Catholic Preaching

By Father Roger LandryReligion & Spirituality Christianity

Catholic Preaching episodes

March 02 Remarks to Seminarians at Bigard Memorial Seminary in Enugu, Nigeria, March 1, 2026
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Bigard Memorial Seminary, Enugu, Nigeria
March 1, 2026
There was a big welcoming reception and program to receive TPMS-USA at Bigard Seminary in Enugu, Nigeria. At the end of the program, they asked me, as the National Director of The Pontifical Mission Societies in the USA to share some remarks on our visit to the seminary, which is the largest Catholic seminary in the world, with 714 seminarians. This is what I said.
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.1.26_Remarks_to_Seminarians_at_Bigard_Seminary.mp3
The post Remarks to Seminarians at Bigard Memorial Seminary in Enugu, Nigeria, March 1, 2026 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
22 min
March 02Climbing Tabor Listening to Jesus with Faith, Second Sunday of Lent (A), March 1, 2026
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Bigard Memorial Major Seminary, Enugu, Nigeria
Second Sunday of Lent, Year A
March 1, 2026
Gen 12:1-4, Ps 33, 2 Tim 1:8-10, Mt 17:1-9
To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.1.26_Homily_at_Bigard_Memorial_Seminary_1.mp3

The following text guided the homily:
It is a great joy for me to be here with you at Bigard Memorial Major Seminary for this Mass on the Second Sunday of Lent. I thank you, your formators and faculty and especially your rector, Father Ikpenwa, for your very warm welcome. This is the only seminary in the world named after Jeanne Bigard, the foundress of the Pontifical Society of St. Peter the Apostle, and how proud she would be of this place, because it encapsulates the hope of all those who pray for, work for, and contribute to the Society: a seminary full of those who are eager to place themselves in the hands of Jesus the Eternal High Priest and continue his mission of the salvation of the world; a seminary that has grown to be the largest seminary in the whole world. The word seminary, as you know, comes from the Latin word for “seed” and it is here that the mustard seed planted in 1924 has grown to be a huge tree where not only so many birds can take their rest, but where those same birds fly across Nigeria and beyond as signs of the new and eternal Covenant. It is here that you are formed as a seed to be like the grain of wheat that falls to the ground, that allows the old Adam in you to die, so that with the New Adam you might rise and bear much fruit. It is here, in short, that you are formed not just to be priests, not just to be good priests, not just to be hardworking and dependable priests, but to be the holy priests Jesus desires and deserves. And I so rejoice to be in this very fruitful garden where the seeds of the future are planted, sprout and grow, as the Divine Gardener, who has begun this good work in you, day by day seeks to bring that good work to completion.
In today’s readings, we see how the Lord Jesus wants to form not just the whole Church, but in a special way, her priests and future priests, to be devout disciples and ardent apostles capable of carrying on the Great Commission he has entrusted to us. On the Second Sunday of Lent each year, the Church always has us make a pilgrimage, with Jesus, with three of his first seminarians, Peter, James and John, up the Mount of Transfiguration, where Jesus seeks to teach us three valuable lessons necessary for a good Lent, a holy life and a fruitful priesthood.
The first lesson is about exertion, about the effort, that a holy Lent, a true Christian life, time in seminary and priestly ministry all entail. Jesus leads Peter, James and John on a hike up what St. Matthew calls an “exceedingly high mountain.” Christian tradition associates the place where Jesus was transfigured as Mount Tabor, which towers over Galilee and the Plains of Megiddo, and takes over ten minutes to climb in vans zig-zagging up narrow paths. It would take vigorous climbers at least a few hours to ascend on foot. The three apostles needed to leave civilization behind, they needed to leave their comfort zones behind, and climb with Jesus, sweating, probably gasping for air, to pray. This Lent the Lord Jesus is likewise asking of us to make an exertion. He’s certainly asking that of seminarians. He’s calling us to hard work. He’s calling us to be on the move, to be willing to change and grow. And the pilgrimage he seeks to have us make with him isn’t in a high-speed van. This annual spiritual altitude training, however, is meant to strengthen us for the uphill marathon of Christian and priestly life and the inevitable vicissitudes that arise. A good, holy and vigorous Lent trains us to be like the apostles, to be like St. Paul and St. Francis Xavier, to be like the missionaries who brought the faith here to Nigeria. The first test is whether we will put in the effort to live a good and holy Lent, whether we will make bold resolutions with regard to prayer, fasting and charity. So much depends on our responding to Jesus’ call to work hard and climb with him up the Mount where he is transfigured before us, in order to prepare us faithfully to climb with him the Hill of Calvary.
The second Lenten lesson is the help God wants to give us as we make that spiritual and often physical ascent. When they reach the top of the mountain, the seminarians and future saints Peter, James and John see something extraordinary. Jesus is transfigured. He and his clothes become radiant. St. Luke tells us that Jesus speaks with Moses and Elijah, the greatest figures in Jewish history who symbolize the law and the prophets, about the “exodus” he was to accomplish in Jerusalem, when Jesus would seek to lead us, not from slavery in Egypt through the Red Sea and the desert to the promised land, but through slavery to sin through baptism into his kingdom and ultimately from death to eternal life. The experience of the various theophanies at the top of the mountain are so powerful that the future apostles don’t know what to say, but it leads Peter immediately to want to get into real estate, building booths for Jesus, Moses and Elijah, to keep the experience going for as long as possible. Why did Jesus want them to have this experience? The reason was ultimately to strengthen them to remain strong in faith even when they would descend the Mount of Transfiguration to ascend with him the hill of Golgotha. When they would see Jesus transfigured in blood, they would be able to remember Jesus in glory. The Church helps us to capture the reason for Jesus’ transfiguration in the Eucharistic Preface for this Mass, in which the priest prays, “For after [Jesus] had told the disciples of his coming death, on the holy mountain he manifested to them his glory, to show, even by the testimony of the law and the prophets, that the Passion leads to the glory of the Resurrection.” The Transfiguration was to sustain their faith in trial. The vision of Jesus’ glory has sustained the faith of so many martyrs in making the sacrifice of themselves for God, because they knew that once they breathed their last, they would see Jesus in glory. It’s meant similarly to sustain our faith. Seminarians need these transfiguration moments. The priestly life is beautiful, but it’s hard. There will be many challenges and crosses. We will behold and endure tragedies and lots of pain and suffering. In order for us to be emissaries of Christ our Hope, we need to be able to impart to others our own glimpse of Jesus’ glory, that suffering and even death do not have the last word. We gain that glimpse in our mental prayer. We’re meant to gain it each time at Mass. We’re called to ponder it every time we pray the fourth Luminous mystery. This image of Jesus’ glory, and how Jesus is calling us to accompany him to see it so that we might share it with others, is meant to help us remain faithful in our Christian and priestly lives and to help Christ’s people similarly keep their eyes on the glory that lies before them.
The final lesson might be the most important. God the Father speaks. He begins by affirming his Beloved Son’s identity but then gives a curious imperative: “This is my beloved Son,” he thunders, “Listen to him!” We might ask: What had the seminarians Peter, James and John been doing for the previous two years but listening to Jesus? They listened to him call them from their boats to be fishers of men. They heard all his parables, the Sermon on the Mount and his great Eucharistic discourse. They listened to him teach them how to pray and instruct them as they walked along the dusty way. They listened to him console widows and sinners and lambaste the hypocritical Scribes and Pharisees. They had been listening to him almost constantly since they first met him. But God the Father noticed that they had been selectivelylistening to Jesus. They had been particularly tone deaf to what Jesus had been saying about how he was going to be betrayed, suffer greatly in Jerusalem, be tortured, crucified, killed and on the third day be raised. Even though Jesus told them this at least three times, they didn’t want to hear it, and when Good Friday came, most of them were not within earshot to hear him say his seven last words from the Cross. Even after the foretold crucifixion took place, which would have been a confirmation of everything Jesus had prophesied, they still really didn’t grasp what he indicated about being raised on the third day and were stunned when he walked through the closed doors of the Upper Room. St. Thomas still didn’t believe after the others told him, but only when he saw Jesus’ gloriously transfigured resurrected body with its unbloody wounds. So these words of the celestial Father were very appropriate. God the Father knew that they were ignoring what Jesus was foretelling about his transfiguration in suffering, when instead of dazzling white they would see darkness on earth, and instead of radiant clothes he would be stripped and covered in blood. God the Father knew they were also ignoring Jesus’ summons to follow him all the way, to deny themselves, pick up their cross daily and follow him along the Way of the Cross to glory. So that’s why he said, “Listen to him!” This Sunday, the same Father gives us the same command. He wants us to listen to everything Jesus his beloved Son teaches, about the glories of the kingdom of heaven, but also about the suffering we may experience on earth, so that we might follow Jesus along the spiritual exodus into eternal life, where not only will he be transfigured, but God willing, we, too, will be glorified. And he wants his Son’s seminarians and priests to listen with even greater attention, so that we might help everyone else learn how to listen and follow Jesus, too, along the way by which he leads us to have life in abundance.
To help us learn how to follow Jesus faithfully on this journey, the Church every year on the Second Sunday of Lent also gives us in the first reading part of the vocational story of Abraham, who shows us very clearly what real faith is. When Abraham was 75 years old — well past retirement age for people today — the Lord called him in Ur of the Chaldeans and told him to leave the land of his kinfolk and go to a land He would show him. God asked him to pack his bags, get his extended family and animals and leave behind everything, his language, his land, his friends. Abraham trusted in God and departed his comfortable, familiar surroundings, not knowing where his destination would be. That was only the beginning of the ways God challenged Abraham to trust in Him. God gave him a promise, one that would have sounded crazy to Abraham and his wife, fellow septuagenarian Sara, who were childless at the time. “I will make of you a great nation.” How could Abraham become a great nation if he and his wife had been unable to have children during what was likely fifty or sixty years of marriage? Yet Abraham believed again. When they arrived in Canaan, Abraham found that the land God was intending to give him and his eventual descendants was not going to come to him with a red carpet and a golden key. Instead, he and his family were going to have to fight for it, against several tribes consecutively. Abraham again consented. After they were settled, Abraham and Sara tried not just for a year or two, but for 24 years to have a child, to no avail. Sara lost her confidence, but Abraham continued to believe in the Lord’s promise, despite the excruciatingly long wait. Eventually when Abraham was 100, Sarah gave birth to Isaac, who was destined, Abraham thought, to be the one through whom God would make Abraham the father of many nations. Thirteen years later, however, God decided to test Abraham’s faith to the utmost. He asked Abraham to go to Mt. Moriah, a hill in Jerusalem, and there sacrifice his son, the son for whom he had waited for so long and in whom he had put so much hope. Abraham did what the Lord wanted, even though it would have seemed so contradictory to God’s previous plans. He did so hoping that God himself would provide the lamb for the Holocaust. Isaac his son carried the wood. Abraham built the altar and then was prepared to sacrifice his own son to the Lord, something that the Canaanite pagans were accustomed to do. He did so, as the Letter to the Hebrews tells us, fully believing that even if he should kill his son, God would raise his son from the dead (Heb 11:19), because Isaac was the son of the promise through whom God would make Abraham the father of many nations. But as Abraham’s hand was coming down with the knife, the angel of the Lord stopped him.
The Church gives us the story of Abraham each year at the beginning of Lent first because we’re called to have faith similar to Abraham’s. While God might or might not ask all of us to leave behind everything and go to fight to win a faraway land, He does call each of us to leave our homes, own comfort zones, allowing ourselves to be sent wherever he asks. He calls us to trust in His Word, above all things, even if that word means going against what we know of biology and common sense and believing that a couple in their 90s can conceive their first child. God also calls us to be willing to sacrifice everything — even people or things we love most — for him, if he asks us. “You cannot be my disciple,” Jesus would say elsewhere, “unless you prefer me to your family… to your possessions… to your very life” (Lk 14:26 ff). This is what St. Paul means in today’s second reading when he calls St. Timothy and us to a “bear [our] share of hardship for the sake of the Gospel,” to live a “holy life … according to [God’s] own design and the grace bestowed on us in Christ Jesus.” Lent is meant to help us to trust in Jesus like Abraham, so that we will be willing to bear our hardship in faith, to leave the confomrtable places we have constructed, to live according to God’s design and grace and be led by him on the journey of faith. In order for us to be, like Abraham, true fathers in faith for others, we need to be able to make this journey with trust, as the Lord gives us experiences to strengthen our faith so that through it he might strengthen others.
Today with faith we do not climb the Mount of Transfiguration but ascend the altar of God. It’s at Mass that Lent and everything else in our faith — especially the priesthood — finds its source and summit. It’s here that the Lord seeks to strengthen our faith so that it might be like Abraham’s and ultimately like Peter’s, James’ and John’s. It’s here that we see Jesus transfigured not in glory but in humility. It’s here that we listen to his word, the words of eternal life, and seek to become living commentaries of it. It’s here that we build a booth for Christ within us. And each time we go to Mass, God the Father gives us as a reward for our exertions, as a foretaste of forever, his Beloved Son. As we prepare to behold that Son, the Lamb of God, God the Father says to us, “Listen to him! Do whatever he tells you! Take seriously his words throughout Lent and beyond. Follow him, don’t be afraid, and accompany him on the pilgrimage on which he will lead you — and with you many others — up the exceedingly high mountain of the Celestial Jerusalem. There, in my house, I’ve built a booth not only for him, for Moses and for Elijah, but for you and for those I’m preparing to send you out to shepherd!”

