark, proudly standing guard over the city of Venice and its inhabitants.

The four faces of the four Evangelists are in a certain sense like the faces of anyone else.  They are the means by which we recognize each other.  It’s true that no two people’s fingerprints are identical, and I’m sure that’s a very useful tool in law enforcement.  But in the normal run of things, I don’t look at your fingers to see who you are.  I recognize you by your faces.  In his exposition on the prophecy of Ezekiel quoted in today’s Matins, Pope St. Gregory the Great put it this way: “What signifieth the face save likeness whereby we are known.. since it is by the face that man is known from man?  So the face pertaineth to certitude, and by certitude we are known of God, who saith: I am the Good Shepherd, and I know my sheep and am known of mine.  And again, I know whom I have chosen.”  Maybe this is why the devil and his ever-busy minions are so intent on making us wear masks.  By masking our faces, we become unrecognizable to our fellow-man, and perhaps sometimes we might feel, subconsciously, mistakenly,  that even God has forgotten who we are.

God knows us.  By our fruits he knows us, not by our faces.  He knows who we are and everything about us.  He knows which among us are truly his sheep, and which are wolves, and which are wolves pretending to be sheep.  And we who are his sheep, we are chosen by him.  There aren’t many of us.  “The harvest truly is great,” he tells us, “but the labourers are few.”  Let that fact not trouble us, let us just do as he commands, which is to “pray therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth labourers into his harvest.”  Our prayers must be that our numbers will grow, grow so that our own witness to the words of the Gospel may resonate all the more strongly among our fellow men, even those who are wolves, striking them like the bolts of lightning emanating from the four creatures of Ezekiel’s vision.  “Behold, I send you as lambs among wolves,” our Lord admonishes us.  And do you want to know what to say to these wolves out there?  He tells us what to say.  “Say unto them, The kingdom of God is come nigh unto you.”  Remind them that God is nigh unto them, that he sees what they do, that he knows them just as certainly as he knows us.  He sees through the masks of piety and hypocrisy that cover their faces, through their subterfuge and pretenses, and he knows them by their fruits. 

Perhaps our admonitions that the kingdom of God is come night unto them, that their evil deeds are being watched by the same Almighty Judge, may give them pause to reflect on the wickedness of those deeds and of the life they live.  If not now, then they will at least remember on that dreadful day of judgment that they had been warned.  Remember the words of St. Paul, that now, we see as through a glass darkly, but then face to face.  When we meet that judge, we will not only realize just how well he knows us, but we will see him face to face and recognize him for who he is.  We will also recognize ourselves for who we are.  When the kingdom of God comes nigh unto us, we will know God and we will despise our every miserable thought, word and deed that ever displeased him.  The sheep will be separated from the goats—and certainly from the wolves—and we will all be sent forth unto our eternal reward or everlasting punishment.  Meanwhile, although we may see now as through a glass darkly, let’s not forsake the Light of the Gospel, which shines and enlightens the obscure confusion in which the world now finds itself.  No matter how dimly that light may shine, it is enough for us to recognize the face of God in all men of good will.  It is enough for us to make out the pathway to heaven.