Catholic Preaching

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Chapel of the Annunciation, University of Mary, Bismarck, ND

Monday of the Fourth Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

January 30, 2023

Heb 11:32-40, Ps 31, Mk 5:1-20

 

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.30.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

*  Today’s Gospel is about more than one more of Jesus’ dramatic expulsions of evil. It points to something that needs to be exorcised from all of us in every age. After Jesus frees a man from a legion of demons — and a legion in the Roman army was 600 troops — by casting them into a herd of 2,000 pigs who, now possessed, ran off a cliff and drowned in the Sea of Galilee, the people of that pagan region of the Gerasenes didn’t rejoice at the liberation of the man who used to gouge himself with stones, break chains that attempted to bind him, and terrorize the people of the region; they didn’t come to Jesus to ask him likewise to free the other possessed people in the region, or to cure their sick or to teach them; instead, they asked him to … leave their region. Jesus was bad for business. They probably worried that if he stayed he might next endanger their sheep, too, or their grain, or other aspects of their livelihood. They essentially cared more for the swine they had lost than the brother they had gained.

* This is not a problem just for ancients. Still today, people can give possessions primacy over people, allowing people to be disturbed, even possessed, even killed as long as their possessions are left undisturbed. Pope Francis wrote about this in his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium: “How can it be that it is not a news item,” he asks, “when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points?” Materialism, or what St. John calls the concupiscence of the eyes, remains one of the greatest ways the devil seeks to possess multitudes. We remember the way he tempted Jesus in the desert to set his sights on material bread in order to thwart him from his mission and focus on bodily wants and needs more than on his mission. But Jesus refused, saying we live on more than bread, but by every word that comes from God’s mouth. In his first beatitude, as we heard yesterday, we learn that the kingdom of heaven belongs to those who are “poor in spirit,” those who treasure God’s kingdom more than they do things. Poverty in spirit is essential not only for us to love God but also to love our neighbor. In order to love our neighbor, we have to be willing to sacrifice our things, even our life, for their good. It would have been possible for Jesus, of course, to exorcise the legion of demons and not assent to their request to be sent into the swine so that they might lead the swine to run into the Sea of Galilee and drown. Jesus permitted it not just as an illustration of the destruction the demons were already doing within the man but also what they were hoping to do to him and to every human being: to lead us off various cliffs — jumping from the parapet of the temple! — in order to propel us to death. In permitting the swine to be invaded and destroyed by the demons in this way, Jesus was displaying in a graphic way the power of evil that he was coming to silence and expunge.

* But Jesus would do that more than just by this miracle in the terrority of the Gerasenes. He would do so fundamentally by his passion, death and resurrection. He would, in some sense, permit the evil one to allow others to conspire to kill him, but in so doing, he would free us from the dominion of the devil and make true liberation possible. Jesus was himself run out of Jerusalem by the possessed, he was crucified,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Chapel of the Annunciation, University of Mary, Bismarck, ND

Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

January 29, 2023

Zeph 2:3.3:12-13, Ps 146, 1 Cor 1:26-31, Mt 5:1-12

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.29.23_Homily_UMary_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* In today’s first reading, the Prophet Zephaniah, after telling the seventh century BC people of Judah about the consequences of their sinful behavior that would result in the exile, gives them a message of hope, promising to “leave as a remnant in your midst a people humble and lowly, who shall take refuge in the name of the Lord.” These would be the people who were not committing evil, speaking lies or deceiving with their tongues, but rather who were seeking the Lord, observing his law and pursuing justice and humility. The remnant would be the “humble of the earth,” humble interiorly in terms of how they related to God and humbled exteriorly in terms of the way the world related to them. The remnant would not just be the few that survived the exile to worship on God’s holy mountain, but ultimately the “poor” to whom Jesus would proclaim the Good News when he came, in fulfillment of the Messianic prophecies. The remnant is, therefore, an image of the Kingdom of God, of the Church, that would begin as a lowly, tiny mustard seed and by the power of the Holy Spirit grow.

