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Father Roger J. Landry is a priest of the Diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts, who works for the Holy See’s Permanent Observer Mission to the United Nations in New York.... more

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August 10, 2025Indestructible Money Bags with Inexhaustible Treasures, 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C), August 10, 2025
Fr. Roger J. Landry
Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY
Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, C
August 10, 2025
Wis 18:6-9, Ps 33, Heb 11:1-2.8-19, Lk 12:32-48

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/8.10.25_Homily_1.mp3

The following text guided today’s homily:
“Blessed the people the Lord has chosen to be his own,” we prayed several times in today’s psalm. How blessed we are to know God, to know how loved we are by him, to know what he asks of us, to have the joy of helping others to know him. The second reading from the Letter to the Hebrews describes how blessed Abraham was to have been chosen by God and to respond with faith in him, the faith that led him to leave all he knew in his 70s and go to a place God would show him, the faith that helped him and his wife Sarah to trust in God that, even in their old age, they would have a son through whom Abraham would become the father of many nations, the faith that led him even to be willing to sacrifice that long-awaited son, confident that God would be able to raise Isaac from the dead. The first reading from the Book of Wisdom describes how blessed the Jews were, for having been chosen by God and having trusted in him to follow Moses’ instructions, celebrate the Passover and follow Moses through the Red Sea, into the desert, to the Promised Land. The Psalm itself describes how blessed all believers are, trusting in God to “deliver them from death and preserve them in spite of famine.” All of these readings are illustrations of what the Letter to the Hebrews says about faith. Faith, it underlines, “realization of what is hoped for and the evidence of things not seen.” We live by faith when we trust in God to know he will keep his promises and live in accordance with those promises. How blessed we are that God has chosen us to receive the gift of faith in him!
In the Gospel today, Jesus makes plain that blessing and the way we are supposed to respond in faith. Everything begins with his extraordinary words, “Your Father is pleased to give you the kingdom!” God the Father wants to give us something greater than he gave Abraham and the Jews. He wants to give us what they and their descendants longed for: to make us, in this world and forever, heirs of his Kingdom. The kingdom of God is ultimately God, who chooses us to be his own and makes us members of the royal family. Bestowing on us that gift, Jesus says, gives God the Father great joy. Jesus tells us, therefore, “Don’t be afraid any longer.” Sometimes we are afraid of God, afraid of displeasing him, afraid of our weaknesses and our capacity to choose against God, others and ourselves, we are afraid of the eternal consequences of our sinful choices. But Jesus encourages us not to be afraid, because his Father is delighted to give it all to us, shown in his sending his Son into the world to announce to us that the Kingdom is at hand, to teach us how to enter it, and, at great personal cost on Calvary, to make it possible for us to live with the King always.
Jesus wants us to be as happy about receiving that gift of the kingdom as God the Father is to give it. That’s why he tells us that we need to let go of a desire to build our own material kingdom here on earth and use everything we have to obtain God’s kingdom. “Sell your belongings and give alms,” he says. “Provide money bags for yourselves that do not wear out, an inexhaustible treasure in heaven that no thief can reach nor moth destroy.” The way to seize and live in the kingdom is through Christ-like charity, to use whatever money or goods we have, time we have, capacities we have we have, to lift others up. To love in this way is like transferring all we have to an account in the national bank of the kingdom that can never be taxed, where it will form an “inexhaustible treasure” that will never cease paying dividends. But Jesus wants us to respond with faith, trusting in his promises. He wants us to make a choice as to whether we are going to build up this heavenly treasure or, like the fool in last Sunday’s Gospel, try to build up towers for our grain and wealth here on earth. “For where your treasure is,” Jesus tells us, “there also will your heart be.” Is our heart really in God, in his kingdom, in his promises and in his eternally secure treasure? Or is our heart in this fleeting world where eventually everything will pass away?
If our heart is really in God, Jesus today tells us how to prove it. He tells us, “Gird your loins and light your lamps and be like servants who await their master’s return from a wedding, ready to open immediately when he comes and knocks. Blessed are those servants whom the master on his arrival finds vigilant.” If we’re living in the kingdom with the King, then we will be vigilant, alert, hungry for him. Like the five wise virgins Jesus described in a parable of the kingdom in St. Matthew’s Gospel, we will light our lamps full of oil burning and ready for his return. We will gird our loins like the Jews in the desert, ready to run out to meet, embrace him and follow him wherever he leads. This is an expectant longing, like a child awaiting the return of a parent so that together they can to on an exciting adventure. A little later in the parable, Jesus drives home the point with two other images. One is of a security guard. “Be sure of this,” he says. “If the master of the house had known the hour when the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into.” Jesus wants us to be as alert for the joy of his arrival as a shepherd is alert for the advance of wolves who want to attack his flock, or a father is to protect the family members and property in his house when he hears a report of burglars in the neighborhood. The second image is of a steward. “Who, then,” Jesus states, “is the faithful and prudent steward whom the master will put in charge of his servants to distribute the food allowance at the proper time? Blessed is that servant whom his master on arrival finds already doing so.” If we’re awaiting him, Jesus wants us to be faithful, prudent and sharing what he has put at our disposal for the care of others. Notice the tense of the verbs Jesus employs: he will put in charge the one he finds already doing so He doesn’t want us to wait for an official ceremony appointing us; he wants us caring for others now. That’s what it means to be faithful. That’s what it means to be prudent. That’s what good stewardship means. He adds, in words that could apply to both images, “And should he come in the second or third watch and find them prepared in this way, blessed are those servants.” The Jewish night was broken down into four three-hour periods or “watches”: 6-9 pm, 9 pm to midnight, midnight to 3 am and 3-6 am. Jesus is communicating that if he finds us vigilant for him with the lamp of our heart burning, loins girt ready to greet him, and generously sharing his blessings, even at night when we and others are tired, even when most others aren’t even watching, how much more blessed we’ll be. We’ll really be showing that charity is not some quid pro quo that we do only because we have to or are looking for a reward, but has become so much a part of our nature that we do it even when we’re exhausted. That’s what it means to live in the kingdom with faith.
But that’s not the only response Jesus describes. There are those who don’t light their lamps. There are those who not only don’t gird their loins but take off their sandals. There are those who don’t distribute God’s blessings to others, but who, instead, thinking he’s long delayed, begin to “eat, drink and get drunk” and beat and abuse others. These are the unfaithful and imprudent stewards, these are the co-conspirators of the thieves, these are the ones who will be, Jesus says, with images evoking hell, “beaten severely” and assigned a place with the unfaithful. It’s a sad possibility of human freedom that people to whom God wants to give the kingdom can respond to his offer with such indifference and ingratitude, or even with such contempt as to spurn the values of the kingdom for an earthly fiefdom of their own making. Such a life begin when we place our heart not in God and his promises, but in the pleasures of this life and things of the world. That leads to the corruption of our heart, such that it’s drowsy rather than vigilant, lazy rather than prompt, drunk rather than sober, evil rather than generous, stupid rather than smart, and unfaithful rather than true. Which set of adjectives and actions better would better describe us? Are we truly faithful and prudent stewards with lamps lit, loins girt and hearts really in God? What about in the second or third watch of the night? Are we already doing what he asks us, or do we wait until he or others seem to start paying attention?
There are two objections that come up in the conversation. The first is from St. Peter, who queries, “Lord, is this parable for us or for everyone?” The question implies that he thought that the apostles might be exempt from what Jesus was teaching. We, too, can sometimes listen to Jesus’ words and immediately apply them to others, rather than to ourselves. In priestly work, I’m often approached by people who ask me to preach or write an article about x or y, not because they think they need help in that particular area, but because they think a family member, or a friend, or someone at whom they’re wagging a finger needs to hear it. All of Sacred Scripture, however, applies to each of us. Perhaps particular passages are more obviously relevant to some disciples rather than others, but none of us is exempt. Every parable is meant for us and for everyone, including what Jesus is saying to us in the Gospel today. Those of us who, like the apostles, may be more known for following Jesus, for striving to live by his teachings and spreading love of him, rather than being exempt from the application of the parables are called to be examples.
That leads us to the second objection. We might think that even though we are not excused from their application, there are others who need to listen to Jesus’ words more carefully and follow them more assiduously. In terms of being faithful and prudent stewards, for example, we may think that it applies more toward bishops, priests, and religious, teachers, business owners and parents. In terms of being vigilant for the master’s arrival, we might think that it really focuses on those who are advanced in years or facing a life-threatening diagnosis. In terms of converting from placing their treasure in things that thieves can pilfer and moths can destroy, we might deem that those words pertain far more to those far richer than we are and not living by a vow of poverty, or de facto poverty, or a promise of simplicity of life. But Jesus at the end of this Sunday’s passage says, not, “Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and little will be demanded of the person entrusted with little,” but rather, “Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more.” The point is that we’ve all been entrusted with lavish gifts, filled to overflowing. Others may have more than we think we have, but each of us has still been blessed with a great deal. Others may be spiritual billionaires, but we’re still millionaires. And God wants us to spend what he’s given us! Much is demanded of us, not in a way in which God wants to pressure us to doing good, but in a way in which he has high expectations and hopes in us because of the love with which he has enriched us. He wants us to use everything we have, not to eat, drink and get drunk, not for our own aggrandizement, but to make indestructible money bags containing an inexhaustible treasure. He has given us the resources, the time and the trust that we need. Rather than making excuses or thinking ourselves somehow excused from learning from and living like the King, he wants us to purify our hearts, light our lamps, gird our loins, and distribute his blessings.
Today on August 10 the Church annually celebrates someone who was always conscious of the Lord in his midst who with loins girt and lamps lit sought to be a faithful and prudent steward at all times. St. Lawrence was one of the seven deacons of Rome in the mid-third century. As we see in the Acts of the Apostles, the Apostles in Jerusalem were no longer able to do the charitable service of tables and all the charity that was implied in that activity. So they ordained seven men, full of the Holy Spirit, to the service of charity. They did this not because such charity was less important than the prayer and the ministry of the Word the apostles were doing but precisely because it was, and the apostles wanted to ensure that it get done. Over the course of time in various ancient dioceses, the service of deacons expanded into diakoniai, the charitable centers of the Church (like Catholic Charities today). In Rome, these service centers were quite extensive and were run by a team of seven deacons. Even though there were many priests in Rome, there were just seven deacons, who were men of great charity and organizational ability, and it was from the deacons that popes were often elected (like Pope Saints Leo the Great and Gregory the Great, who would be ordained priests and then bishop of Rome). St. Lawrence was one of the deacons and was put in charge of the diakoniai, to give so many of the poor, of God’s family members, their food at the proper time.He died in the persecution of Valerian in 258, four days after Pope St. Sixtus and four other deacons of Rome were arrested in the Catacomb of St. Praetextatus during the celebration of Mass. St. Lawrence was given a few days to round up all of the Church’s “treasures.” The Romans were trying to decapitate the Church of Rome by killing off its leaders and amassing and destroying all its good. So St. Lawrence assembled all of the Church’s true treasures, which were not books or vessels but those for whom Christ died: all of the poor, both Christian and non-Christian. They were the pearls of great price that the early Church during the age of persecutions was willing to sacrifice so much to serve. The authorities were so incensed at Lawrence’s not turning over the supposedly real treasures of the Church that they wanted to execute him in a particularly gruesome way. He was roasted on a gridiron, a terribly painful manner to die. But in giving his body and blood and roasting flesh, he was just continuing the charity of his adult life. As he was being burned alive, he turned to his executioners and said perhaps the most famous comic line in all of hagiography: “Assum est. Versa et manduca,” roughly translated, “This side is cooked. Turn me over and eat.” Through his love for God and for others, through giving his very life and goods as alms, he was amassing an inexhaustible treasure. He was one entrusted with more and invested that trust for the Master’s glory.
If we choose to live like St. Lawrence, as a minister, missionary, man or woman of charity, Jesus promises in the Gospel an extraordinary reward. He guarantees he will “gird himself, have them recline at table, and proceed to wait on them.” That is what he did for the apostles during the Last Supper as he fed them with his own body and blood, and that’s what he promises to do for us at the eternal wedding banquet. God the Father indeed is pleased to give us the kingdom and he shows it by giving us the King of Kings as our food even here on earth. Let us lift up our hearts to the Lord and place our treasure where our hearts are. How blessed we are to have been chosen by God and called to the Supper of the Lamb!