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1
Genesis 12:1-4a
The LORD said to Abram:
“Go forth from the land of your kinsfolk
and from your father’s house to a land that I will show you.
“I will make of you a great nation,
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
so that you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you
and curse those who curse you.
All the communities of the earth
shall find blessing in you.”
Abram went as the LORD directed him.
Responsorial Psalm
Psalm 33:4-5, 18-19, 20, 22.
R. (22) Lord, let your mercy be on us, as we place our trust in you.
Upright is the word of the LORD,
and all his works are trustworthy.
He loves justice and right;
of the kindness of the LORD the earth is full.
R. Lord, let your mercy be on us, as we place our trust in you.
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. Lord, let your mercy be on us, as we place our trust in you.
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. Lord, let your mercy be on us, as we place our trust in you.
Reading 2
2 Timothy 1:8b-10
Beloved:
Bear your share of hardship for the gospel
with the strength that comes from God.
He saved us and called us to a holy life,
not according to our works
but according to his own design
and the grace bestowed on us in Christ Jesus before time began,
but now made manifest
through the appearance of our savior Christ Jesus,
who destroyed death and brought life and immortality
to light through the gospel.
Verse Before the Gospel
Matthew 17:5
From the shining cloud the Father’s voice is heard:
This is my beloved Son, hear him.
Gospel
Matthew 17:1-9
Jesus took Peter, James, and John his brother,
and led them up a high mountain by themselves.
And he was transfigured before them;
his face shone like the sun
and his clothes became white as light.
And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them,
conversing with him.
Then Peter said to Jesus in reply,
“Lord, it is good that we are here.
If you wish, I will make three tents here,
one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”
While he was still speaking, behold,
a bright cloud cast a shadow over them,
then from the cloud came a voice that said,
“This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased;
listen to him.”
When the disciples heard this, they fell prostrate
and were very much afraid.
But Jesus came and touched them, saying,
“Rise, and do not be afraid.”
And when the disciples raised their eyes,
they saw no one else but Jesus alone.
As they were coming down from the mountain,
Jesus charged them,
“Do not tell the vision to anyone
until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.”
The post Climbing Tabor Listening to Jesus with Faith, Second Sunday of Lent (A), March 1, 2026 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
27 min
February 27Striving for Surpassing Righteousness, First Friday of Lent, February 27, 2026
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Sacred Heart Minor Seminary, Akure, Nigeria
Friday of the First Week of Lent
February 27, 2026
Ezek 18:21-18, Ps 130, Mt 5:20-26