* Paul picks up on this theme of the humble, lowly and virtuous remnant in today’s passage from his First Letter to the Corinthians, when he tells us, “Consider your own calling, brothers and sisters. Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. Rather God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise, and God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong, and God chose the lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something, so that no human being might boast before God.” The remnant would be comprised of those whom the world considers foolish, weak, lowly and despised. It would include a young girl from Nazareth and a hardworking yet impoverished builder who were able to secure only a stable for her Son and offer the indigent sacrifice of pair of turtledoves at his presentation. It would include a fisherman whose first words were that he was a sinful man, a despised tax collector, a woman who had had seven demons, as well as the sick, crippled, blind, lame, and formerly possessed. It would ultimately include you and me. God chose us in our lowliness to help others become humble, in our dependence on God’s wisdom to help others learn to accept and live by it, in our low social rank and the disdain we get from the opinion makers of the age to help others learn not to boast before God but to boast in the Lord and his goodness.

* This is the proper introduction to understand the moral revolution Jesus introduces in today’s Gospel at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, in which Jesus teaches us the principles of how we as his followers, in contrast both to the Scribes and Pharisees and the Gentiles, are supposed to live. Jesus presents to us the way to follow him to happiness, holiness, and heaven. The path he charts stands in stark contrast to the path that the vast majority of people in the world — especially the worldly wise, strong, noble, rich and influential — believe will make us happy. St. Paul told the Corinthians in today’s second reading that “Christ Jesus … became for us wisdom from God, as well as righteousness, sanctification and redemption,” and so let’s listen to God’s wisdom, justice, holiness and salvation incarnate as if we’re hearing him for the first time.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Chapel of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx

Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

January 29, 2023

Zeph 2:3.3:12-13, Ps 146, 1 Cor 1:26-31, Mt 5:1-12

 

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.29.23_Homily_MCs_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* In today’s first reading, the Prophet Zephaniah, after telling the seventh century people of Judah about the consequences of their sinful behavior that would result in the exile, gives them a message of hope, promising to “leave as a remnant in your midst a people humble and lowly, who shall take refuge in the name of the Lord.” These would be the people who were not doing evil or speaking lies and deceiving with their tongues, but rather who had been seeking the Lord, observing his law and pursuing justice and humility. The remnant would be the “humble of the earth,” interiorly in terms of how they related to God and exteriorly in terms of the way the world related to them. It would not just be the few that survive the exile to worship on God’s holy mountain, but ultimately those to whom Jesus would address the Good News when he came, in fulfillment of the Messianic prophecies, to proclaim the Gospel to the poor. The remnant is, therefore, an image of the Kingdom of God, of the Church, that would begin as a lowly mustard seed and by the power of the Holy Spirit grow.

* Paul picks up on this theme of the humble, lowly and virtuous remnant in today’s passage from his First Letter to the Corinthians, when he tells us, “Consider your own calling, brothers and sisters. Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. Rather God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise, and God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong, and God chose the lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something, so that no human being might boast before God.” The remnant would be those whom the world considers foolish, weak, lowly and despised. It would include a young girl from Nazareth and a hardworking yet impoverished builder who were able to secure only a stable for childbirth and the indigent offering of pair of turtledoves at the presentation. It would include a fisherman whose first words were that he was a sinful man, a despised tax collector, a woman who had had seven demons, as well as the sick, crippled, blind, lame, and formerly possessed. It would ultimately include you and me. God chose us in our lowliness to help others become humble, in our dependence on God’s wisdom to help others learn to accept and live by it, in our low social rank and the disdain we get from the opinion makers of the age to help others to help others learn not to boast before God but to boast in the Lord and his goodness.