The readings for today’s Mass are:
Reading 1
Wisdom 18:6-9
The night of the passover was known beforehand to our fathers,
that, with sure knowledge of the oaths in which they put their faith,
they might have courage.
Your people awaited the salvation of the just
and the destruction of their foes.
For when you punished our adversaries,
in this you glorified us whom you had summoned.
For in secret the holy children of the good were offering sacrifice
and putting into effect with one accord the divine institution.
Responsorial Psalm
Psalm 33:1, 12, 18-19, 20-22
R. (12b) Blessed the people the Lord has chosen to be his own.
Exult, you just, in the LORD;
praise from the upright is fitting.
Blessed the nation whose God is the LORD,
the people he has chosen for his own inheritance.
R. Blessed the people the Lord has chosen to be his own.
See, the eyes of the LORD are upon those who fear him,
upon those who hope for his kindness,
To deliver them from death
and preserve them in spite of famine.
R. Blessed the people the Lord has chosen to be his own.
Our soul waits for the LORD,
who is our help and our shield.
May your kindness, O LORD, be upon us
who have put our hope in you.
R. Blessed the people the Lord has chosen to be his own.
Reading 2
Hebrews 11:1-2, 8-19
Brothers and sisters:
Faith is the realization of what is hoped for
and evidence of things not seen.
Because of it the ancients were well attested.
By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place
that he was to receive as an inheritance;
he went out, not knowing where he was to go.
By faith he sojourned in the promised land as in a foreign country,
dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs of the same promise;
for he was looking forward to the city with foundations,
whose architect and maker is God.
By faith he received power to generate,
even though he was past the normal age
—and Sarah herself was sterile—
for he thought that the one who had made the promise was
trustworthy.
So it was that there came forth from one man,
himself as good as dead,
descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky
and as countless as the sands on the seashore.
All these died in faith.
They did not receive what had been promised
but saw it and greeted it from afar
and acknowledged themselves to be strangers and aliens on earth,
for those who speak thus show that they are seeking a homeland.
If they had been thinking of the land from which they had come,
they would have had opportunity to return.
But now they desire a better homeland, a heavenly one.
Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God,
for he has prepared a city for them.
By faith Abraham, when put to the test, offered up Isaac,
and he who had received the promises was ready to offer his only son,
of whom it was said,
“Through Isaac descendants shall bear your name.”
He reasoned that God was able to raise even from the dead,
and he received Isaac back as a symbol.
Alleluia
Matthew 24;42a, 44
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Stay awake and be ready!
For you do not know on what day your Lord will come.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Luke 12:32-48
Jesus said to his disciples:
“Do not be afraid any longer, little flock,
for your Father is pleased to give you the kingdom.
Sell your belongings and give alms.
Provide money bags for yourselves that do not wear out,
an inexhaustible treasure in heaven
that no thief can reach nor moth destroy.
For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.
“Gird your loins and light your lamps
and be like servants who await their master’s return from a wedding,
ready to open immediately when he comes and knocks.
Blessed are those servants
whom the master finds vigilant on his arrival.
Amen, I say to you, he will gird himself,
have them recline at table, and proceed to wait on them.
And should he come in the second or third watch
and find them prepared in this way,
blessed are those servants.
Be sure of this:
if the master of the house had known the hour
when the thief was coming,
he would not have let his house be broken into.
You also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect,
the Son of Man will come.”
Then Peter said,
“Lord, is this parable meant for us or for everyone?”
And the Lord replied,
“Who, then, is the faithful and prudent steward
whom the master will put in charge of his servants
to distribute the food allowance at the proper time?
Blessed is that servant whom his master on arrival finds doing so.
Truly, I say to you, the master will put the servant
in charge of all his property.
But if that servant says to himself,
‘My master is delayed in coming,’
and begins to beat the menservants and the maidservants,
to eat and drink and get drunk,
then that servant’s master will come
on an unexpected day and at an unknown hour
and will punish the servant severely
and assign him a place with the unfaithful.
That servant who knew his master’s will
but did not make preparations nor act in accord with his will
shall be beaten severely;
and the servant who was ignorant of his master’s will
but acted in a way deserving of a severe beating
shall be beaten only lightly.
Much will be required of the person entrusted with much,
and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more.”
The post Indestructible Money Bags with Inexhaustible Treasures, 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C), August 10, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
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29min
August 10, 2025 Daily Reflection for the Pontifical Mission Societies, August 10, 2025
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
National Director, The Pontifical Mission Societies
Daily Reflection for August 10, 2025

Here is the video of today’s reflection:
The Youtube generated transcript for today’s reflection is:
I’m Monsignor Roger Landry, National Director of the Pontifical Mission Society’s, coming to you from the North American College in Rome.
It’s August 10th, Sunday, and in the Gospel, Jesus teaches us how to live our life with a proper focus, with real priorities. He says that we are to store up for ourselves a real treasure in heaven, recognizing that the things that we have on earth are meant to be used ultimately for his Kingdom. So he tells us to give alms and store up for ourselves a treasure that moths can’t attack, that rust can’t corrode, and that even the IRS can’t take in taxes. He gives a couple parable images.
He says that we’re supposed to be like servants awaiting their master’s return, ready to open up, no matter what time he returns, in awe. Rather than those who say, “My master’s long delayed,” and begin to waste their time and drunken revelry, he wants us excited for his return.
Missionaries are those who live with these types of priorities. They are storing up for themselves a rich treasure in heaven by accounting Jesus, their pearl of great price, their treasure buried in a field worth their whole life. And they go all throughout the world trying to help others live by these same priorities.
Today on this Lord’s day, united with them, especially in the prayer of the creed across the globe, let’s ask for the grace to be able to imitate those priorities. Jesus tells us in the Gospel to give alms and store up for ourselves a treasure in heaven. Can we do that? Especially for missionaries. Can we give alms to support their crucial work? Many dioceses across the globe function entirely off what the church in the U.S. gives them, only about $40,000 or $50,000 a year to run a whole diocese for 365 days. Priests survive exclusively on the mass stipends that are sent, $5 a day or $10 at most from which they’re supposed to give out their gift for the poor families in their parishes.
So today all of us reflecting on Jesus’ words can prioritize about what we’re really doing with our life so that we can become those good and trustworthy servants of a master waiting to come back to embrace us forever, and hoping that we will prepare through our own generosity and our own faith so many to embrace him too. God bless you.
The Gospel reading on which the reflection was based was:
Gospel
Luke 12:32-48
Jesus said to his disciples:
“Do not be afraid any longer, little flock,
for your Father is pleased to give you the kingdom.
Sell your belongings and give alms.
Provide money bags for yourselves that do not wear out,
an inexhaustible treasure in heaven
that no thief can reach nor moth destroy.
For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.
“Gird your loins and light your lamps
and be like servants who await their master’s return from a wedding,
ready to open immediately when he comes and knocks.
Blessed are those servants
whom the master finds vigilant on his arrival.
Amen, I say to you, he will gird himself,
have them recline at table, and proceed to wait on them.
And should he come in the second or third watch
and find them prepared in this way,
blessed are those servants.
Be sure of this:
if the master of the house had known the hour
when the thief was coming,
he would not have let his house be broken into.
You also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect,
the Son of Man will come.”
Then Peter said,
“Lord, is this parable meant for us or for everyone?”
And the Lord replied,
“Who, then, is the faithful and prudent steward
whom the master will put in charge of his servants
to distribute the food allowance at the proper time?
Blessed is that servant whom his master on arrival finds doing so.
Truly, I say to you, the master will put the servant
in charge of all his property.
But if that servant says to himself,
‘My master is delayed in coming,’
and begins to beat the menservants and the maidservants,
to eat and drink and get drunk,
then that servant’s master will come
on an unexpected day and at an unknown hour
and will punish the servant severely
and assign him a place with the unfaithful.
That servant who knew his master’s will
but did not make preparations nor act in accord with his will
shall be beaten severely;
and the servant who was ignorant of his master’s will
but acted in a way deserving of a severe beating
shall be beaten only lightly.
Much will be required of the person entrusted with much,
and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more.”
The post Daily Reflection for the Pontifical Mission Societies, August 10, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
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3min
August 09, 2025 Daily Reflection for the Pontifical Mission Societies, August 9, 2025
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
National Director, The Pontifical Mission Societies
Daily Reflection for August 9, 2025