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
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The outline of the homily was:
The significance of the seminary’s motto, Adveniat Regnum Tuum, and its dedication to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Jesus today wants to teach us how to make his kingdom come through having a heart like his. The readings today do that in teaching us how to have a righteousness, a holiness, surpassing that of the scribes and Pharisees, who had three main defects: they thought it was their work, not primarily God’s, that made them righteous; they were focused on external deeds, not a heart that produces good and bad deeds; they didn’t recognize how much they needed God’s mercy and how God wanted them to extend that mercy. Today’s readings are ultimately about the latter.
Ezekiel teaches us about God’s mercy and justice. His mercy is toward those who turn away from sin and turn toward him for forgiveness. His justice is for those who turned away from him, turn toward sin, and refuse to repent. People find both of these ways “unfair.” Those who think they don’t need God’s mercy think his mercy toward repentant sinners is unjust — it is, but God’s mercy is greater than his justice. Those who think they should be given a pass for sinning based on previous good actions find his ways unjust, but they are just getting what they deserve for the choice they’ve made to abandon the good life for the bad. Jesus wants us to be those who receive his mercy, who receive the fruits of Jesus’ satisfying the needs of justice by dying to take away our sins.
We see these lessons in the second half of the Gospel when Jesus tells us to reconcile before trying to worship God because he wants us worshipping capable of receiving his mercy by striving to reconcile with our spiritual siblings. That’s what we’re doing at Mass, what we do at every Mass, in the symbolic gesture of the sign of peace.
Reading 1
Ezekiel 18:21-28
Thus says the Lord GOD:
If the wicked man turns away from all the sins he committed,
if he keeps all my statutes and does what is right and just,
he shall surely live, he shall not die.
None of the crimes he committed shall be remembered against him;
he shall live because of the virtue he has practiced.
Do I indeed derive any pleasure from the death of the wicked?
says the Lord GOD.
Do I not rather rejoice when he turns from his evil way
that he may live?
And if the virtuous man turns from the path of virtue to do evil,
the same kind of abominable things that the wicked man does,
can he do this and still live?
None of his virtuous deeds shall be remembered,
because he has broken faith and committed sin;
because of this, he shall die.
You say, “The LORD’s way is not fair!”
Hear now, house of Israel:
Is it my way that is unfair, or rather, are not your ways unfair?
When someone virtuous turns away from virtue to commit iniquity, and dies,
it is because of the iniquity he committed that he must die.
But if the wicked, turning from the wickedness he has committed,
does what is right and just,
he shall preserve his life;
since he has turned away from all the sins that he committed,
he shall surely live, he shall not die.
Responsorial Psalm
Psalm 130:1-2, 3-4, 5-7a, 7bc-8
R. (3) If you, O Lord, mark iniquities, who can stand?
Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD;
LORD, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
to my voice in supplication.
R. If you, O Lord, mark iniquities, who can stand?
If you, O LORD, mark iniquities,
LORD, who can stand?
But with you is forgiveness,
that you may be revered.
R. If you, O Lord, mark iniquities, who can stand?
I trust in the LORD;
my soul trusts in his word.
My soul waits for the LORD
more than sentinels wait for the dawn.
Let Israel wait for the LORD.
R. If you, O Lord, mark iniquities, who can stand?
For with the LORD is kindness
and with him is plenteous redemption;
And he will redeem Israel
from all their iniquities.
R. If you, O Lord, mark iniquities, who can stand?
Verse Before the Gospel
Ezekiel 18:31
Cast away from you all the crimes you have committed, says the LORD,
And make for yourselves a new heart and a new spirit.
Gospel
Matthew 5:20-26
Jesus said to his disciples:
“I tell you,
unless your righteousness surpasses that
of the scribes and Pharisees,
you will not enter into the Kingdom of heaven.
“You have heard that it was said to your ancestors,
You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment.
But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother
will be liable to judgment,
and whoever says to his brother, Raqa,
will be answerable to the Sanhedrin,
and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ will be liable to fiery Gehenna.
Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar,
and there recall that your brother
has anything against you,
leave your gift there at the altar,
go first and be reconciled with your brother,
and then come and offer your gift.
Settle with your opponent quickly while on the way to court.
Otherwise your opponent will hand you over to the judge,
and the judge will hand you over to the guard,
and you will be thrown into prison.
Amen, I say to you,
you will not be released until you have paid the last penny.”
The post Striving for Surpassing Righteousness, First Friday of Lent, February 27, 2026 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
20 min
February 26Becoming People of Prayer Inspiring People All Across the World, First Thursday of Lent, February 26, 2026
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
St. Francis Xavier Parish, Owo, Nigeria
Site of the Massacre of 41 Christians on June 5, 2022
Thursday of the First Week of Lent
February 26, 2026
Esther 12.14-16, 23-25, Ps 138, Mt 7:7-12

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
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The outline of the homily was:
Few churches are known around the world, but St. Francis Xavier in Owo, Nigeria, is one, not just because of the tragedy of the massacre on Pentecost 2022, but because of the faith that brought parishioners to Church that day, because of the resilience and the courage of the faithful after the tragedy. It is a great honor to be able to be here with you, to give God thanks for the gift of our Christian faith.
We come to Church to pray, to adore God, to love him, to receive what he wants to give us. Prayer is the most important thing we do. We see the importance of prayer throughout Lent: Jesus’ words on Ash Wednesday about how to pray pleasing to God the Father; His words two days ago about the Our Father, in which he taught us to pray with confidence to our Dad in heaven and to what to ask for; and his words today about confidence in prayer, knowing that God always responds, even if occasionally he doesn’t give us what we’re asking for because he wants to give us something far better.
St. Francis Xavier’s missionary life was given to teaching people how to pray, beginning with children, to whom he would teach the Our Father, Hail Mary, Creed, Acts of Faith, Hope, Love and Contrition by putting them to melodies and then have them sing them throughout the village as missionary troubadours. Eventually everyone would learn the truths of faith and come to grow in them, before and after baptism. He teaches us the importance of transmitting our faith, which is helping people to learn how to pray.
The greatest prayer of all time is Jesus’ from the Upper Room and Calvary into which we enter at every Mass. The Mass is the great school of prayer, in which we learn to unite all our prayers’ to Jesus’ prayer. We do so tonight entrusting the Holy Innocents of Owo, one day we pray the declared Martyrs of Owo, with Jesus’ sacrifice to God the Father, for our good and the good of the whole Church.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading I
Esther C:12, 14-16, 23-25
Queen Esther, seized with mortal anguish,
had recourse to the LORD.
She lay prostrate upon the ground, together with her handmaids,
from morning until evening, and said:
“God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob, blessed are you.
Help me, who am alone and have no help but you,
for I am taking my life in my hand.
As a child I used to hear from the books of my forefathers
that you, O LORD, always free those who are pleasing to you.
Now help me, who am alone and have no one but you,
O LORD, my God.
“And now, come to help me, an orphan.
Put in my mouth persuasive words in the presence of the lion
and turn his heart to hatred for our enemy,
so that he and those who are in league with him may perish.
Save us from the hand of our enemies;
turn our mourning into gladness
and our sorrows into wholeness.”
Responsorial Psalm
Psalm 138:1-2ab, 2cde-3, 7c-8
R.        (3a) Lord, on the day I called for help, you answered me.
I will give thanks to you, O LORD, with all my heart,
for you have heard the words of my mouth;
in the presence of the angels I will sing your praise;
I will worship at your holy temple
and give thanks to your name.
R.        Lord, on the day I called for help, you answered me.
Because of your kindness and your truth;
for you have made great above all things
your name and your promise.
When I called, you answered me;
you built up strength within me.
R.        Lord, on the day I called for help, you answered me.
Your right hand saves me.
The LORD will complete what he has done for me;
your kindness, O LORD, endures forever;
forsake not the work of your hands.
R.        Lord, on the day I called for help, you answered me.
Verse Before the Gospel
Psalm 51:12a, 14a
A clean heart create for me, O God;
give me back the joy of your salvation.
Gospel
Matthew 7:7-12
Jesus said to his disciples:
“Ask and it will be given to you;
seek and you will find;
knock and the door will be opened to you.
For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds;
and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
Which one of you would hand his son a stone
when he asked for a loaf of bread,
or a snake when he asked for a fish?
If you then, who are wicked,
know how to give good gifts to your children,
how much more will your heavenly Father give good things
to those who ask him.
“Do to others whatever you would have them do to you.
This is the law and the prophets.”
The post Becoming People of Prayer Inspiring People All Across the World, First Thursday of Lent, February 26, 2026 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
22 min
February 15The Wise Path to True Greatness in God’s Kingdom, Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time (A), February 15, 2026
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, New York
Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A
February 15, 2026
Sir 15:15-20, Ps 119, 1 Cor 2:6-10, Mt 5:17-37