* This is the proper introduction to understand the moral revolution Jesus introduces in today’s Gospel at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, in which Jesus teaches us the principles of how we as his followers, in contrast both to the Scribes and Pharisees and the Gentiles, are supposed to live. Jesus presents to us the way to follow him to happiness, holiness, and heaven. The path he charts stands in stark contrast to the path that the vast majority of people in the world — especially the worldly wise, strong, noble, rich and influential — believe will make us happy. St. Paul told the Corinthians in today’s second reading that “Christ Jesus … became for us wisdom from God, as well as righteousness, sanctification and redemption,” and so let’s listen to God’s wisdom, justice, holiness and salvation incarnate as if we’re hearing him for the first time.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Saturday of the Third Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of St. Thomas Aquinas, Doctor

January 28, 2023

Heb 11:1-2.8-19, Lk 1:69-75, Mk 4:35-41

 

To listen to an audio recording of this homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.28.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Throughout this week, Jesus has been teaching us and helping us to grow in faith. Over the last few days he’s been talking about what faith is and does — that faith is like rich soil that hears the seed of God’s word, accepts it wholeheartedly and bears abundant fruit; that faith is meant to illumine others like a light set on a lamp stand and grows through being measured out; that faith is like a mustard seed that God wants to help grow to become the biggest of shrubs — but today Jesus puts the disciples in a bootcamp experience to test their faith and help it to grow. The training happens on the Sea of Galilee.

* Jesus tells them, as night was coming, to get into the boat with him and cross to the other side. Jesus was so exhausted that he fell asleep in the stern of the boat and remained asleep even when the boat was beginning to rock, even when the waves that were “breaking over the boat” were doubtless splashing him in the face. Those storms were common to the Sea of Galilee because of the latitudinal mountain ranges stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to the Sea of Galilee that served as a wind tunnel and caused serious storms to begin almost out of nowhere. In the middle of the storm, the disciples didn’t respond with faith. They didn’t cry out to the Lord in prayer. They didn’t have confidence in the love of the Lord remaining with them. They feared for their life. They woke Jesus and said, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” Do you not care? Their fears had gotten them to think Jesus was totally insensitive to their plight and to completing his own mission for the salvation of the world! Jesus got up and rebuked the wind and the sea, calming it. Then he rebuked the disciples. He asked, “Why are you terrified? Do you not yet have faith?” Jesus allowed the entire storm to occur as a test of faith, to help them in the midst of it to pass the test so that their faith might grow.

* Jesus allows us to pass through similar tests, through analogous storms. The storms of pain and suffering, the storms of the suffering and death of loved ones, the storms of anxiety, failure, and various problems, the storms of temptations sometimes quite fierce so that in the midst of all of these tests, we might grow in faith. Every test of faith we can pass, and when we do, our faith grows. But it’s important that when we’re being tested, we respond not just with a vague perseverance, but by growing in trust of God and in trust of all that he has promised, because he is faithful to his promises.

* That’s what today’s first reading is about. The eleventh and twelfth chapters of the Letter to the Hebrews are among the most inspirational sections of the entire Bible. Yesterday we finished the tenth chapter focusing on the holy hypomone — perseverance — God wants us to have in contrast to those who “draw back.” We pondered how the early Christians allowed themselves to be dispossessed of so many of their earthly possessions — even their life! — because they knew that they had a greater possession (hyparxin) in God in faith. Today the Letter to the Hebrews builds on it. It defines faith as “the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen.” Faith is the hypostasis, the substance, the down payment, of what we hope for, the evidence of what we do not yet see but know is coming.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time, A, Vigil

January 28, 2023

 

To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.28.23_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy to have a chance to ponder with you the consequential conversation the Lord wants to have with us this Sunday, as we enter into the most famous homily Jesus ever preached, the Sermon on the Mount, which charts the distinctive way that Jesus, out of love for us, wants his disciples to live. This Sunday Jesus gathers us around him like his original listeners on the mountain and presents to us the way to heaven, the way to happiness, the way to holiness, precisely so that we choose to follow him on it. The path that he shows us stands in stark contrast to the path that the vast majority of people in the world believe will make us happy. Jesus’ words present us with the choice on which our lives hinge. Let’s listen to him as if we’re hearing him for the first time:

* The world tells us that to be happy, we have to be rich. Jesus says, rather, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they will inherit the kingdom of heaven.”