Here is the video of today’s reflection:

The Youtube generated transcript for today’s reflection is:
I’m Monsignor Roger Landry, National Director of the Pontifical Mission Societies. It’s August 9th. I’m recording this at the North American College in Rome, the place where American seminarians are sent in order to prepare to be sent home to serve us in the United States as priests.
Today in the Gospel there’s a scene in which a dad exasperated comes up to Jesus and asks him to exorcize his son who was constantly attempting to commit suicide by running into fire or drowning himself. The father had already brought his son to the nine apostles who weren’t with Jesus at the transfiguration but they weren’t able to expunge the demon. And so Jesus somewhat exasperated said, “Oh faithless and perverse generation, bring him to me.” And Jesus worked that exorcism.
After he said to the disciples that they weren’t able to work that miraculous deed because their faith was too little. He said if we have faith the size of a mustard seed we can transplant mountain ranges into the sea. Jesus was using very graphic language there, but the real question is, what’s the level of our faith? Do we have faith? In St. Mark’s version of the scene he said some demons are cast out only by prayer and fasting. To have faith to pray as if lives depend on it because they do. To have faith to pray in the body, which is what fasting is, hungering for what God hungers way beyond our own material needs.
Someone who had this type of faith is the great saint the church celebrates today. St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, known in life as St. Edith Stein. She was a Jewish convert who reading St. Teresa of Ávila’s life recognized this is the truth and wanted to enter into the true relationship with that truth with a personal name, Jesus. She gave her life with her sister Rosa in the concentration camp during World War II when the Nazis rounded her up in response to the heroic statement of the Dutch bishops against Nazism. She said, “We are going to suffer for our people.” She knew that she was continuing to make up in her own flesh what was lacking in her of Christ’s sufferings for the sake of the Church. She was a bride on the cross together with Jesus.
Through her intercession, we pray for all missionaries that their faith may be great, and for the whole Church that our faith might sustain them so that together we can move the mountains of disbelief and bring everybody one day to the heavenly Jerusalem, the celestial mountain where Jesus
awaits us together with St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross and all the saints. God bless you.
The Gospel reading on which the reflection was based was:
Gospel
Matthew 17:14-20
A man came up to Jesus, knelt down before him, and said,
“Lord, have pity on my son, who is a lunatic and suffers severely;
often he falls into fire, and often into water.
I brought him to your disciples, but they could not cure him.”
Jesus said in reply,
“O faithless and perverse generation, how long will I be with you?
How long will I endure you?
Bring the boy here to me.”
Jesus rebuked him and the demon came out of him,
and from that hour the boy was cured.
Then the disciples approached Jesus in private and said,
“Why could we not drive it out?”
He said to them, “Because of your little faith.
Amen, I say to you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed,
you will say to this mountain,
‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move.
Nothing will be impossible for you.”
The post Daily Reflection for the Pontifical Mission Societies, August 9, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
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3min
August 03, 2025The Answer to the Burning Question in Our Hearts, Eighteenth Sunday (C), August 3, 2025
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Annunciation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Suffern, New York
Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
August 3, 2025
Eccl 1:2.21-23, Ps 90, Col 3:1-5,9-11; Lk 12:13-21