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
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The following text guided the homily:
February 15 is the annual feast of St. Claude La Colombière (1641-1682), most famous for having served for a short but crucial time as the spiritual director of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, to whom Jesus appeared to reveal the mystery of his Sacred Heart just over 350 years ago. St. Margaret Mary had suffered a great deal from fellow Visitation nuns, priests and theologians thinking she was deluded, hallucinating, attention grabbing and perhaps possessed. The Lord had promised her that he would send her “one of his servants” to guide her. One day St. Claude came one day to hear confessions at the monastery, she interiorly heard the Lord say, “This is he whom I am sending you,” and he helped her enormous understand what the Lord was revealed. St. Margaret Mary would eventually write about him in her autobiography, “His gift is to lead souls to God.” He had been filled with God’s wisdom and helped her, and many others, order their lives to God.
Today’s readings are all about divine wisdom and how God wants us not only to learn it and live by it but help others to live by it and thereby guide others to God. Paul in today’s second reading, from his First Letter to the Corinthians, speaks to us about two types of wisdom. The first is the “wisdom of this age” which is “doomed to perish.” The other, he says, is the wisdom of the “mature,” namely, “God’s wisdom,” which is “secret and hidden” to the so-called clever of any epoch, but will lead us to “what no eye has seen, no ear heard, nor any human heart conceived.” It is what “God has revealed” to those of us who “love him.” Jesus’ wisdom, as we will see, is far different from that offered by those in the world, but is the path to true spiritual maturity, to full stature as a human being and a Christian.
Sirach in the first reading focuses on whether we will choose to live by divine wisdom. He tell us, “If you choose, you can keep the commandments. To act faithfully is a matter of your own choice. He has placed before you fire and water; stretch out your hand to whichever you choose. Before each person are life and death, and whichever one chooses will be given.” In other words, God has made us free, free to accept his wisdom or free to reject it, free to choose to burn in fire, or free to live according to the cool, living water of our baptism. Will we choose to follow the wisdom Jesus imparts, recognizing that it is a choice between fire and water, between winning and losing, between eternal life and death?
In the responsorial psalm, we focus on hunger, on desire, on the will we need to use our freedom to follow God’s wisdom. It speaks about those who “seek [the Lord] with all their heart,” who firmly “walk in the law of the Lord,” who ask the Lord to “instruct me in the way of your statutes” and to “give me discernment that I may observe your law and keep it with all my heart.”
All of these insights about true wisdom, freedom and desire lead us to what Jesus tells us in the Gospel, where with great candor he describes the standards of behavior that are meant to distinguish his followers from the virtuous pagans who love those who love them and even the most religiously observant Jews, like the Scribes and Pharisees. After speaking to us in the last two weeks about becoming like him in living the beatitudes so that we might be truly salt of the earth and light of the world, this week Jesus sets out five ways that as his disciples our holiness is supposed to surpass others’. In each of them, Jesus is calling us, like him, to “fulfill the law and the prophets,” to become “great in his kingdom” by acting on this wisdom and teaching others to do the same. In each of them, he will take us far beyond actions to the thoughts and desires that motivate our actions, so that he can ultimately make us not only those who don’t do the wrong thing, and not even those who do the right thing, but those who do the right thing for the right reason, and who can become guides like St. Claude helping others toward the same excellence.
The first standard Jesus teaches us involves the way we treat others. He says that it’s not enough for us not to murder someone. We need to refrain also from the thoughts that set us on the path to maim and murder our brothers. He tells us, “If you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire.’” We are called, in short, to love others from our heart and head outward. We don’t love others if all we do is not kill them. If we’re envious, jealous, uncomplimentary, or vengeful within, we’re still not loving them. To enter into his kingdom, to become holy, we can’t kill with our hearts or tongues either. The first standard is not to do no harm to our neighbor — even the virtuous pagans recognized that — but truly to love our neighbor like Christ loves us. He wants us to become great in his kingdom through loving this way and helping others to love this way.
The second standard to which Jesus calls us is to make the first move in reconciling ourselves with those from whom we have been alienated either by our sins or theirs. “When you are offering your gift at the altar,” he tells us, “if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go, first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.” Jesus is saying to us that it’s not sufficient for us to be merely “good with God”; we also have to be “good with others.” When we come to pray and ask God’s forgiveness, we must examine first whether others have something against us. If they do, Jesus tells us that we need to make the first move and go to reconcile, even if we have been the one aggrieved, just like God made the first move in reconciling us when we had sinned against him. So the second standard is to be reconciling, to be peacemakers and not just peacewishers, to be merciful like God is merciful, just as Christ came into the world mercifully to reconcile all things to the Father. He wants us to become great in his kingdom through being merciful this way and helping others to choose this path of mercy.
The third standard to which Jesus calls us is truly to be pure of heart. It is not enough for us not to commit adultery in the flesh, he says. We need to avoid the thoughts that lead to adultery. Jesus states: “I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Jesus implies that even sacramentally married spouses can be adulterers with each other if they allow lust for each other to invade their marriage. But this standard of purity applies to everyone. Lust, as St. John Paul II taught, changes the entire intentionality of a human person from a giver to a taker, from a protector to a predator, from someone who sacrifices his own desires for another’s good to someone who consumes another for his or her own gratification. Jesus wants us, rather, to become truly pure of heart, someone who, as he says in the Beatitudes, sees God in others and reverences him in them. Jesus calls us to be excellent in terms of purity and love and by means of prayer, self-discipline, the sacrament of confession and other graces, he will give us the help we need to get there. But we have to desire it and use our freedom to live by his holy wisdom. And he wants us to go out to a world wounded by lust and help lead them to God.
The fourth standard is about the indissolubility of marriage, which is an important theme on the weekend we celebrate Valentine’s day. Jesus reminds us that his approach to the gift of marriage is different from the way most others regard it, because his standards are the only ones consistent with how he designed marriage in the beginning. Jesus says, “Anyone who divorces his wife causes her to commit adultery; whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.” Later on he explains why, because in marriage God joins a man and a woman for the rest of their life in one flesh, and what God has joined, not even all the family court judges in the world can divide. Some may tragically need, for legal reasons, to seek a divorce, to protect themselves or their children from an abusive spouse or one who is endangering the family through various destructive vices. But that civil action of divorce doesn’t break the one-flesh union created by God, which lasts until death. It’s easy for us to try to dismiss Jesus’ standards and live by those of Hollywood actors like Zsa Zsa Gabor who married 9 times, Elizabeth Taylor (8 times), Nicholas Cage (5 times) or many others who serially cohabitate as if they’re spouses even a minimal public commitment. Many in our culture live by these worldly standards. Even many Christian Churches have caved into them. But we need to open ourselves to the help God gives men and women to remain faithful to the covenant with each other and with God in poverty or prosperity, in sickness and health, in good times and in worse times, all the days of their life. On the day after St. Valentine’s Day, it’s an opportunity to focus on the blessing of marriage, to pray for married couples, and to pray for all those who have received the vocation to marriage, that they may model their bond not on the no-fault-divorce notions of the world or the redefining tendencies of the culture and the courts, but on the way Christ faithfully, indissolubly and fruitfully loves his Bride the Church. We’re called to live by this wisdom and help others to live by it, too.
The final standard Jesus mentions this Sunday is about our truthfulness. He tells us that we’re not to take oaths, because we should be so transparently truthful that we have no need. Rather than behaving like people who, to be believed, have to say, “I swear to God,” “Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye,” Jesus wants our “yes” to be “yes” and our “no” to be “no.” We live in a culture that lies all the time, with fake news that people invent and put out on social media, with press spokesmen who spin rather than tell the truth, with politicians who intentionally say one thing and do another, with legions who don’t keep their word and promises or who say only what they think others want to hear. Jesus tells us that everything other than total sincerity and honesty comes from the devil, the father of lies. Jesus, who is the truth incarnate, wants his followers to be distinguished as people who never tell lies, whose word is immediately believed because we would rather die than lie. Jesus calls us to a standard of full-time truthfulness and transparency and to teach others to say and live by the truth, too.
In Lent were not beginning this Wednesday, next Sunday we would have taken up the two other things Jesus says that are meant to distinguish us from others: how we’re supposed to offer no resistance to one who is evil by turning the other cheek and how we’re to love even our enemies and pray for our persecutors. These sixth and seventh standards of the truly Christian life are even more challenging than what we’ve heard today and obviously will set us apart from virtuous pagans and righteous Jews. They will help us to become like Jesus, “perfect as [our] heavenly Father is perfect,” and make us capable, by word and example, to guide others to God and to his saving ways. While we won’t have them in next Sunday’s Gospel, they are nevertheless goals of the Holy Season of Lent we’re about to commence. Lent is the annual gift God gives us to have us all focus on learning his wisdom, living by it, and helping others to live by it, how to repent and convert from worldly ways and live by the Gospel, how to do so urgently because we are dust and unto dust we shall return, how to hunger for this gift through fasting, ask God for it in prayer, and share it as the most precious alms. The whole season of Lent like a period of spiritual direction meant given to us by the Church to lead us to God and help us, collectively, to lead the world to follow us as we follow Christ and live by his wisdom.
To help us live by the high standards of Christian excellence he sets out for us, Jesus gives us the greatest help of all, himself, the Word-made-flesh, with which he feeds us at Mass. Just as throughout the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus interiorizes the law, so in order to redeem us, Jesus didn’t want to remain outside of us, but chose to come inside, so that from the inside he can help us adopt his thoughts, his desires, and his will so that deeds of true Christian love can flow from our interior bond with him. That is what happens in Holy Communion. Let us therefore turn to Jesus and ask him to give us the help to live up to high standards, to purify our thoughts, our eyes, our hearts, our relationships, our commitments, and our speech, so that together with our reconciled Christian brothers and sisters, we may come to see what eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor the human heart even imagined, the full blessedness he has in store, in this life and in the next, for those who freely choose to live by his wisdom and walk in his holy ways.