* The world tells us we’re happy when we don’t have a concern in the world. Jesus says, on the other hand, “Blessed are those” who are so concerned with others that “they mourn” over their own and others’ miseries, “for they will be comforted” by him eternally.

* Worldly know-it-alls say, “You have to be strong and powerful to be happy.” Jesus, in contrast, retorts, “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.”

* The spiritually worldly shout increasingly more each day, “To be happy, you’ve got to have all your sexual fantasies fulfilled” and our culture promotes people like Hugh Hefner and promiscuous, Hollywood vixens as those who have it made. Jesus, however, says “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.”

* The world preaches, “You’re happy when you accept yourself,” espouses an “I’m okay, you’re okay,” brand of moral relativism, and advocates a culture of comfort. Jesus says, though, “Blessed are those who hungerand thirst for holiness, for his grace and justification, for they will be filled.”

* The world says, “You’re happy when you don’t start a fight, but finish it” and people from professional wrestlers, to boxers, to generals, to armchair or back-seat presidents shout “No mercy,” Jesus says “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy” and “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”

* Our American culture increasingly says, “You’re happy when everyone considers you nice, when you don’t have an enemy in the world.” Jesus says, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake” and “blessed are you when people revile you, persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account,” “for their reward will be the kingdom of heaven.

* “Blessed are you,” the Lord Jesus says, “who are poor in spirit, gentle and merciful, you who mourn, who care for what is right, who are pure in heart, who make peace, you who are persecuted! Blessed are you!” Jesus exalts those whom the world generally regards as weak. He basically says to us, as St. John Paul II once said to young people on the Mount of the Beatitudes, “Blessed are you who seem to be losers, because you are the real winners: the kingdom of heaven is yours!” But in this, Jesus is essentially beckoning us to follow him, because he is the face of the beatitudes.

Fr. Roger J. LandryColumbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, ManhattanFriday of the Third Week in Ordinary Time, Year IMemorial of Saint Angela Merici

January 27, 2023Heb 10:32-39, Ps 37, Mk 4:26-34

 

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.27.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

Today Jesus continues to speak to us about the objective good of his Kingdom and how to receive and respond to his gracious offer of it and grow and thrive within it. On Wednesday, if we didn’t have the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, we would have heard the Parable of the Sower and the Seed and focused on faith-filled receptivity, which Jesus said features hearing the Word, actively accepting it, and bearing fruit 30, 60 and 100-fold. Yesterday Jesus said that true faith can’t be hidden, but shines like the light of a lamp placed on a lamp stand, and that the more we exercise the spiritual muscle of the theological virtue of faith, the more it will grow. Today he gives us a pair of images to teach us two more angles about the increase in faith that is meant to happen when we enter and live in his kingdom.

Jesus says, first, that faith grows like a mustard seed. “When it is sown in the ground,” Jesus says, “it is the smallest of all the seeds on the earth. But once it is sown, it springs up and becomes the largest of plants and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the sky can dwell in its shade.” Even a little bit of faith is enough, Jesus would say elsewhere, to move mountains. Even when it seems small, we should know that it contains within the power to grow to be enormous. And by another image he describes one of the most important parts of that growth: it’s God’s work. Jesus compares the growth in faith to what happens with a farmer scattering seed in the Holy Land, turning it over once, and then allowing the growth. “It is as if a man were to scatter seed on the land and would sleep and rise night and day and the seed would sprout and grow, he knows not how. Of its own accord the land yields fruit, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. And when the grain is ripe, he wields the sickle at once, for the harvest has come.” The farmer certainly does a little of the work, but most of the work happens by what is contained in the seed, what is contained in the soil, and the water that comes. So it is with growth in faith. God has given us that seed, he’ll provide the water of the sacraments, he’ll provide the sunshine of various blessings, and he’ll give so many of the nutrients like teaching and formation necessary for us to be rich, fruitful soil. And so we should have great confidence in God’s work.