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/8.3.24_Homily_1.mp3

The following text guided the homily:
Earlier this morning, in his Mass for the Jubilee of Youth at Tor Vergata in Rome, Pope Leo sought to help the nearly one million young people from all over the world recognize and choose the path of true happiness. “There is a burning question in our hearts,” he said, “a need for truth that we cannot ignore, which leads us to ask ourselves: what is true happiness? What is the true meaning of life?”… We continually aspire to something ‘more’ that no created reality can give us; we feel a deep and burning thirst that no drink in this world can satisfy. … The fullness of our existence does not depend on what we store up or, as we heard in the Gospel, on what we possess (cf. Lk12:13-21). … Buying, hoarding and consuming are not enough. We need to lift our eyes, to look upwards, to the ‘things that are above’ (Col 3:2), to realize that everything in the world has meaning only insofar as it serves to unite us to God and to our brothers and sisters in charity.” He reminded them of what his spiritual father St. Augustine wrote about in his Confessions, that he had waited far too long to love God. He was deaf to God’s calls and shouts, blind to God’s flashing, searching for what could satisfy in the created things of God when God was already at work within him. Eventually he received eyes to see and ears to hear, eventually he breathed God’s fragrance and began to pant for him, tasted his goodness and hungered and thirsted for more, was touched by him and began to burn for his peace. Pope Leo wanted the young people of the world, and the not-so-young, to learn from St. Augustine’s mistake, to make up for lost time, and to follow Jesus the Way, Truth, Resurrection and Life along the path that leads to the joy that alone will satisfy the human person’s restless heart.
Today’s readings bring us into the heart of this mystery of the meaning of life and of the choices necessary to have life to the full. The words from the Book of Ecclesiastes have never lost their prophetic shock: “Vanity of vanities! All things are vanity!,” it says, before going on to say that eventually our worldly wisdom, knowledge, skill, toil and property will all pass away. None of these has lasting value. This is reinforced in the Psalm, which compares worldly treasures to grass that springs up in the morning but by evening wilts and fades under the scorching sun. As a result, the Psalmist prays, “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain wisdom of heart.”
Jesus in the Gospel responds to that prayer, answering the question that his vicar on earth this morning indicated was the most important to ask: What I am living for? What am I working for? Many in Jesus’ time, and many today, are living vainly because they’re living for money and the things of this world rather than for God. Jesus today describes how easy it is to make making money an idol by means of a story about a rich farmer who, after a copious harvest, tore down old silos and built bigger silos to store his crops, totally unaware that his life was soon going to be over and then none of it would matter. In response to the nice problem of over-abundance, rather than use his massive surplus of food to feed the hungry, he thinks only about himself and about hoarding his earthly wealth. He didn’t care that many others didn’t have the bare necessities. Charity wasn’t even in the picture. And he had a rude awakening coming. That night he would die. “You, fool, this night your life will be demanded of you,” Jesus puts into the mouth of his Father. “And the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?” Jesus drew the moral of the story: “Thus it will be for the one who stores up treasure for himself, but is not rich in what matters to God.” He was the poster boy for a life of vanity, which doesn’t mean just “egocentric” but “worthless.”
Jesus said these words in response to someone in the crowd asking him, “Teacher, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me.” Over the course of my priesthood, I have been shocked at how many times I’ve had been asked to get involved in familial disputes like the one Jesus was requested to resolve. This man obviously thought that his brother was wronging him and wanted Jesus, the just one, to intervene. This man’s brother probably was wronging him. But underneath this appeal for justice, Jesus saw two things at play. First, the petitioner was thinking that gaining the inheritance was more important than maintaining a good relationship with his brother. How many people today still think and act in these terms, allowing money or other vanities to separate them and keep them apart for years, decades or even to the grave! Second, Jesus saw that, despite what was likely a just request, the motivation underneath it was not justice but primarily greed disguised as righteousness. Jesus didn’t come from heaven to earth to settle inheritance disputes but to make us aware of a totally different type of inheritance. St. Paul would say that “love of money is the root of all evil” (1 Tim 6:10) and that means that all sin can be summarized in a sense by a desire to place possessions, or money, or the things of this world, and ultimately oneself over other people, including one’s family members. Jesus gives not only the petitioner and the crowd but all of us an important antidote as medicine against this spirit of acquisitiveness that leads to all types of sins: “Beware of all kinds of greed, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions!”
The problem for many today is that they think that life does consist in the abundance of possessions. We idolize the rich and famous. We watch programs and buy magazines about them, devouring whatever can give us a window into their life. While few of us spend much time setting our hearts on mansions, private airplanes, superyachts, fancy cars, butlers and chauffeurs, many spend their time dreaming about and working for much larger homes, new cars, housekeepers and the like. They can deceive themselves pretending that because they’re not rich, they’re not greedy, while many are obsessed about mammon, spending far more time thinking about money and material concerns more than they think about God. Few of us, today, with increased urbanization, are tempted to build larger barns for surplus produce, but many of us worry and some are even obsessed about increasing the size of our stock portolios, retirement accounts, pensions, bank statements, homes and vehicles. The most fitting equivalent of our grain bins would be the explosion of storage units everywhere. When we no longer need something for our day-to-day life, after our dresser drawers, closets, attics and basements are full, we just get storage lockers. Even when no longer have use for something, we still hold onto it in case at some point we might need it later, while so many others might use it now. To all of us in this culture, Jesus calls us to become rich in what matters to God. In the passage right after today’s section, which unfortunately is not included, Jesus tells us: “Sell your belonging and give alms. Provide money bags for yourselves that do not wear out, an inexhaustible treasure in heaven that no thief can reach nor moth destroy. For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.” Jesus wants us all to be rich in what matters, to be greedy not to fill attics, basements, storage facilities or ever bigger houses, but to build spiritual barns full to the brim with what lasts.
So the question is: where is our treasure? Is our heart truly centered on God? St. Paul in today’s passage from Colossians, which we hear every Easter Sunday morning at Mass, tells us, “If you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Think of what is above, not what is on earth, for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” He summons us to focus on the things that matter. He reminds us that Christ is our life and therefore we should put to death the things in us that are earthly, that are vain, like, he indicates, the “greed that is idolatry,” and to “put on the new self … in the image of its Creator.” He summons us to live a different life. He wants us to become filthy rich in faith, well-heeled in hope, and loaded in love for God and for others, to place our treasure in God, in holiness, and in heaven. The apostle summons us, like great entrepreneurs, to seize every chance we have to grow “rich in what matters to God.”
So how do we do that? What practical things characterize a life that seeks the things that are above, a heart that places its treasure in what matters? We can focus on four things.
First, it’s going to be a life that prioritizes prayer, in which we learn how to calibrate our heart to what God desires.
Second, it’s going to be a life that chooses the Sacraments. Do we realize that the Sacrament of Baptism is worth far more than receiving the inheritance of several royal houses? That the tiniest particle of the consecrated host, the smallest drop of Precious Blood, is worth infinitely more than all the wealth of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerburg, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett combined? That the Sacrament of Reconciliation is far more valuable than winning the lottery many times over?
Third, it’s going to life of faith overflowing in love, that rejoices to sacrifice for others, to give without counting the cost, that seeks to imitate Christ’s own charity. There are so many opportunities for us to give of our time, of the gifts God has given, of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, of the mercy we’ve received from God, of whatever material things we have in our possession, as a participation in God’s providential care.
Fourth, it’s going to be a life that treasures the Word of God, that hungers for every syllable that comes from God’s mouth and seeks to become a doer of that word.
Lastly, it’s by living the virtue of evangelical poverty. The Gospel verse today reminds us that the poor in spirit, those who place their treasure in the kingdom of God, are blessed. They are blessed indeed. Sisters of Life, like other consecrated religious, make a vow of poverty. This is such an important witness to everyone in the Church and the world of what truly matters. As St. John Paul II wrote in his beautiful 1996 exhortation, Vita Consecrata, the vow of “povertyproclaims that God is man’s only real treasure. When poverty is lived according to the example of Christ who, ‘though he was rich … became poor,’ it becomes an expression of that total gift of self that the three Divine Persons make to one another” (21) He says it is the potent Christian response to the “materialism that craves possessions, heedless of the needs and sufferings of the weakest, and lacking any concern for the balance of natural resources. … Its primary meaning is to attest that God is the true wealth of the human heart. Precisely for this reason evangelical poverty forcefully challenges the idolatry of money, making a prophetic appeal as it were to society, which in so many parts of the developed world risks losing the sense of proportion and the very meaning of things” (89-90).
As today we respond to the challenge that Jesus in the Gospel and his vicar in Tor Vergata are making to us, it’s important for us to recognize that the Lord is in fact summoning us to make a choice. Today’s words are not just academic, but highly practical. Elsewhere in the Gospel, Jesus in absolute terms that we cannot serve both God and money. We have to make a choice. We’re either going to serve God and that’s going to change totally the way we relate to money and the vain things of the world or we’re going to serve money and that idolatry is going to change the way we relate to God. This choice between God and mammon was the one offered to the Rich Young Man, who knew that something was missing from his life even though he was keeping the commandments and he came to ask Jesus what he needed to do to find fulfillment. Jesus told him that if he wanted to come to be perfected, if he wanted to have it all, he needed to sell all his goods, give the money to the poor, become rich in heaven, and then come follow him. When faced, however, with that choice between Jesus and his stuff, between the two types of treasures Jesus indicates, between God and mammon, the Rich Young Man chose his stuff, and went away from Jesus sad. Today Jesus meets all of us, like he met that young man upon whom he looked with love, and tells us that we need to make the choice the Rich Young Man, at least at that point of his life, was too afraid to make. Jesus challenges us, calls us and wants to help us to choose not the path of vanity, the complete waste of our time on earth, but to seek heaven and place our heart, and our treasure, in what will bring us lasting joy in this world and be the only thing that we can take with us into the new and eternal kingdom.
Every Mass is an opportunity for us to make that choice. In the Preface at the heart of every Mass, the priest says, “Lift up your hearts!” and we respond, “We have lifted them up to the Lord!” That’s the chief message of Jesus, not just during the liturgy but in life. Jesus wants us to “Lift up [our] hearts” from the idols we make so easily of material things, praying that we will say with all the choices we make, “We have lifted our lives up to the Lord!” In the Mass, we receive the greatest treasure in the world, Jesus himself, the pearl of great price, worth selling everything we have to obtain, and Jesus wants to help us to unite our life to what he desires, to what is truly good for us and others, and to what will lead us to riches that cannot be lost. In response to the culture that vainly cries out to get Jesus to intervene so that they can obtain earthly inheritances, at every Mass, we cry out to Jesus, with the inspired words of Psalm 16, “You are my inheritance, O Lord! … You, Lord, are my allotted portion and my cup. … Fair to me indeed is my inheritance.” This is the answer to the “burning question in our hearts” to which Pope Leo alluded this morning. This is inheritance, the treasure, that Jesus, his earthly vicar Pope Leo, St. Augustine, St. Paul, and indeed all the saints have chosen and are urging us today to choose.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1
Ecclesiastes 1:2; 2:21-23
Vanity of vanities, says Qoheleth,
vanity of vanities! All things are vanity!
Here is one who has labored with wisdom and knowledge and skill,
and yet to another who has not labored over it,
he must leave property.
This also is vanity and a great misfortune.
For what profit comes to man from all the toil and anxiety of heart
with which he has labored under the sun?
All his days sorrow and grief are his occupation;
even at night his mind is not at rest.
This also is vanity.
Responsorial Psalm
Psalm 90:3-4, 5-6, 12-13, 14 and 17
R. (1) If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.
You turn man back to dust,
saying, “Return, O children of men.”
For a thousand years in your sight
are as yesterday, now that it is past,
or as a watch of the night.
R. If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.
You make an end of them in their sleep;
the next morning they are like the changing grass,
Which at dawn springs up anew,
but by evening wilts and fades.
R. If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.
Teach us to number our days aright,
that we may gain wisdom of heart.
Return, O LORD! How long?
Have pity on your servants!
R. If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.
Fill us at daybreak with your kindness,
that we may shout for joy and gladness all our days.
And may the gracious care of the LORD our God be ours;
prosper the work of our hands for us!
Prosper the work of our hands!
R. If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.
Reading 2
Colossians 3:1-5, 9-11
Brothers and sisters:
If you were raised with Christ, seek what is above,
where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.
Think of what is above, not of what is on earth.
For you have died,
and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
When Christ your life appears,
then you too will appear with him in glory.
Put to death, then, the parts of you that are earthly:
immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire,
and the greed that is idolatry.
Stop lying to one another,
since you have taken off the old self with its practices
and have put on the new self,
which is being renewed, for knowledge,
in the image of its creator.
Here there is not Greek and Jew,
circumcision and uncircumcision,
barbarian, Scythian, slave, free;
but Christ is all and in all.
Alleluia
Matthew 5:3
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Luke 12:13-21
Someone in the crowd said to Jesus,
“Teacher, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me.”
He replied to him,
“Friend, who appointed me as your judge and arbitrator?”
Then he said to the crowd,
“Take care to guard against all greed,
for though one may be rich,
one’s life does not consist of possessions.”
Then he told them a parable.
“There was a rich man whose land produced a bountiful harvest.
He asked himself, ‘What shall I do,
for I do not have space to store my harvest?’
And he said, ‘This is what I shall do:
I shall tear down my barns and build larger ones.
There I shall store all my grain and other goods
and I shall say to myself, “Now as for you,
you have so many good things stored up for many years,
rest, eat, drink, be merry!”’
But God said to him,
‘You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you;
and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?’
Thus will it be for all who store up treasure for themselves
but are not rich in what matters to God.”
The post The Answer to the Burning Question in Our Hearts, Eighteenth Sunday (C), August 3, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
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25min
July 28, 2025 The Call to Holiness in the Life of Digital Missionaries and Catholic Influencers, Jubilee for Digital Missionaries and Catholic Influencers, July 28, 2025
Monsignor Roger J. Landry
Panel on “Saints: Influencers of God”
Jubilee of Digital Missionaries and Catholic Influencers
Auditorium Conciliazione, Vatican City State
July 28, 2025