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1
Sir 15:15-20
If you choose you can keep the commandments, they will save you;
if you trust in God, you too shall live;
he has set before you fire and water
to whichever you choose, stretch forth your hand.
Before man are life and death, good and evil,
whichever he chooses shall be given him.
Immense is the wisdom of the Lord;
he is mighty in power, and all-seeing.
The eyes of God are on those who fear him;
he understands man’s every deed.
No one does he command to act unjustly,
to none does he give license to sin.
Responsorial Psalm
Ps 119:1-2, 4-5, 17-18, 33-34
R. (1b) Blessed are they who follow the law of the Lord!
Blessed are they whose way is blameless,
who walk in the law of the LORD.
Blessed are they who observe his decrees,
who seek him with all their heart.
R. Blessed are they who follow the law of the Lord!
You have commanded that your precepts
be diligently kept.
Oh, that I might be firm in the ways
of keeping your statutes!
R. Blessed are they who follow the law of the Lord!
Be good to your servant, that I may live
and keep your words.
Open my eyes, that I may consider
the wonders of your law.
R. Blessed are they who follow the law of the Lord!
Instruct me, O LORD, in the way of your statutes,
that I may exactly observe them.
Give me discernment, that I may observe your law
and keep it with all my heart.
R. Blessed are they who follow the law of the Lord!
Reading 2
1 Cor 2:6-10
Brothers and sisters:
We speak a wisdom to those who are mature,
not a wisdom of this age,
nor of the rulers of this age who are passing away.
Rather, we speak God’s wisdom, mysterious, hidden,
which God predetermined before the ages for our glory,
and which none of the rulers of this age knew;
for, if they had known it,
they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
But as it is written:
What eye has not seen, and ear has not heard,
and what has not entered the human heart,
what God has prepared for those who love him,
this God has revealed to us through the Spirit.
For the Spirit scrutinizes everything, even the depths of God.
Alleluia
cF. mt 11:25
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Blessed are you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth;
you have revealed to little ones the mysteries of the kingdom.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Mt 5:17-37
Jesus said to his disciples:
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.
I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.
Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away,
not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter
will pass from the law,
until all things have taken place.
Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments
and teaches others to do so
will be called least in the kingdom of heaven.
But whoever obeys and teaches these commandments
will be called greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses
that of the scribes and Pharisees,
you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.
”You have heard that it was said to your ancestors,
You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment.
But I say to you,
whoever is angry with his brother
will be liable to judgment;
and whoever says to his brother, ‘Raqa,’
will be answerable to the Sanhedrin;
and whoever says, ‘You fool,’
will be liable to fiery Gehenna.
Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar,
and there recall that your brother
has anything against you,
leave your gift there at the altar,
go first and be reconciled with your brother,
and then come and offer your gift.
Settle with your opponent quickly while on the way to court.
Otherwise your opponent will hand you over to the judge,
and the judge will hand you over to the guard,
and you will be thrown into prison.
Amen, I say to you,
you will not be released until you have paid the last penny.
“You have heard that it was said,
You shall not commit adultery.
But I say to you,
everyone who looks at a woman with lust
has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
If your right eye causes you to sin,
tear it out and throw it away.
It is better for you to lose one of your members
than to have your whole body thrown into Gehenna.
And if your right hand causes you to sin,
cut it off and throw it away.
It is better for you to lose one of your members
than to have your whole body go into Gehenna.“It was also said,
Whoever divorces his wife must give her a bill of divorce.
But I say to you,
whoever divorces his wife – unless the marriage is unlawful –
causes her to commit adultery,
and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.
“Again you have heard that it was said to your ancestors,
Do not take a false oath,
but make good to the Lord all that you vow.
But I say to you, do not swear at all;
not by heaven, for it is God’s throne;
nor by the earth, for it is his footstool;
nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King.
Do not swear by your head,
for you cannot make a single hair white or black.
Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No’ mean ‘No.’
Anything more is from the evil one.”
The post The Wise Path to True Greatness in God’s Kingdom, Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time (A), February 15, 2026 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
34 min
February 12Climbing the Mountain of Faith Rather Than Sliding Into Corruption, Fifth Thursday (II), February 12, 2026
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Leonine Forum NYC Chapter, IESE Business School
Thursday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
February 12, 2026
1 Kings 11:4-13, Ps 106, Mk 7:24-30

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.12.26_Homily.mp3

The following points were attempted in the homily:
Earlier this week, the great news was published that Archbishop Fulton Sheen, the greatest preacher in American Catholic history and my predecessor as National Director of the Pontifical Mission Societies, will be beatified later this year. One of Sheen’s famous quips was that there are no plateaus in the spiritual life: you’re either striving to go uphill or you’re sliding downhill. We’re either striving to come, follow Jesus up the Mount of the Beatitudes, the Mount of the Transfiguration, Mount Zion, or Calvary, or we’re descending into a pit, further from Jesus. St. Paul counseled St. Timothy in his second letter that the real choice in life is between perseverance and denial, between faith each day and infidelity (2 Tim 2:12-13). In today’s readings we see those two paths on full display. We see in the Gospel what perseverance and growth in faith look like, and the sometimes unconventional means Jesus uses to help us, and in the first reading we see the sad consequences of the lack of perseverance, corruption and the idolatry in the lives of someone God had blessed beyond measure. Insofar as there are indeed no plateaus in the spiritual life, these readings help us to diagnose which path we’re on and, regardless of where we are today, determine to follow Jesus on the path of faith.
The scene in the Gospel is one of the most moving — and at first glance disturbing — in all of Sacred Scripture. Jesus went into the heart of pagan territory to escape from the crowds. A pagan mother got word that he was there and came to beg him with desperation to exorcise the demons from her daughter. St. Matthew’s version of the scene gives us the most details. The woman first fell at Jesus’ feet and begged, “Have pity on me, Lord, Son of David! My daughter is tormented by a demon.” But Jesus at first gave her no answer at all. She didn’t quit, however. Next she turned to the apostles and begged for their intervention, but they merely came to Jesus and begged in turn, “Send her away, for she keeps calling out after us.” Jesus, therefore, said to her, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But she still didn’t quit. She approached Jesus now that he was speaking to her, fell down before him in homage, and used one of the most powerful words in any language: help. “Lord, help me!,” she cried out. She gave an SOS, proclaimed Mayday, and pulled a verbal fire alarm. Yet Jesus told her, “It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.” It seems like an insult, but it really wasn’t, it was a strong play on words that used to be exchanged between Gentiles and Jews of the time. Jesus was testing her. He was giving her the occasion to grow in faith. She passed the test. She didn’t give up. She reminded Jesus that he was the Good Shepherd even of puppies. “Please, Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters.” Jesus pronounced his amazement at her persevering faith and gave her the greatest compliment in Sacred Scripture: “O woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish!” And at that moment her daughter was healed. She never ceased going up hill, even as the slope seemed to get steeper. That’s why Jesus recognized her great faith — and wanted all of us to recognize it, too.
Her perseverance in faith is contrasted with what we see in the first reading with King Solomon. Solomon, as we saw last Saturday, had been blessed by God with the gift of wisdom, of an understanding heart so that he could properly discern, judge and guide his people. As we noted yesterday, he became famous across the ancient world for the wisdom with which he had been blessed such that the Queen of Sheba would journey 2,300 miles each day to listen to him and in amazement leave him 120 gold talents, the equivalent in today’s money of $821 million. But eventually his wise and understanding heart, his pure heart, became a lustful heart, then a corrupt heart and finally an idolatrous one. It began with his entering into political alliances, which in the ancient world were normally sealed by intermarriage. The Lord had precisely forbidden the Israelites to intermarry because, he said, they would “turn your hearts to their gods.” But Solomon not only intermarried, but fell in love with what those he married loved. As the sacred author of First Kings tells of in the verse immediately before today’s first reading begins, Solomon “had seven hundred wives of princely rank and three hundred concubines, and his wives turned his heart.” He basically had 1,000 wives (in the ancient world concubines were not mistresses as they were wives of a lower social class) who served his vanity and turned his heart away from pleasing God toward pleasing them. Then the great builder of the Temple of Jerusalem — the one who had so praised God for his presence in the Temple — began to build temples to pagan gods, including as we see the god of Moloch, before whose image innocent babies would be sacrificed. Rather than going uphill to the summit of holiness with God, he slid down into the pit of idolatry.
What happened? Pope Francis once described it very well in a homily. He said Solomon simply lost his faith due to his vanity and lust. When he began to sin, he didn’t repent of it like his father David did; he rather pressed on the gas pedal and became “corrupt,” an unrepentant sinner. And that led to his idolatry. “He began to take so much pleasure in his pagan wives and concubines that they diverted his heart to others gods,” Pope Francis said. “These women weakened Solomon’s heart slowly. His heart no longer remained wholly with the Lord, like David’s, his father’s. His heart weakened so much that he lost the faith. He lost the faith! The wisest man in the world let himself be led away by indiscreet, indiscriminate love; he let himself be led astray by his passions.” To be faithful, we know, is not a thing merely of the mind, but of one’s whole life. To be faithful means to seek to love God with all one’s heart, mind, soul and strength. Solomon had lost faith while retaining knowledge because precisely his heart — the core of his being, what he desired — had been weakened by sin. But it didn’t stop there. Pope Francis continued, “He went astray even further and was converted from a sinner into someone who was corrupt [an unrepentant sinner]. His heart was corrupted through this idolatry. … His vanity and passions let him to corruption. It’s in the heart where one loses faith. The evil seed of his passions grew in Solomon’s heart and led him to idolatry.”
What happened to the Syro-Phoenician woman and to Solomon can happen to each of us. I’ve had the joy many times in my priesthood to see people come to Christ late in life, those who came the Lord in prison, those who were once drug addicts and philanderers, deadbeats and even involved in the modern Moloch worship of the abortion industry. Something makes them come to recognize they need the Lord. In some ways the most important thing that happened in the life of the Syro-Phoenician woman was that her daughter got possessed by a demon, probably because of the context in which she was being raised. But that terrible event in the life of her family led her to seek out Jesus, to place persevering faith in him, and to have her life changed forever. On the other hand, I have seen seen many people go the way of Solomon. How many Catholic politicians, to take just one class of people, say that they were once altar boys, that they went to Catholic school for 12 or 16 years and then they begin to use their office to advance the destruction of human life, attacks on religious freedom, false ideas of marriage, policies truly injurious to the poor and needy in favor of special treatment for friends. They can go from people who once sought to please God to those who have been thoroughly corrupted. We’ve seen the same thing with some priests, including those who were blessed by God with enormous abilities to teach the faith and bring people to God. Even though they knew the truth, they gave themselves over to vanity and to lust, lost their faith, betrayed their vocations, God and their people, and began to live a life of sin. We have seen the same thing happen with faithful Catholic husbands and wives. They’ve been great Catholics for decades, but slowly they give in to tepidity, cave in to temptation, and before you know it, they’ve gone from happily married faithful spouses to adulterers, destroying their marriages, their families, their careers and their souls in the process. We’re all old enough to have seen some people we once knew were holy forget God, forget who they were, and slide down the grease poll to the type of unrepentant corrupt sinners Solomon became. The truth is that faith isn’t a once-and-for-all gift that just grows on its own. It’s a gift of God that grows also in response to acts of faith, in response to tests, like we see with the Canaanite mother today. We need to persevere in faith, to continue to live by God’s wisdom, to persist in informing and following a conscience well-tuned to God’s voice. We need to recognize that but for the grace of God, we can go the path of Solomon, but with the grace of God, we can indeed climb the mountain of the Lord.
The Canaanite woman begged Jesus just to let her and her daughter eat the crumbs that fell from the Master’s table. Today Jesus is going to let us have far more than crumbs, he’s about to give his whole body, blood, soul and divinity, in order to build us into a temple where the one, true God is worshipped rather than any idols. This is the means by which he wants to help us grow into the types of persons who today, tomorrow and increasingly each day, Jesus will be able to say to us, whether woman or man, “great is your faith!”