One way God routinely acts to help that seed of faith grow large is through putting us in tests in which we need to exercise the spiritual muscles of faith. Every time we pass the test of faith under duress, our faith grows. We see this in today’s first reading from the Letter to the Hebrews. It describes how the faith of the first Christians grew. The sacred author tells us, “Remember the days past when, after you had been enlightened (baptized), you endured a great contest of suffering. At times you were publicly exposed to abuse and affliction; at other times you associated yourselves with those so treated. You even joined in the sufferings of those in prison and joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property, knowing that you had a better and lasting possession.” The last sentence points to how they were able to remain faithful in the midst of so many trials and “great contests,” including the confiscation of their goods and even the confiscation of their earthly life.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Thursday of the Third Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of SS. Timothy and Titus

January 26, 2023

2 Tim 1:1-8, Ps 96, Mk 4:21-25

 

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, which didn’t start at the beginning, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.26.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today on the Feast of SS. Timothy and Titus, two great collaborators of St. Paul who assisted him in crisscrossing the ancient world to spread the Gospel and who were installed by him as important bishops among the first Christian communities, the Church has us focus on the Word of God they heard, lived and announced. It’s an opportunity for us to examine how we are doing on each score.

* First, we can focus on how we hear the Word of God. Jesus tells us in today’s Gospel, “Take care what you hear” and “Anyone who has ears to hear ought to hear.” Jesus is calling us to pay attention, to listen well to what he’s saying, to recognize that the gift of hearing above all exists so that we might hear him. We ought to be at the edge of our seats when Jesus speaks, attentive to every word, remembering it, pondering it in our hearts, piecing it together with what he’s taught us before and letting it become a foundation for what he wishes to teach us later. He wants us to take such care of what we hear that we treasure what he reveals, nourishing it, watering the seeds of his word. If we didn’t have the feast of the conversion of St. Paul yesterday, we would have heard the Gospel of the Parable of the Sower and the Seed, and he wants us to receive his word on good soil, so that we might bear abundant fruit.

* That leads us to the second point: allowing the Word of God thoroughly to transform us. Jesus begins today’s Gospel asking, “Is a lamp brought in to be placed under a bushel basket or under a bed, and not to be placed on a lampstand? For there is nothing hidden except to be made visible; nothing is secret except to come to light.” He’s describing that the Word of God received within us is meant to shine through us. Through his holy Word, God has lit the lamp of our minds and hearts and he doesn’t want us to place that gift under a bushel basket or a bed but on a lamp stand so that it may through us illumine others. The Word is not supposed to be a secret, but a key that unlocks the secret of human life.

* That brings us to the third point, that we are called to share that word with others. God has generously shared it with us and wants us generously to share it with others, because the extent to which we share it will be a sign of the extent to which we have really received it. He tells us, the “measure with which you measure will be measured out to you and still more will be given to you. To the one who has, more will be given; from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.” This is basically the law of “use or it or lose it,” which every student, every athlete, every musician knows. The more we learn, the more we can learn. The more we work out, the more we can work out and the tougher the exercises we can do. The more we practice the piano, the more our talent develops; the less we practice, the more we lose our ability. Any teacher will tell you that if you really want to learn something, try to teach it to others. Unless we use a gift, the gift atrophies. It’s similar with the light of the teaching he gives us: the more we give it, the more we’ll receive it, and if we don’t pass it on to others, we’re at risk for losing it. The measure with which we measure is measured back to us. The way we let the light shine, the way we take care of the word,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul

January 25, 2023

Acts 9:1-22, Ps 117, Mt 16:15-18

 

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.25.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today on this feast of the conversion of Saul of Tarsus — one of the most important events in the history of the world because of the impact this one man had, post-conversion, in spreading the Gospel all over the known world at the time and whose writings have deeply influenced all of Christian theology — it is important to understand what led to his conversion, what his conversion truly was, and what it means for our conversion.