To watch the video of the presentation within the context of the panel, please click below:
To listen to an audio recording of today’s words, please click below:
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The following text guided the remarks:
Dear Fellow Digital Missionaries,
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger often emphasized that the two most effective arguments for the Catholic faith are the lives of the saints and the art the Church has produced in her womb.
As we focus during this Jubilee of Digital Missionaries and Catholic Influencers on saints as the true “influencers of God,” it’s important to keep the future Pope Benedict XVI’s pivotal insight in mind.
He was the most renowned theologian to sit on the chair of Peter since at least St. Leo the Great, 15 centuries prior. Yet he said that the most important thing to be effective missionaries in any medium is not the truth itself, especially understood in the abstract. He said it was the goodness of saints as they put the truth into practice and the beautiful art that reveals the splendor of the truth to human eyes and ears.
I have the great joy and honor to be, as National Director of The Pontifical Missions Societies in the United States, the successor of the Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, who was National Director for 16 years. Archbishop Sheen proclaimed the faith powerfully to multitudes by his soaring preaching and best-selling books. But he also was one of the Church’s greatest pioneers in proclaiming the Catholic faith through two different forms of what was then new media: radio and television. What made Archbishop Sheen so effective was not just his philosophical logic and theological depth. It was the way he eloquently communicated the beauty of the truth and radiated with integrity an ardent and holy love for God, for others and for the truth that set them free.
His life reveals that the real influencers of God, the ones who become the most effective and long-lasting missionaries of their time, are not necessarily the smartest, wittiest or most mellifluous. They are those whose words, actions and lives reveal God-in-a-man or God-in-a-woman, young or old.
Technical excellence of course helps. Intelligence, humor, creativity, good looks, a way with words, and a sonorous voice obviously don’t hurt. But to paraphrase St. Paul’s words to the first Christians in Corinth, God does not necessarily call as digital missionaries those who by human standards are the wisest, most powerful and most nobly born, but those who by worldly criteria may seem comparatively foolish, weak, and lowly (1 Cor 1:26-29). These are the holy ones who recognize that their wisdom and strength come from God, that their rebirth in baptism makes them a son or daughter of the King of Kings, and who therefore seek to live with the dignity befitting that nobility.
As we’re about to hear, soon-to-be-Saint Pier Giorgio Frassati lived this way. In his prayer, vivacity, deep friendships, humility and loving care for the poor, he influenced so many of his contemporaries in Turin, and across the world since, to recognize the Lord living in him.
The future Saint Carlo Acutis lived this way. Through his dealings with his family members, classmates, doormen, and the poor, and in his interactions with others throughout the then-burgeoning world wide web, he radiated such Eucharistic charity that people were led “non io ma Dio,” not to him but to God.
Chiara Corbella Petrillo lived this way. As a joyful daughter, wife, mom, sister and friend, she diffused such a trust in God after the diagnosis and death of her first two children soon after birth and after the diagnosis of cancer during and after her third pregnancy that people grasped in her that they were encountering the sacred, as she entered more deeply into the mystery of redemptive suffering and the culmination of Christian love.
Sister Claire Crockett lived this way. In an age of celebrity, she left the stage and screen to show everyone that the greatest drama of all is the theo-drama in which Christ is the central protagonist knocking on our door, encouraging children and us to open, and take up fully our part, on the stage that matters most.
Later this week, we will celebrate the Memorial of St. Ignatius of Loyola. The pivotal moment in his life occurred when, after reading a book of the Lives of the Saints, he asked why he couldn’t do what Francis of Assisi or Dominic of Guzman had done. He indeed could. And with God’s grace he did.
It’s important for us to ask ourselves a similar question: Why can’t we do what Pier Giorgio, Carlo, Chiara and Sr. Clare did? Why can’t we do what Paul of Tarsus, Francis Xavier, Therese of Lisieux and Frances Cabrini did? If they had access to our state-of-the-art websites, Youtube platforms, Instagram and X accounts, and podcast software, how would they use them for the Gospel? What would they post and emphasize? How excited would they be that, because of these technological advances, they could now, at one and same time, basically preach the Gospel to all nations — including the 1,124 missionary dioceses and territories across the globe? How would they blend holiness of life with beauty and technical excellence to influence others on behalf of God? And why can’t we, with God’s help, do what they might do if they were alive today?
As we give God thanks for our vocation to be his disciples and apostles in the digital age, we ask God to give us a ravenous hunger and thirst for holiness as well as the virtues required to become the Michelangelos and Palestrinas, the Fra Angelicos and Hildegard von Bingens, of the digital arena, so that we, through goodness and beauty, can persuade our contemporaries of the truth with a capital-T.
And we ask the Lord to send upon us anew the Holy Spirit as tongues of fire, to ignite our voices, minds, hearts, fingers, indeed our whole being, so that through us and our work in the digital mission fields, he may renew the face of the earth and light the world ablaze with the hope and joy that come from him.
May God bless you all and make abundantly fruitful — and influential! — your important work for his kingdom!
The post The Call to Holiness in the Life of Digital Missionaries and Catholic Influencers, Jubilee for Digital Missionaries and Catholic Influencers, July 28, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
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7min
July 25, 2025 Crossing the Threshold of Hope, 2025 Napa Institute Summer Conference, July 25, 2025
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
2025 Napa Institute Summer Conference
Napa, California
July 25, 2025

To view today’s keynote, please click below:

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To download the PDF slides of the keynote, please click below:
2025 Napa Institute Crossing the Threshold of Hope

The post Crossing the Threshold of Hope, 2025 Napa Institute Summer Conference, July 25, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
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33min
July 22, 2025Learning from Mary Magdalene as Forgiven, Supportive, Thirsting and Joyful Apostles, Feast of St. Mary Magdalene, July 22, 2025
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Chapel of the Pontifical Mission Societies, St. Petersburg, Florida
Feast of St. Mary Magdalene
July 22, 2025
Songs 3:1-4, Ps 63, Jn 20:1-2.11-18