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1
1 KGS 11:4-13
When Solomon was old his wives had turned his heart to strange gods,
and his heart was not entirely with the LORD, his God,
as the heart of his father David had been.
By adoring Astarte, the goddess of the Sidonians,
and Milcom, the idol of the Ammonites,
Solomon did evil in the sight of the LORD;
he did not follow him unreservedly as his father David had done.
Solomon then built a high place to Chemosh, the idol of Moab,
and to Molech, the idol of the Ammonites,
on the hill opposite Jerusalem.
He did the same for all his foreign wives
who burned incense and sacrificed to their gods.
The LORD, therefore, became angry with Solomon,
because his heart was turned away from the LORD, the God of Israel,
who had appeared to him twice
(for though the LORD had forbidden him
this very act of following strange gods,
Solomon had not obeyed him).
So the LORD said to Solomon: “Since this is what you want,
and you have not kept my covenant and my statutes
which I enjoined on you,
I will deprive you of the kingdom and give it to your servant.
I will not do this during your lifetime, however,
for the sake of your father David;
it is your son whom I will deprive.
Nor will I take away the whole kingdom.
I will leave your son one tribe for the sake of my servant David
and of Jerusalem, which I have chosen.”
Responsorial Psalm
PS 106:3-4, 35-36, 37 AND 40
R. (4a) Remember us, O Lord, as you favor your people.
Blessed are they who observe what is right,
who do always what is just.
Remember us, O LORD, as you favor your people;
visit us with your saving help.
R. Remember us, O Lord, as you favor your people.
But they mingled with the nations
and learned their works.
They served their idols,
which became a snare for them.
R. Remember us, O Lord, as you favor your people.
They sacrificed their sons
and their daughters to demons.
And the LORD grew angry with his people,
and abhorred his inheritance.
R. Remember us, O Lord, as you favor your people.
Gospel
MK 7:24-30
Jesus went to the district of Tyre.
He entered a house and wanted no one to know about it,
but he could not escape notice.
Soon a woman whose daughter had an unclean spirit heard about him.
She came and fell at his feet.
The woman was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by birth,
and she begged him to drive the demon out of her daughter.
He said to her, “Let the children be fed first.
For it is not right to take the food of the children
and throw it to the dogs.”
She replied and said to him,
“Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s scraps.”
Then he said to her, “For saying this, you may go.
The demon has gone out of your daughter.”
When the woman went home, she found the child lying in bed
and the demon gone.
The post Climbing the Mountain of Faith Rather Than Sliding Into Corruption, Fifth Thursday (II), February 12, 2026 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
18 min
February 11Seeking True Wisdom and Wealth, Fifth Wednesday (II), February 11, 2026
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Basilica of St. Mary, Phoenix, Arizona
The Theology of Gift Conference, University of Mary
Wednesday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes, World Day of the Sick
February 11, 2026
1 Kings 10:1-10, Ps 37, Mk 7:14-23