* St. Paul’s shocking conversion was, at least partially, the miraculous result of St. Stephen’s prayers. When the first Christian martyr (after we could say John the Baptist and Jesus himself) was being stoned to death outside the Jerusalem Gate that now bears his name, the stone-throwing assassins were all laying their cloaks at the feet of Saul, showing that he was presiding over the execution. St. Stephen prayed, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them,” as he was asking Jesus to receive his spirit, echoing Jesus’ own words from the Cross, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” These prayers — Stephen’s and Jesus’ — were heard. God didn’t hold this sin against Saul. And Jesus Christ met him on the road to Damascus to give him by means of that forgiveness the gift of conversion.

* His shocking conversion was not principally the superficial change from being a persecutor of Christians to a proclaimer of Christ, from a murderer to a maker of the faithful. It wasn’t from an immoral life far from God to a moral one. As the late Pope Benedict XVI stressed, it was from a false notion of a holy life to a true notion. Paul had been from his young days a zealous follower of God. He had come down from Turkey to Jerusalem to study at the feet of the greatest rabbi of the age, Gamaliel. As a young man, he had such zeal to keep the community of Israel together that he made it his mission to try to stomp out the heretical sect that was dividing Judaism and blasphemously claiming that a carpenter from Nazareth not only was the Messiah but the Son of God, one who said he would destroy the holy Temple. That’s why he was terrorizing Christians. In the persecution of the Church, he was the furthest thing, for example, from Herod, who hunted down the baby Jesus in order to preserve his own privileges. Paul’s conversion was, rather, from an erroneous notion that we are saved by our external adhesion to all the prescriptions of the Mosaic Law, to the true one that we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. We are saved by Christ’s work, not our own. We can also say, on the heels of the Sunday of the Word of God, that Saul, despite his scholarship, had a defective notion of what was contained in the Word of God and where it was leading. He was “kicking against the goad” (Acts 26:14), as Jesus said to him, meaning rebelling against the stick used to drive cattle, because he was not following where the “goad” of the Word of God was ultimately leading him.

* But those aspects of his conversion still do not lead us to the deepest essence of what happened to him and what is meant to happen to us. His conversion was a death and resurrection. After St. Paul met the Lord 137 miles north of Jerusalem in Damascus where the Christian community was strong, after he was blinded and needed to walk by faith, he was baptized by Ananias and the scales fell from his eyes, a sign not just of a capacity to see things in the new light of Christ that had previous...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Tuesday of the Third Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of St. Francis de Sales

January 24, 2023

Heb 10:1-10, Ps 40, Mk 3:31-35

 

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.24.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* God the Son came into the world for a two-fold mission — to save us and to show us how to receive and extend the gift of salvation — and we see both aspects of that mission in today’s readings.

* The first part of his mission was one of obedience. The Letter to the Hebrews tells us that all Old Covenant sacrifices were not sufficient to “take away sins” or to “make perfect those who come to worship by the same sacrifices.” The sacrifices of “bulls and goats” and other animals are a sign of the need for forgiveness, “only a yearly remembrance of sins,” but they are not capable of taking them away and sanctifying the worshippers. That’s in total contrast to the sacrifice Jesus himself would make in the New and Eternal Covenant. Putting into Jesus’ mouth the words of Psalm 40 that constitute today’s Responsorial Psalm, the Letter to the Hebrews says, “For this reason, when he came into the world, he said: ‘Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me; in burnt offerings and sin offerings you took no delight. Then I said, “As is written of me in the scroll, Behold, I come to do your will, O God.”’” There’s a Hebrew couplet here, in which the same thing is said twice with different words: the first point is that the sacrifices, burnt offerings, sin offerings of the Old Covenant neither were sought by God nor delighted him; the second is that God the Father prepared a body for Jesus, a body that would do God’s will. That’s the sacrifice that God both desired and that delighted him. God wanted a sacrifice of obedience in the flesh to counteract the sins that needed to be expiated, because every sin, from Adam’s and Eve’s down to yours and mine, flows from disobedience, from a refusal to hear what God is saying and act on it. Pope Benedict wrote about this in his 2008 apostolic exhortation on the Word of God in the life and mission of the Church, Verbum Domini in a paragraph subtitled “Sin as a refusal to hear the word of God.” He wrote, “The word of God also inevitably reveals the tragic possibility that human freedom can withdraw from this covenant dialogue with God for which we were created. The divine word also discloses the sin that lurks in the human heart. Quite frequently in both the Old and in the New Testament, we find sin described as a refusal to hear the word, as a breaking of the covenant and thus as being closed to God who calls us to communion with himself. Sacred Scripture shows how man’s sin is essentially disobedience and refusal to hear.” Then he says about Jesus’ obedience: “The radical obedience of Jesus even to his death on the cross (cf. Phil 2:8) completely unmasks this sin. His obedience brings about the New Covenant between God and man, and grants us the possibility of reconciliation. Jesus was sent by the Father as a sacrifice of atonement for our sins and for those of the whole world (cf. 1 Jn 2:2; 4:10; Heb 7:27). We are thus offered the merciful possibility of redemption and the start of a new life in Christ. For this reason it is important that the faithful be taught to acknowledge that the root of sin lies in the refusal to hear the word of the Lord, and to accept in Jesus, the Word of God, the forgiveness which opens us to salvation.”