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/7.22.25_Homily_1.mp3

The following points were attempted in the homily:
Today as we inaugurate this new chapel at the offices of The Pontifical Mission Societies in St. Petersburg and place Jesus in the tabernacle for the first time, we celebrate the feast of a saint who helps us to appreciate from several angles what we’re doing today. She’s one of the greatest saints who has ever lived, the woman who, after the Blessed Virgin, is mentioned most in the Gospels: St. Mary Magdalene. And we celebrate her in a special way, as a liturgical feast, decreed so by the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments in 2016, at the express will of Pope Francis. In the Decree, it gave three reasons for this liturgical upgrade: St. Mary Magdalene is a witness of the transforming power of Divine Mercy, a model of the indispensable service and dignity of women in the Church, and an epitome of evangelization. Each of the three help us to grasp the gift we will have here in this chapel: being able to approach Jesus for his mercy, not just for our sins but for all the help we need to do our mission well and in supplication for all those in the Church’s mission work across the globe, especially those in harm’s way; we will be strengthened by Jesus here to support all those on the front lines of the Church’s evangelization efforts, just like she did for Jesus and the Church he founded at its beginning; and we can be transformed by Jesus here like she was to be able to go out to others with the news that he is alive, risen from the dead and seeks to accompany us. We can look at each of these in turn.
First, Mary Magdalene experienced Christ’s compassion and mercy. St. Luke and St. Mark tell us that she had had seven demons cast out from her. She had in some way been under the hold of the devil. Some saints throughout the centuries said that these seven demons may have been the seven deadly sins. Regardless of what their manifestation was, she had experienced the healing power of the Lord. In order to relate appropriately to the Lord, we, too, need to relate to him in his saving mercy. Prior to the papacy, Pope Francis in the Book length interview El Jesuita said that it’s only great sinners forgiven by the Lord who have the experience of who they really are and how much they’re love. Mary Magdalene had that grace. She knew she had been saved and healed. And that’s an experience all of us should begin with if we’re going to imitate the saint we fête today.
Second, St. Mary Magdalene shows us the dignity of women in God’s plan of salvation, caring for the Lord and the Church, sharing in his mission, hearing his teaching, seeing his deeds. St. Luke tells us that, after having received Christ’s mercy, she was one of several women “who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities” who faithfully accompanied Jesus and the apostles during his journeys and “provided for them out of their resources” (Lk 8:2-3). This was not a group of bored do-gooders who figured that these wandering 13 men would be lost without their spiritual and practical maternity. No, each of them had received from Jesus a physical healing, a spiritual healing, or both, and in gratitude wanted to give Jesus and his mission all the love, time and material support they could. And St. Mary Magdalene particularly excelled in this care, even when others failed. The evangelists all tell us that when almost all of Jesus’ disciples abandoned him, St. Mary Magdalene was faithful with him to the end, standing at the foot of the Cross together with the Blessed Mother, with Mary the wife of Clopas, with Salome and with St. John. She remained indomitably faithful with feminine courage at the most difficult moments of discipleship. She helped Mary and Joseph of Arimathea take Jesus’ body down and prepare it for burial. She returned after the Sabbath to anoint his body. Her care for Christ and his mission is a model for every disciple: she loved Jesus, whose mercy transformed her life, and consecrated her life to him and his redeeming work.
Third, St. Mary Magdalene shows us the joy of the resurrection and how to share the Good News of the Resurrection with others. We see in the Gospel of today’s Mass that early on Easter morning, the first moment she could after the end of the Sabbath, she came to the tomb in order to anoint Jesus’ dead body. She was seeking him. She was lost without his guidance. When she didn’t find his body, she ran to SS. Peter and John and said, “They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don’t know where they put him.” When she returned a short time later, she wept at his absence. When the angels in the tomb asked why she was crying, she replied, “They have taken my Lord, and I don’t know where they laid him.” When blinded by grief and the change in the Lord’s risen appearance, she mistook Jesus for a gardener when he, too, asked her the reason for her tears, she said, “Sir, if you carried him away, tell me where you laid him, and I will take him.” She sought the Lord so much that she wanted to be with him even if it would just be his corpse. That’s when Jesus revealed himself to her, calling her by name. Her love for the Lord Jesus is shown in the Song of Songs and in the Psalm for this Mass. “I sought him whom my heart loves– I sought him but I did not find him,” we hear in the first reading. “The watchmen came upon me, as they made their rounds of the city: Have you seen him whom my heart loves? I had hardly left them when I found him whom my heart loves.” Her whole life was characterized by the words of the Psalm: “O God, you are my God whom I seek; for you my flesh pines and my soul thirsts like the earth, parched, lifeless and without water.” Her example is one that inspires us to seek the Lord with the same Passion. And when we do our joy is overwhelming. At the end of today’s Gospel, Jesus commissions our saint, “Go to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” She was the first person to whom the Risen Lord Jesus appeared and she was sent as the first witness of the Resurrection to the apostles who were hovering in the Upper Room. Jesus commissioned Mary to be the apostolorum apostola, as St. Thomas Aquinas called her, the apostle of — or better to — the apostles, the one sent to those who would be sent to bring the good news of great joy of Jesus’ resurrection to the entire world. Mary went to them and announced simply, “I have seen the Lord!” and then reported to them what Jesus had told her. Likewise, all of us, having longed for the Lord, having longed for triumph over sin and death, are called by Christ to share with others joyfully the good news of Jesus’ resurrection. At the beginning of Mass today, we turned to God the Father, praised him because his “only begotten Son entrusted Mary Magdalene before all others with announcing the great joy of the Resurrection,” and then asked, “grant that through her intercession and example we may proclaim the living Christ and come to see him reigning in your glory.” God wants all of us to proclaim the “living Christ,” to announce that Christ is alive, that, like Mary Magdalene, “I have seen him,” but also, “I have heard him speaking to me in prayer and the Word of God,” and “I have even received him risen from the dead inside me in Holy Communion!” St. Mary Magdalene teaches us is how to spread this good news, the greatest gift we could give to others.
All three of these lessons that we learn from St. Mary Magdalene find their culmination in the Mass, celebrated today here in our office for the first time. It’s here at the beginning that we cry out, “Lord have mercy!” and “I have greatly sinned,” opening ourselves up to God’s forgiveness as we listen to him speaking to us live in the Gospel. It’s here that we associate ourselves in his work, giving ourselves and our resources at the offertory as we unite our sacrifices to those of Christ to be presented to the Father. It’s here that we long for him and have a chance to meet him risen from the dead under the appearances of sacramental signs. It’s from here that he sends us to announce to the whole world his resurrection. When the Vatican decreed this feast, they prepared a proper preface, which summarizes St. Mary Magdalene’s life and turns it the prayer the whole Church makes as we prepare to meet the same Jesus whom she so loved. It’s entitled “About the Apostle of the Apostles” and the Church prays in unison: “It is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation, that in all things we proclaim you, Almighty Father, whose mercy is no less than his power, through Christ our Lord. He appeared in the garden and revealed himself to Mary Magdalene, who had loved him in life, witnessed him dying on the Cross, sought him as he lay in the tomb, and was the first to adore him, newly risen from the dead. He honored her with the office of being an apostle to the Apostles, so that the good news of new life might reach the ends of the earth.” Indeed, as we celebrate St. Mary Magdalene, we celebrate that Mercy that is at the root of the “good news of new life,” the proclamation of which, she commenced in her mission to the Apostles, they advanced in life and death, and now we seek to continue to the ends of the earth.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 SGS 3:1-4B
The Bride says:
On my bed at night I sought him
whom my heart loves–
I sought him but I did not find him.
I will rise then and go about the city;
in the streets and crossings I will seek
Him whom my heart loves.
I sought him but I did not find him.
The watchmen came upon me,
as they made their rounds of the city:
Have you seen him whom my heart loves?
I had hardly left them
when I found him whom my heart loves.
Responsorial Psalm PS 63:2, 3-4, 5-6, 8-9
R. (2) My soul is thirsting for you, O Lord my God.
O God, you are my God whom I seek;
for you my flesh pines and my soul thirsts
like the earth, parched, lifeless and without water.
R. My soul is thirsting for you, O Lord my God.
Thus have I gazed toward you in the sanctuary
to see your power and your glory,
For your kindness is a greater good than life;
my lips shall glorify you.
R. My soul is thirsting for you, O Lord my God.
Thus will I bless you while I live;
lifting up my hands, I will call upon your name.
As with the riches of a banquet shall my soul be satisfied,
and with exultant lips my mouth shall praise you.
R. My soul is thirsting for you, O Lord my God.
You are my help,
and in the shadow of your wings I shout for joy.
My soul clings fast to you;
your right hand upholds me.
R. My soul is thirsting for you, O Lord my God.
Alleluia
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Tell us, Mary, what did you see on the way?
I saw the glory of the risen Christ, I saw his empty tomb.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel JN 20:1-2, 11-18
On the first day of the week,
Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early in the morning,
while it was still dark,
and saw the stone removed from the tomb.
So she ran and went to Simon Peter
and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and told them,
“They have taken the Lord from the tomb,
and we don’t know where they put him.”
Mary stayed outside the tomb weeping.
And as she wept, she bent over into the tomb
and saw two angels in white sitting there,
one at the head and one at the feet
where the Body of Jesus had been.
And they said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?”
She said to them, “They have taken my Lord,
and I don’t know where they laid him.”
When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus there,
but did not know it was Jesus.
Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?
Whom are you looking for?”
She thought it was the gardener and said to him,
“Sir, if you carried him away,
tell me where you laid him,
and I will take him.”
Jesus said to her, “Mary!”
She turned and said to him in Hebrew,
“Rabbouni,” which means Teacher.
Jesus said to her,
“Stop holding on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father.
But go to my brothers and tell them,
‘I am going to my Father and your Father,
to my God and your God.’”
Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples,
“I have seen the Lord,”
and then reported what he told her.
The post Learning from Mary Magdalene as Forgiven, Supportive, Thirsting and Joyful Apostles, Feast of St. Mary Magdalene, July 22, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
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17min
July 21, 2025 Pope Leo XIV’s Missionary Papacy, The Pontifical Missions Society USA Staff Day, July 21, 2025
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
TPMS-USA Staff Day
St. Raphael’s Church, St. Petersburg, Florida
July 21, 2025

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7.21.25 Pope Leo XIV’s Missionary Papacy
The post Pope Leo XIV’s Missionary Papacy, The Pontifical Missions Society USA Staff Day, July 21, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
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1h 1min
July 21, 2025Reading, Responding to, and Becoming Jesus’ Signs, 16th Monday (I), July 21, 2025
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
St. Raphael’s Catholic Church, St. Petersburg, Florida
Monday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Memorial of St. Lawrence of Brindisi
July 21, 2025
Ex 14:5-18, Ex 15, Mt 12:38-42