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.11.26_Homily_1.mp3

The following text guided today’s homily:
Today we conclude The theology of the Gift Conference focused on fostering the vocation every disciple has to use the good God has given as co-responsible stewards of the mission of the Church, the Word of God and today’s observance of the World Day of the Sick on the Memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes has us focus on the subject of the gift of God’s wisdom and the way we’re supposed to seek and harness it as true wealth. It gives us a chance to ask what types of sacrifices we’re making to come to know and enter into communion with the God of wisdom, how we’re called to receive, ponder, and pass on the gift of divine light, and how we’re called to help others recognize, seek, live by and share this divine endowment.
In the first reading, we have the remarkable scene of the visit of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon. Sheba was located at the bottom of the Arabian Peninsula, encompassing modern Yemen across the Red Sea from Ethiopia. She and her enormous retinue undertook a journey on foot and caravan of about 2,300 miles — the distance it would take to walk between New York City and the California border! — in order to come into Solomon’s presence in search of his wisdom. She had heard reports in her country thousands of miles away about his wisdom and his deeds. On Saturday, at daily Mass, the Church meditated upon Solomon’s answer to God’s question to him, “Ask something of me and I will give it to you.” The 18-year-old baby king’s response was for an “understanding heart to distinguish right from wrong” in order better to govern God’s people. God was so pleased with the answer that he promised to give him a “heart so wise and understanding” that no one until then, and no one after, would equal him. Immediately thereafter that wisdom was put to the test when two women who had just given birth came to him, one who had tragically smothered her child rolling on top of her baby during her sleep. In the middle of the night she had taken the other woman’s child as her own. In an age prior to DNA testing, there was no way to know for sure whose mom the living child was. Solomon asked for a sword to cut the child in half, thereby exposing who the real mother was. The woman who had stolen the baby was fine with the solution. The true mom begged him to give the child to her competitor lest the child die. The teenage king, with that wise and understand heart God had given him, recognized who the real mom was and awarded the child back to her. The sacred author tells us, “When all Israel heard the judgment the king had given, they were in awe of him, because they saw that the king had in him the wisdom of God for giving judgment.” That was just the beginning. The First Book of Kings goes on to tell us, “God gave Solomon wisdom and exceptional understanding and knowledge, as vast as the sand on the seashore. … He was wiser than all other men and his fame spread throughout the neighboring nations. Solomon also uttered three thousand proverbs, and his songs numbered a thousand and five. He discussed plants, from the cedar on Lebanon to the hyssop growing out of the wall, and he spoke about beasts, birds, reptiles, and fishes. Men came to hear Solomon’s wisdom from all nations, sent by all the kings of the earth who had heard of his wisdom.”
This was the context that the Queen of Sheba came to test him with subtle questions. Solomon explained everything she asked about, the text relates, and there remained nothing that he could not explain to her. She said that his wisdom surpassed even the reports she had heard and she praised the great fortune of Solomon’s servants who had a chance to be with him and hear his wisdom. In gratitude, she emptied her treasury, giving him 120 gold talents a huge quantity of spices and precious stones. Just to give you a sense of how valuable she accounted the gift of Solomon’s answers, the gift of divine wisdom, we could focus just on the money she gave. A talent was a weight of measurement. Each gold talent weighed 75 pounds. She gave Solomon 120 of those talents that she had brought along her 2,300 mile journey in her caravan. The price of gold this morning is $5,701.40 per ounce. So the value of just the gold she gave him, in today’s money, is 120 talents, times 75 pounds per talent, times 16 ounces per pound, time $5,701.40 per ounce. Get ready: just in money she gave $821,001,600. And there’s no way to calculate the cost of the precious stones and the huge quantity of spices. Solomon’s wisdom, or better God’s wisdom given to Solomon, was more valuable to her than close to $1 billion.
We can ask ourselves how much we value God’s wisdom, whether we would pay an enormous sum to obtain it, whether we would walk 2,300 miles through a desert to obtain it, whether we would have the hunger and the unanswered questions about so many things with regard to human life to grasp how much we need it. But there’s a more important point. In St. Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus referred to this hunger of the Queen of Sheba and said that it was a test for the people of his age and our own. “At the judgment,” he said, “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.” If the Queen of Sheba made such a journey and expended so much for Solomon’s wisdom, how much more, Jesus was saying, should we desire and be willing to make enormous sacrifices to obtain Jesus’ own teaching! We’ve all been privileged to meet people who make this sacrifice, especially converts to the Catholic faith. Sometimes they need to pay the price of being disowned by their family. Sometimes leaders in different Christian denominations have to give up their titles, houses, prestige, even the flock of their parishes or dioceses to enter the Church. Sometimes those in certain places of the Middle East, Africa and Asia put their lives on the line to do so. But they do! They recognize in Jesus the pearl of great price worth selling everything else to obtain. The sacrifice is small, they deem, compared to the gift they receive. They’ll journey to the end of the earth. They’ll sacrifice far more than gold, spices and gems. And that is the treasure God has placed in our earthen vessels. That’s the treasure we’re called lavishly to share. And that is only part of the gift we have in God, a gift we’re called to seek, to steward and to share.
But for us to share the faith effectively, we can’t just be spiritual consiglieri imparting divine wisdom as discarnate proverbs. It’s got to come from within. It’s got to be more than heard, but seen. Jesus describes this truth in today’s Gospel. The greater-than-Solomon gives us his wisdom on something that was truly revolutionary in the Jewish mindset of his day. “Hear me, all of you, and understand,” he says. “Nothing that enters one from outside can defile that person; but the things that come out from within are what defile.” Right before this, in the Gospel the Church pondered yesterday, Jesus was criticized because he and his disciples didn’t do the scrupulous ritual washings of their hands, cups, jugs, kettles, beds and so many other objects upon which the Pharisees in Jesus’ day insisted. These were all basically human hygienic traditions that hadn’t been revealed by God but had become a collective neurosis for the Pharisees and a substitute for real worship. Jesus said that nothing coming from the outside, either touching a jug or a ritually impure person, or even anything we eat, can make us impure in the sight of God. The purity that God cares about, he said, is what comes from the heart. Jesus had come to give us a heart transplant, to take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh, hearts like his, hearts that could love God and others. He wanted us to help us become pure of heart. The heart is the real core of the person, pointing to what we love and desire. It’s what’s in the heart — and the actions that flow from the heart — that renders a person pure or impure, holy or sinful, Jesus says. He says that from the heart, from what we desire, come sins like “evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly.” I want to focus only on the last one, folly, which is basically the lack of wisdom. The Greek word that St. Mark uses, aphrosune, doesn’t point to an imprudence flowing from a frail brain or intellect. Rather, it means a moral foolishness, the result of those who play the fool by acting contrary to God’s wisdom. This is the type of folly that can affect everyone, even those with high IQs, like we see, often, among those in the academy, or in positions of leadership in politics or culture. The point for us is that while aphrosune originates in the heart, so does, to a degree, sophia, true wisdom. While always a divine gift, as we see in the life of Solomon, wisdom is similarly the result of a desire, a desire to know the truth, a desire to journey and sacrifice for the truth, a desire to live the truth. In the Psalm today we see what happens in the heart of the person who is wise. “The mouth of the just murmurs wisdom,” we prayed. If we’re truly in a right relationship with God, we are going to be “regurgitating” on God’s wisdom, letting it echo within, trying to understand it, and speaking of it to others. To become just, to become holy, to become pure, flows from what we’re murmuring on within. And so, everything depends on whether we’re ruminating on the things of God, on the truth, on wisdom, or whether we’re chewing disproportionately on politics, or sports, or the weather, or gossip, or grudges, or the types of sinful desires Jesus describes.
We can, today, make two applications of these truths. The first is to Our Lady here in this Basilica dedicated to her. She is often called Sedes Sapientiae, the Seat of Wisdom, because Wisdom incarnate, the greater than Solomon, took up his throne within her womb and then in her lap. She became Virgin Most Prudent because she nourished herself on everything God had revealed, pondering and treasuring it in her contemplative heard and seeking to align her whole life in accordance with God’s word. We celebrate our Lady today under the title of Our Lady of Lourdes, because it was on this day in 1858 that she began appearing to St. Bernadette Soubirous in Lourdes, France, a village in the French Pyrenees, enriching this gift who had never received a formal education with the wisdom that came from God, involving her in the work God wanted to accomplish in Lourdes, and helping her ultimately become a saint. Pilgrims flock to Lourdes from all over the world to venerate Our Lady in search of the way that Our Lady seeks to help us come to know and love her Son, the incarnation of divine wisdom, and to live by it as salt and light.
Many likewise go to Lourdes for healing. 72 people have been officially healed in Lourdes and countless have received unofficial miracles of body and soul there. For that reason, today is the World Day of the Sick. This observance was begun by St. John Paul II in 1993, six years after he visited this Church, and two years after he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. It’s a day on which we pray for and care and commit ourselves to support the sick and those who care for them. But on this day in which we ponder the wealth of divine wisdom, we remember that St. James at the beginning of his epistle reminds us that God “various trials” because the “testing of your faith produces perseverance” and ultimately “wisdom” which God “gives to all generously and ungrudgingly” (James 1:2-5). Jesus himself, the Letter to the Hebrews reminds us, learned obedience and human wisdom “through what he suffered” (Heb 5:8). St. Paul, looking at the Cross, said that we see Christ “the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor 1:24). The point of all of these passages and others we could cite is that God helps us to grow in wisdom not principally through sacred study but through sacred suffering, through uniting our sufferings to Christ and his sufferings. Throughout this Basilica we have several images of St. Francis of Assisi, who died 800 years ago this October 3. As he lay dying, he asked that his “book” be brought to him and his Franciscan brothers knowingly brought him the Crucifix, from which St. Francis had told them he had learned all the wisdom he sought to share with them. Today we also remember in this Basilica visited by St. John Paul II what he said about the Christian meaning of suffering in his extraordinary 1984 exhortation Salvifici Doloris, that “suffering, which is present under so many different forms in our human world, is also present in order to unleash love in the human person, that unselfish gift of one’s ‘I’ on behalf of other people, especially those who suffer. The world of human suffering unceasingly calls for, so to speak, another world: the world of human love; and in a certain sense man owes to suffering that unselfish love which stirs in his heart and actions” (29). Pope Leo, in his first Message for today’s observance, focused precisely on the figure of the Good Samaritan by which Jesus, the true Good Samaritan, teaches us how to be neighbor, how to love, how to be like him. As we conclude our conference on the Theology of Gift, we recognize that suffering stretches our capacity of self-giving love, as we are even forced to make the choice of being a Good Samaritan or passing by the other side. Those of us who are charged with helping catalyze people to use their gifts to build up the Church can never neglect the incredible wealth and wisdom involved in those who suffer and how the mystery of suffering can unleash the generosity and care of Good Samaritans who sustain the inn of the Church as we care for all those whom we find wounded, neglected, even left for dead, or otherwise in need.
Today, at the end of this conference, on this feast of Our Lady and World Day of the Sick, Jesus, who is greater than Solomon, wants to give us an even greater wisdom than he gave Solomon and Solomon passed on to the Queen of Sheba. Jesus gives us his Holy Word and even more importantly he gives us his Holy Spirit to guide us through the gift of wisdom and prudence to know and to live wisdom. But he wants us to desire it, prioritize it, seek it, and live by it. And the more we do, the more we will draw people to the Source of that wisdom, just like Solomon drew the Queen of Sheba, and just like the saints in every age including our own continue to attract people to the God of wisdom who takes up his throne within us. There’s a greater than Solomon here with us today. What we’ve just heard something more valuable $821 million. We are about to do something far more valuable than all the gold, precious stones and spices in the world: enter into a holy communion with the Wisdom-of-God-made-flesh. This is worth traveling across deserts and countries for 2,300 miles. May we in response to these gifts praise God like the Queen of Sheba, give ourselves and all we have in response to God’s lavish generosity, and then go to announce with confidence, together with others whose gifts we unleash, this incredible gift of holy wisdom to the world!