* Jesus’ whole existence is a commentary on obedience. We see a glimpse of this in the Psalm today.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Monday of the Third Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Day of Prayer for the Legal Protection of Unborn Children

Sixth Day of the Octave of Prayer for Christian Unity

Memorial of St. Marianne Cope

January 23, 2023

Heb 9:15.24-28, Ps 98, Mk 3:22-30

 

To listen to an audio recording of this homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.23.23_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today’s Gospel reading is a very timely gift to help us understand more deeply two things we bring to prayer today. It is, first, the U.S. Church’s Day of Prayer for the Legal Protection of Unborn Children, held annually on January 22, the day in 1973 in which the dreadful Roe v. Wade decision was delivered by the Supreme Court, the fiftieth anniversary of which we marked yesterday. Since this year January 22 falls on a Sunday, the U.S. Bishops moved the observance to today. The second thing we mark is the sixth day of the Octave of Prayer for Christian Unity. The Lord in today’s Gospel gives us the means to understand deeply what is at the root of the culture of death and division in the Church as well as what the prescription is in order to become a culture of life and a true communion.

* In the Gospel, we see the type of division that’s at root in a culture inspired by the one who seeks to lead us to eternal death through sin and division. The devil seeks to destroy unity and seeks to get others, consciously or unconsciously, to cooperate with him in that fragmentation and destruction. The scribes who had come from Jerusalem on foot to Galilee, witnessing Jesus’ exorcisms, couldn’t deny that the exorcisms were occurring, that possessed people were being liberated, that the demons themselves were hailing Jesus as the “Holy One of God.” They couldn’t deny the facts. But they could try to change the interpretation. And because they had already prejudged Jesus not to be the type of Messiah they were looking for — because he didn’t follow their own man-made prescriptions with regard to the Sabbath, to fasting and to other parts of the fence they drew around the Mosaic law, not to mention because he wasn’t interested in political power — they concluded that since he couldn’t be of God, then he had to be of the devil. That’s why they said that Jesus himself was “possessed by Beelzebul” and exorcised not by God’s power but by the power of the “prince of demons.” That was an absurd claim flowing ultimately from the Father of Lies, which Jesus pointed out in some brief parables that not only answer the objections but communicate something really important about the unity that’s meant to reign in his kingdom.

* “How can Satan drive out Satan?,” he said. “If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself,  that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand; that is the end of him. But no one can enter a strong man’s house to plunder his property  unless he first ties up the strong man. Then he can plunder his house.” In other words, the only way he could plunder Satan’s house (a possessed man) and drive him out of that house is if he had bound up Satan first. If a possessed man — as they were claiming Jesus to be — were battling against the prince of demons and casting demons out from those whom the demons had occupied, then Satan’s kingdom would be defeated. Underneath Jesus’ reply is a crucially important principle of unity, something that President Abraham Lincoln himself would famously cite to try to keep the United States united and the Church must never forget as it reflects on the importance...