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
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The following points were attempted in the homily:
Today the Scribes and the Pharisees — those those who had said in the immediately preceding scene in St. Matthew’s Gospel that Jesus did exorcisms by the power of the devil and who had begun to conspire to plot his death — come up, hypocritically call him “Teacher” and ask him for a sign. A sign was a miracle that pointed to something else, namely Jesus’ authority to preach and do what he was saying and doing. We know, however, that Jesus by this point had been working miracles non-stop: he had just cured a man with a withered hand and had expelled demons, he had healed everyone who had been brought to him, he had multiplied bread and fish to feed a multitude, he had cured lepers, made lame people walk and so much more as signs pointing to the fact that he was speaking and working with the authority of God. But the Scribes and Pharisees didn’t want to accept what those miracles signified. So they kept asking for other ones. Perhaps they were waiting until a supposed miracle attempt failed so that they would be able to feel justified in their rejection of Jesus. What they failed to grasp was that Jesus himself was the sign of God, that he was the one pointing to God’s presence because he was simultaneously the sign and signified. Jesus cut to the core of why they were asking for such a miracle, saying, an “evil and unfaithful generation seeks a sign.” If they were of a good and faithful generation, they would have already taken seriously all of the miracles and words that Jesus had already done and grasped that he himself was the sign for which the Jews should have been looking. They would have received the signs done and responded to them. The reason why they failed to grasp the meaning of the sign of Jesus and all the other signs he was doing that pointed toward him was because they were obstinate in what we could call their “religious idolatry,” in their worship not of God but of the religion they had made around the God of Israel, all their man-made precepts and interpretations that were leading them to seek to break the fifth and eighth commandments to murder Jesus. No matter how many signs Jesus worked, no matter how many times he spoke with authority, no matter how many times called them to conversion, they just refused to budge.
Obstinacy is perverse adherence to an idea despite all arguments and signs to the contrary and we see the classic sign of obstinacy in today’s first reading. Pharaoh and the Egyptians were obstinate in their treating the Jews as their slaves. And despite Pharaoh’s finally giving the Israelites permission to leave to go to worship God in the desert, when the Egyptians saw them leaving, they gave up mourning their first born sons, and came in hot pursuit. None of the plagues God had worked convinced them to change course. And when God opened the Red Sea to allow the Israelites to pass through on dry ground, not even that miracle could convince the Egyptians that God was giving a clear sign that he was on the Israelites’ side and was helping them to flee. Exodus tells us, “So obstinate had the Lord made Pharaoh that he pursued the children of Israel even while they were marching away in triumph” and they were so obstinate that they foolishly continued to pursue the Israelites into the Red Sea, where, as we will see tomorrow, they all perished. Nothing could persuade them to stop, examine their behavior, and change course. This is the same thing we see in the Scribes and the Pharisees. Not even Jesus’ resurrection would be enough to convince them that all signs were pointing to his divinity, to the truth of everything he was saying. Some would try to bribe the guards to lie and say that while they were asleep Jesus’ followers came to steal his body.
As believers, we have to confront this obstinacy in our own hearts at times, this refusal to accept what God has done and what it means. We see in today’s first reading that the Jews similarly had missed the point of all God had done. “Were there no burial places in Egypt that you had to bring us out here to die in the desert?,” they asked. Really? God had worked ten great miracles for them and yet they failed to have confidence in him. Even after he parted the Red Sea for them and brought them to the other side — the greatest of all his signs in the Old Testament — they would similarly complain that God had abandoned them or just brought the to the desert to die. Sometimes, we, too, can be faithless and perverse rather than faithful and convert. We, too, can sometimes be as blind to the signs Jesus has worked and continues to work in the present day. We need to do three things:
First, ponder on all God did with gratitude, not asking him for “more,” but allowing what he’s already done to fill us with faith and gratitude. This is the first means by which we can become a “holy and faithful generation.” This morning in Lauds we had Psalm 113, which gives God thanks for all that he has already done as signs of his love in the present. I often love to pray Psalm 136, which is a litany of gratitude to God for his enduring mercy. The Magnificat is similarly an interweaving of praise for all that the Almighty God does for us in our lowliness, how he repeatedly has shown the “might of his arm,” so that we might never begin to believe that he is now weak.
Second, we need to rest in what is the greatest sign of all, Jesus himself. He is the living sign of God’s saving presence. And he calls us to do something in response to him: to repent and to believe fully. The two examples he chose to share with those challenging him demonstrate the summons to conversion and faith. The first one is Jonah, who not only is a sign of the Resurrection, but a great example of conversion who then was able credibly to preach conversion. We know that at Jonah initially refused God’s call. He ran in the opposite direction of Nineveh. He tried to escape on a boat from Joppa, but that’s when he was thrown overboard and experienced the miracle of being saved. Afterward, having learned the lesson, he went to preach conversion and God blessed his efforts. He could incarnate what conversion was. And even though at the beginning he didn’t persevere faithfully in doing what the Lord was asking, he did at the end. Jesus was able to use him as a sign for his interlocutors: that just as conversion was possible for Jonah, it, too, was possible for them. And in terms of preaching conversion, Jesus, as the Messiah, was giving an even greater summons. At the message of Jonah, the Ninevites all repented, from the king down to the pets, who all fasted in sackcloth and ashes. Jesus told them that he was greater than Jonah and a greater sign of conversion. If the pagans of Nineveh had changed their ways at the preaching of Jonah on the first day, then the supposedly religious Jews of his day should have much more readily changed when they heard Jesus preaching “Repent and believe in the Gospel” and working all the signs to back up his message. Likewise with the reference to Solomon we see a sign of the wisdom Jesus bears and is, which should lead us to conform our life to Him. Jesus says that the Queen of Sheba had traveled a great distance with many caravans in her retinue in order to hear Solomon’s wisdom — she had in fact traveled 1660 miles or, at a pace of 15 miles a day, over three months each way — but that his wisdom, God’s teaching about how to live, die and live forever, was greater than Solomon’s. Jesus was declaring that the Scribes and Pharisees weren’t willing to travel any intellectual or moral distance. They weren’t willing to respond with faith. Do we regularly respond to the greatness of the sign of Jesus’ wisdom in the Word of God?
Third, we need to become a sign, just like Jonah, just like Jesus. We need to become a living sign of the difference Jesus makes, a living sign of his resurrection in the midst of the world, of his saving presence. That’s what missionaries do across the globe: they are signs pointing toward God, to the love that leads them to travel to the ends of the earth and prioritize total strangers over their own comforts, to the love that inspires them to give all, even their lives, so that others may come to the One to whom they point. Today the Church celebrates one such sign, St. Lawrence of Brindisi, a great Capuchin Franciscan doctor of the Church. As a six year old boy, he used to give powerful homilies at Christmas time to his family members and other parishioners on the meaning of Christ’s incarnation! He knew the meaning of the sign given in Bethlehem! He was gifted with extraordinary intelligence and an incredible memory such that he learned almost all of the modern European languages as well as the ancient ones used in the Bible, and he used all of that to share the faith. As a Capuchin, he became a famous preacher of conversion, sowing the seed of the Word of God first to Catholics in traditional missions and sermons, then to Protestants in Germany who had left during the Reformation and finally, at Pope Paul V’s request, to the Jews in the Jewish Ghetto in Rome. At the beginning of Mass today, we prayed to God the Father to grant us “that in the same spirit [of St. Lawrence], we may know what must be done and, through his intercession, bring it to completion.” God wants us to receive the sign of his love in our life just like St. Lawrence and then become a sign.
We finish with the Sign of Jonah. Just as Jonah spent three days in the belly of a sea creature in the ocean — and the ocean was a sign of death — before being spit out onto the shore “risen from the dead,” so Jesus would spend three days in the belly of the tomb before likewise being spit out risen. That is the great sign Jesus himself would give, his own resurrection. And we enter that sign, and what it signifies, every Mass. I’ve always been moved that in Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, right over the altar where the Popes celebrate Mass (now on the feast of the Baptism of the Lord each year and in the Mass the day after their election), Michelangelo depicted Jonah. Not only is Christ the fulfillment of the Sign of Jonah, but at Mass, we enter into Christ’s Passion, death and resurrection. We enter with him into the tomb and at the end of Mass he spits us out to the world, to be through, with and in him, new Jonahs, new Solomons, new missionaries, living and preaching the conversion and wisdom with which Jesus has enriched us.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 Ex 14:5-18
When it was reported to the king of Egypt
that the people had fled,
Pharaoh and his servants changed their minds about them.
They exclaimed, “What have we done!
Why, we have released Israel from our service!”
So Pharaoh made his chariots ready and mustered his soldiersB
six hundred first-class chariots
and all the other chariots of Egypt, with warriors on them all.
So obstinate had the LORD made Pharaoh
that he pursued the children of Israel
even while they were marching away in triumph.
The Egyptians, then, pursued them;
Pharaoh’s whole army, his horses, chariots and charioteers,
caught up with them as they lay encamped by the sea,
at Pi-hahiroth, in front of Baal-zephon.
Pharaoh was already near when the children of Israel looked up
and saw that the Egyptians were on the march in pursuit of them.
In great fright they cried out to the LORD.
And they complained to Moses,
“Were there no burial places in Egypt
that you had to bring us out here to die in the desert?
Why did you do this to us?
Why did you bring us out of Egypt?
Did we not tell you this in Egypt, when we said,
‘Leave us alone. Let us serve the Egyptians’?
Far better for us to be the slaves of the Egyptians
than to die in the desert.”
But Moses answered the people,
“Fear not! Stand your ground,
and you will see the victory the LORD will win for you today.
These Egyptians whom you see today you will never see again.
The LORD himself will fight for you; you have only to keep still.”
Then the LORD said to Moses, “Why are you crying out to me?
Tell the children of Israel to go forward.
And you, lift up your staff and, with hand outstretched over the sea,
split the sea in two,
that the children of Israel may pass through it on dry land.
But I will make the Egyptians so obstinate
that they will go in after them.
Then I will receive glory through Pharaoh and all his army,
his chariots and charioteers.
The Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD,
when I receive glory through Pharaoh
and his chariots and charioteers.”
Responsorial Psalm Exodus 15:1bc-2, 3-4, 5-6
R. (1b) Let us sing to the Lord; he has covered himself in glory.
I will sing to the LORD, for he is gloriously triumphant;
horse and chariot he has cast into the sea.
My strength and my courage is the LORD,
and he has been my savior.
He is my God, I praise him;
the God of my father, I extol him.
R. Let us sing to the Lord; he has covered himself in glory.
The LORD is a warrior,
LORD is his name!
Pharaoh’s chariots and army he hurled into the sea;
the elite of his officers were submerged in the Red Sea.
R. Let us sing to the Lord; he has covered himself in glory.
The flood waters covered them,
they sank into the depths like a stone.
Your right hand, O LORD, magnificent in power,
your right hand, O LORD, has shattered the enemy.
R. Let us sing to the Lord; he has covered himself in glory.
Alleluia Ps 95:8
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
If today you hear his voice,
harden not your hearts.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel Mt 12:38-42
Some of the scribes and Pharisees said to Jesus,
“Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.”
He said to them in reply,
“An evil and unfaithful generation seeks a sign,
but no sign will be given it
except the sign of Jonah the prophet.
Just as Jonah was in the belly of the whale three days and three nights,
so will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth
three days and three nights.
At the judgment, the men of Nineveh will arise with this generation
and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah;
and there is something greater than Jonah here.
At the judgment the queen of the south will arise with this generation
and condemn it, because she came from the ends of the earth
to hear the wisdom of Solomon;
and there is something greater than Solomon here.”
The post Reading, Responding to, and Becoming Jesus’ Signs, 16th Monday (I), July 21, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
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18min
July 20, 2025The Hospitality Jesus Desires and Deserves, Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (C), July 20, 2025
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
St. Raphael’s Parish, St. Petersburg, Florida
Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
July 21, 2025
Gen 18:1-10, Ps 15, Col 1:24-28, Lk 10:38-42