The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1
1 KGS 10:1-10
The queen of Sheba, having heard of Solomon’s fame,
came to test him with subtle questions.
She arrived in Jerusalem with a very numerous retinue,
and with camels bearing spices,
a large amount of gold, and precious stones.
She came to Solomon and questioned him on every subject
in which she was interested.
King Solomon explained everything she asked about,
and there remained nothing hidden from him
that he could not explain to her.
When the queen of Sheba witnessed Solomon’s great wisdom,
the palace he had built, the food at his table,
the seating of his ministers, the attendance and garb of his waiters,
his banquet service,
and the burnt offerings he offered in the temple of the LORD,
she was breathless.
“The report I heard in my country
about your deeds and your wisdom is true,” she told the king.
“Though I did not believe the report until I came and saw with my own eyes,
I have discovered that they were not telling me the half.
Your wisdom and prosperity surpass the report I heard.
Blessed are your men, blessed these servants of yours,
who stand before you always and listen to your wisdom.
Blessed be the LORD, your God,
whom it has pleased to place you on the throne of Israel.
In his enduring love for Israel,
the LORD has made you king to carry out judgment and justice.”
Then she gave the king one hundred and twenty gold talents,
a very large quantity of spices, and precious stones.
Never again did anyone bring such an abundance of spices
as the queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon.
Responsorial Psalm
PS 37:5-6, 30-31, 39-40
R. (30a) The mouth of the just murmurs wisdom.
Commit to the LORD your way;
trust in him, and he will act.
He will make justice dawn for you like the light;
bright as the noonday shall be your vindication.
R. The mouth of the just murmurs wisdom.
The mouth of the just man tells of wisdom
and his tongue utters what is right.
The law of his God is in his heart,
and his steps do not falter.
R. The mouth of the just murmurs wisdom.
The salvation of the just is from the LORD;
he is their refuge in time of distress.
And the LORD helps them and delivers them;
he delivers them from the wicked and saves them,
because they take refuge in him.
R. The mouth of the just murmurs wisdom.
Gospel
MK 7:14-23
Jesus summoned the crowd again and said to them,
“Hear me, all of you, and understand.
Nothing that enters one from outside can defile that person;
but the things that come out from within are what defile.”
When he got home away from the crowd
his disciples questioned him about the parable.
He said to them,
“Are even you likewise without understanding?
Do you not realize that everything
that goes into a person from outside cannot defile,
since it enters not the heart but the stomach
and passes out into the latrine?”
(Thus he declared all foods clean.)
“But what comes out of the man, that is what defiles him.
From within the man, from his heart,
come evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder,
adultery, greed, malice, deceit,
licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly.
All these evils come from within and they defile.”
The post Seeking True Wisdom and Wealth, Fifth Wednesday (II), February 11, 2026 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
19 min
February 03Our Daily Encounter with the Lord in the Double-Presentation in the Temple, Presentation of the Lord, February 2, 2026
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Our Lady of Grapes Chapel, Meritage Resort, Napa, CA
Napa Institute Shepherd’s Circle Program
Feast of the Presentation of the Lord
February 2, 2026
Mal 3:1-4, Ps 24, Heb 2:14-18, Lk 2:22-40

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.2.26_Homily_1.mp3

The following points were attempted in the homily:
The Mystery of the Presentation priests ponder every Monday and Saturday in the fourth Joyful Mystery of the Rosary and each night in the canticle at compline.
As we heard twice in the opening admonition and will ponder twice more — during the Preface and in the Prayer after Communion — the essence of this mystery is not Jesus’, Mary’s and Joseph’s obedience to the law of Moses, but how Jesus was coming to encounter his people, something we focused on with the help of Malachi in the first reading. Similarly, the Holy Spirit moved Simeon and Anna to that encounter. Similarly he moves us not just at our baptism but every day.
The meaning of consecration and how we enter into Jesus’ consecration.
Simeon’s declaration of Jesus as his salvation, as Israel’s glory, and as the Light of Revelation to peoples everywhere.
Simeon’s declaration as to how we will be a sign of contradiction for the resurrection and ruin of many in Israel. A contradiction in life, in death and in resurrection.
The incredible privilege we have not just to hold him but to receive him in Holy Communion.

The readings for today’s feast were:
Reading I
Malachi 3:1-4
   Thus says the Lord GOD:
Lo, I am sending my messenger
to prepare the way before me;
And suddenly there will come to the temple
the LORD whom you seek,
And the messenger of the covenant whom you desire.
Yes, he is coming, says the LORD of hosts.
But who will endure the day of his coming?
And who can stand when he appears?
For he is like the refiner’s fire,
or like the fuller’s lye.
He will sit refining and purifying silver,
and he will purify the sons of Levi,
Refining them like gold or like silver
that they may offer due sacrifice to the LORD.
Then the sacrifice of Judah and Jerusalem
will please the LORD,
as in the days of old, as in years gone by.
Responsorial Psalm
Psalm 24:7, 8, 9, 10
R.   (8) Who is this king of glory? It is the Lord!
Lift up, O gates, your lintels;
reach up, you ancient portals,
that the king of glory may come in!
R.   Who is this king of glory? It is the Lord!
Who is this king of glory?
The LORD, strong and mighty,
the LORD, mighty in battle.
R.   Who is this king of glory? It is the Lord!
Lift up, O gates, your lintels;
reach up, you ancient portals,
that the king of glory may come in!
R.   Who is this king of glory? It is the Lord!
Who is this king of glory?
The LORD of hosts; he is the king of glory.
R.   Who is this king of glory? It is the Lord!
Reading II
Hebrews 2:14-18
Since the children share in blood and flesh,
Jesus likewise shared in them,
that through death he might destroy the one
who has the power of death, that is, the Devil,
and free those who through fear of death
had been subject to slavery all their life.
Surely he did not help angels
but rather the descendants of Abraham;
therefore, he had to become like his brothers and sisters
in every way,
that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest before God
to expiate the sins of the people.
Because he himself was tested through what he suffered,
he is able to help those who are being tested.
Alleluia
Luke 2:32
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
A light of revelation to the Gentiles,
and glory for your people Israel.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Luke 2:22-40
When the days were completed for their purification
according to the law of Moses,
Mary and Joseph took Jesus up to Jerusalem
to present him to the Lord,
just as it is written in the law of the Lord,
Every male that opens the womb shall be consecrated to the Lord,
and to offer the sacrifice of
a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons,
in accordance with the dictate in the law of the Lord.
Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon.
This man was righteous and devout,
awaiting the consolation of Israel,
and the Holy Spirit was upon him.
It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit
that he should not see death
before he had seen the Christ of the Lord.
He came in the Spirit into the temple;
and when the parents brought in the child Jesus
to perform the custom of the law in regard to him,
he took him into his arms and blessed God, saying:
“Now, Master, you may let your servant go
in peace, according to your word,
for my eyes have seen your salvation,
which you prepared in the sight of all the peoples:
a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
and glory for your people Israel.”
The child’s father and mother were amazed at what was said about him;
and Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother,
“Behold, this child is destined
for the fall and rise of many in Israel,
and to be a sign that will be contradicted
-and you yourself a sword will pierce-
so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”
There was also a prophetess, Anna,
the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher.
She was advanced in years,
having lived seven years with her husband after her marriage,
and then as a widow until she was eighty-four.
She never left the temple,
but worshiped night and day with fasting and prayer.
And coming forward at that very time,
she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child
to all who were awaiting the redemption of Jerusalem.
When they had fulfilled all the prescriptions
of the law of the Lord,
they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth.
The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom;
and the favor of God was upon him.
The post Our Daily Encounter with the Lord in the Double-Presentation in the Temple, Presentation of the Lord, February 2, 2026 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
13 min
January 26 Archbishop Fulton Sheen and the Missions, TPMS-USA Staff Day, January 21, 2026
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Staff Training Day
The Pontifical Mission Societies USA
St. Petersburg, Florida
January 21, 2026
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.21.26_Life_Work_and_MIssion_of_Sheen_Part_II_1.mp3
The post Archbishop Fulton Sheen and the Missions, TPMS-USA Staff Day, January 21, 2026 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
45 min
January 26 Archbishop Fulton Sheen: Life and Work, TPMS-USA Staff Day, January 21, 2026
Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Staff Training Day
The Pontifical Mission Societies USA
St. Petersburg, Florida
January 21, 2026
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.21.26_Life_Work_and_MIssion_of_Sheen_Part_I_1.mp3
The post Archbishop Fulton Sheen: Life and Work, TPMS-USA Staff Day, January 21, 2026 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.
49 min

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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.