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
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The following text guided the homily:
It’s a great joy for me to be with you this afternoon. I’m Monsignor Roger Landry, the National Director of The Pontifical Mission Societies, which coordinates for the Vatican the help that American Catholics give to the 1,124 missionary dioceses and territories across the globe. We have offices in Manhattan and in St. Petersburg, and whenever I’m here, Father Curtis and Father Claudius graciously welcome me into their home. Father Curtis asked me if I would be free to celebrate this Mass and I jumped at the chance. Their hospitality to me — and more generally, the hospitality of St. Raphael Parish to me — is a good backdrop for one of the main lessons of today’s readings.
In the Gospel, Martha and Mary welcome Jesus to their home, but they seek to welcome him in two different ways. Martha seeks to please the Lord by doing various things for him. St. Luke doesn’t specify what she was doing, but anyone who has hosted a guest knows the types of things that would have characterized her hospitality. She would have been finishing up whatever cleaning had to get done, setting up the place to eat, and doubtless preparing a meal.
In doing all of this, she was following in the sacred footsteps of Abraham and Sarah from the first reading, both of whom, in welcoming the three men, spared no effort. Sarah at once baked three cakes with choice flour; Abraham, at 99, ran to the herd to select a tender calf to be prepared and served it with curds and milk. Their great hospitality was rewarded. Little did they know they were serving God himself under the disguise of those three men, whom Abraham mysteriously greeted in the singular, “My Lord!” (The Fathers of the Church, as well as the great byzantine iconographers like Rublev, saw in these three persons addressed collectively as a singular “Lord” the Blessed Trinity). And it was that same God who promised them that, within a year — when Abraham was 100 and Sarah 91! — he would grant them a son, Isaac.
When Martha, however, similarly spares no effort to welcome God-incarnate with the same attention to detail — and solicits Jesus’ authoritative help in persuading her sister Mary to do her fair share of the preparations — Martha receives what at first glance seems to be a mild rebuke. To her plea, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me,” Jesus, rather than doing so, says to Martha, “Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”
What Jesus was not saying here was that Martha’s efforts were somehow evil or unappreciated. Shortly before he entered their home, Jesus, as we heard last week, gave the parable of the Good Samaritan, praising the one who made the effort to take care of another in contrast to those who did nothing. In several other places in the Gospel he praised service of others: he said that he himself had come among us as one who serves (Lk 22:27); he washed his disciples’ feet at the Last Supper and told them to do the same (Jn 13:12-14); he promised to gird himself with an apron and wait on those at the heavenly banquet (Lk 12:37); and he said that the greatest among us would be the one who serves the rest (Mt 23:11). Jesus was clearly not castigating Martha for her loving service. What he was saying to her, however, was that none of those efforts was strictly speaking essential, that therefore there was no reason to get worked about them, and that there was something more important, something that Mary realized and Martha as yet hadn’t.
Here’s what Mary recognized: Jesus had come to their home primarily not to be fed, but to feed. The welcome he sought most was their time, their friendship, their love, their open ears and open hearts. Mary understood this and sat at Jesus’ feet listening to him as if nothing in the rest of the world really mattered — because, in fact, Jesus implies, nothing in the rest of the world does matter anywhere near as much as that. Jesus once said in a parable, “The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it” (Mt 13:45-46). Jesus was for Mary that pearl of great price more valuable than everything else in the jewelry collection of her life combined.
In these interactions in Bethany with Martha and Mary, Jesus was indicating to them, to the apostles, and to us today the most important priorities of all so that we, too, might choose the better part, by identifying the most important thing of all and then setting our minds and hearts on acting in accordance with that priority. So it’s key to get practical, because each of us wants one day to have Jesus say of us what he said of Mary in today’s Gospel, that we have chosen the better part and we won’t be separated from that Better Part even into eternity. We can ponder three applications.
The first is our hospitality toward Jesus. Like the sisters of Bethany, each of us is called to welcome Christ into our homes, both our physical homes and the spiritual abode of our hearts and souls. Do we really welcome Jesus and sit at his feet in prayer? Do we have a time and place where we pray regularly and say yes to him and no to other things that are relative or even real distractions? Christ knocks on the doors of each of our hearts and homes wanting to come in — as we’ll pray in the Communion Antiphon later — but how often and how much do we invite him in? The question is whether we, like Martha, are too caught up and anxious by so many other less important things that we’re welcoming into our minds and souls each day that we no longer have the energy or space to invite in Christ. Christ ought to be invited in first. That leads to the second point.
We’re called to imitate Mary in choosing the better part and truly allowing Jesus to feed us as he desires to do. It’s not enough for us to know what our priority should be. We also have to choose it. That means reorienting our life to make Jesus truly its center. One of the most common problems facing many even faithful Catholics today, and preventing their spiritual growth, is that they put many things ahead of God, on Sunday, on Monday and throughout the week. I like to call this mixed-up set of priorities the “Jesus is an important part of my life” syndrome. We try to squeeze Jesus into our schedule if we still have room if we’re not exhausted after having completed all the other activities we believe we “have to” do, whereas what we’re supposed to be doing is making God truly the God of our life, giving him first place, and then centering all the rest we do around our relationship with him. If only “one thing is necessary,” then if we do that one thing and fail to do everything else, then our life will still be successful; if only one thing is necessary, however, and we do everything else except that one thing, then, ultimately, we would have wasted our life. That’s what we must grasp, will and choose. Those who center their life around Jesus will have a totally different attitude, for example, toward prayer, Eucharistic adoration, daily Mass, and faith education opportunities where Jesus seeks to feed us. To choose Jesus as the best part of all was Mary of Bethany’s great wisdom and we will be wiser the more we imitate her.
The third application is to Martha. Martha often gets a bad rap in Church history in comparison to her sister because many interpret what Jesus did as a spiritual smack down, somehow denigrating the loving service Martha was doing for him in the kitchen. Jesus wasn’t at all minimizing the importance of what Martha was doing but was focusing on how she was doing it. The last thing Jesus would want would be for all of us merely to sit at his feet and allow everyone else to work to serve us. That entitled behavior is certainly not the Christian way or the way Jesus adopted. Like Martha, we are called to work hard serving others, but we’re supposed to do it with the spirit of Mary. That’s what the sanctification of our work is all about, to have Martha’s hands and Mary’s contemplative heart, so that we won’t be distracted by many other things, but so focused on Jesus in work, at school and in family life that we’ll be getting fed by him in action as we seek to serve others. That’s the vocation of every Christian. And one of the most important forms of service we can give to others is to help them to form the true priorities that will bring them to happiness, holiness and heaven. Jesus wants to send us as missionaries so that we might show others by our witness and words how to choose the better part, how happily to make God the true priority of one’s life, in the midst of so many modern distractions and anxieties that leave people without a sure compass and spinning out of control. This is what heroic missionaries do throughout the world in areas where the Church is too young, too poor or too persecuted to be self-sufficient. They by their own life have shown that Jesus is worth it and they’re trying to help others, sometimes in the most remote locations, to get to know Jesus, to welcome him, and to choose him as the better part. This is what each of us is called to do, with the diligence of Martha and the Jesus-centered focus of Mary
At tonight’s Mass, in the modern Bethany of St. Raphael’s Church, we, too, like Mary, have a chance to imitate Mary in welcoming Jesus into our life as he deserves and wishes to be welcomed. The same Jesus who visited their home comes here to St. Raphael’s in the Holy Eucharist, desiring, hoping, we will truly choose him as our priority, and having sat at his feet in the Liturgy of the Word, act on what he teaches. He has come literally to feed us. Tonight we ask him, through this nourishment, to give us the courage to reorder the priorities of our life. Jesus is the one thing necessary. Mary chose the better part. Now we beg her and Saint Martha to intercede for us before Jesus’ feet in heaven that we might receive the grace to make the same choice today, tomorrow and beyond in such a contagious way that we might become missionaries helping all those we know, indeed the whole world, reprioritize.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1
Genesis 18:1-10a
The LORD appeared to Abraham by the terebinth of Mamre,
as he sat in the entrance of his tent,
while the day was growing hot.
Looking up, Abraham saw three men standing nearby.
When he saw them, he ran from the entrance of the tent to greet them;
and bowing to the ground, he said:
“Sir, if I may ask you this favor,
please do not go on past your servant.
Let some water be brought, that you may bathe your feet,
and then rest yourselves under the tree.
Now that you have come this close to your servant,
let me bring you a little food, that you may refresh yourselves;
and afterward you may go on your way.”
The men replied, “Very well, do as you have said.”
Abraham hastened into the tent and told Sarah,
“Quick, three measures of fine flour! Knead it and make rolls.”
He ran to the herd, picked out a tender, choice steer,
and gave it to a servant, who quickly prepared it.
Then Abraham got some curds and milk,
as well as the steer that had been prepared,
and set these before the three men;
and he waited on them under the tree while they ate.
They asked Abraham, “Where is your wife Sarah?”
He replied, “There in the tent.”
One of them said, “I will surely return to you about this time next year,
and Sarah will then have a son.”
Responsorial Psalm
Psalm 15:2-3, 3-4, 5
R.(1a) He who does justice will live in the presence of the Lord.
One who walks blamelessly and does justice;
who thinks the truth in his heart
and slanders not with his tongue.
R. He who does justice will live in the presence of the Lord.
Who harms not his fellow man,
nor takes up a reproach against his neighbor;
by whom the reprobate is despised,
while he honors those who fear the LORD.
R. He who does justice will live in the presence of the Lord.
Who lends not his money at usury
and accepts no bribe against the innocent.
One who does these things
shall never be disturbed.
R. He who does justice will live in the presence of the Lord.
Reading 2
Colossians 1:24-28
Brothers and sisters:
Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake,
and in my flesh I am filling up
what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ
on behalf of his body, which is the church,
of which I am a minister
in accordance with God’s stewardship given to me
to bring to completion for you the word of God,
the mystery hidden from ages and from generations past.
But now it has been manifested to his holy ones,
to whom God chose to make known the riches of the glory
of this mystery among the Gentiles;
it is Christ in you, the hope for glory.
It is he whom we proclaim,
admonishing everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom,
that we may present everyone perfect in Christ.
Alleluia
Cf. Luke 8:15
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Blessed are they who have kept the word with a generous heart
and yield a harvest through perseverance.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Luke 10:38-42
Jesus entered a village
where a woman whose name was Martha welcomed him.
She had a sister named Mary
who sat beside the Lord at his feet listening to him speak.
Martha, burdened with much serving, came to him and said,
“Lord, do you not care
that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving?
Tell her to help me.”
The Lord said to her in reply,
“Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things.
There is need of only one thing.
Mary has chosen the better part
and it will not be taken from her.”
The post The Hospitality Jesus Desires and Deserves, Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (C), July 20, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
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