Catholic Preaching

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Corpus Christi Church, Manhattan

Solemnity of Christ the King, Year C

November 20, 2022

2 Sm 5:1-3, Ps 122, Col 1:12-20, Lk 23:35-43

 

To listen to a recording of the homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.20.22_CCM_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* Today we celebrate with great joy the Solemnity of Christ the King. It is the last Sunday of the liturgical year and, in many ways, the culmination of everything we have marked up until now — the goal of Advent and Christmas, Lent and Easter, Pentecost and Corpus Christi and of all the Sundays and feasts throughout the year. They have all pointed toward this reality, that Christ is the King of the Universe, the Lord of all, the judge of the living and the dead. All of time, all of history, is heading toward this climax when Christ will be revealed to people of every race, nation and religion as the universal King of Kings.

* The reality of the cosmic proportions of Christ’s kingship is attested to by St. Paul in today’s reading from his Letter to the Colossians. Christ the King is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, through, for and in whom all things were created in heaven and on earth and in whom they hold together. He is the beginning, before all things, the firstborn from the dead, and the dwelling place of divine fullness. He is the one who has reconciled both heaven and earth, in whom we have redemption, who has delivered us from the power of darkness and transferred us to his kingdom. This the King we celebrate.

* But as we see in today’s Gospel, the last thing that Jesus looked like as he hung upon the Cross on Good Friday was a king. He was bathed in blood, not clothed with royal purple. He was hammered to a Cross, not seated on a throne. He was crowned with thorns, not with many crowns of gold and diadems. To ridicule him and humiliate the Jews, Pilate had ordered that an inscription in three languages be hammered above his head: “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” Rather than pay him homage, most in the crowd mocked him. The chief priests mocked him. The Roman soldiers and passers-by mocked him. Even the thieves crucified with him mocked him. And all of them derided him in the same way: “If you’re truly the king of the Jews, the Messiah, the Christ, come down from that Cross and save yourself.” Such visible force was the only demonstration of kingly power they could comprehend.

* For most Jews at the time, Jesus’ crucifixion was the proof that he was precisely notthe long-awaited Messiah-king for whom they had longed for centuries. In the first reading, we see the beginning of David’s kingship in Jerusalem. The Jews anticipated that when the Son of David finally came, he would rule in the way that his ancestor David had ruled. He would defeat all foreign powers and would be brutal to those who opposed him. When David marched into Jerusalem, right after the end of today’s first reading, the inhabitants of Jerusalem who opposed David told him that even the blind and the lame of the city were united in opposition against him and would defeat him. So when David’s men took the city, they went up and attacked even the blind and the lame. The Jews anticipated that the Messiah-King would use his power to subjugate all those who made themselves his adversaries, rather than take their abuse and die an ignominious death to save his abusers. They were totally unprepared for a king who would serve at all, not to mention serve his executions to the point of death.

* The Romans were likewise unprepared for a king like Jesus. When Pontius Pilate interrogated Jesus, he asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

St. Paul’s Chapel, Columbia University

Eucharistic Procession Fervorino

Solemnity of Christ the King

November 20, 2022

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.20.22_Fervorino_St._Paul_and_the_Eucharist_1.mp3

 

This is the text that guided the reflection:

* We are here in this beautiful chapel dedicated to St. Paul in the heart of our Columbia campus. The famous stained glass windows of John La Farge behind us feature St. Paul’s preaching in Athens in the Areopagus, right next to the Acropolis. Above is the inscription taken from St. Paul’s words there, “What you unknowingly worship, I proclaim to you.”

* We remember from Acts 17 that the Athenians had a statue dedicated to an unknown God. Underneath St. Paul’s feet, we see an inscription in Greek that says “To the unknown God.” St. Paul used that statue and inscription as a starting point to try to bring them to the God who had come that they did not yet know, to reveal to them the one in whom the live, move and have their being. Many didn’t give him the time of day, especially once he started talking about Jesus’ bodily resurrection.

* We see this drama played out out. In the center, St. Paul is preaching and the listeners are showing various degrees of attention, some are listening, some are totally indifferent. On the left, we see those who heard and became believers, like Dionysius, Damaris and others. On the right, we see skeptics, including a Greek judge.

* Today in the modern areopagus of a famous and elite secular campus, we proclaim with St. Paul Christ as the King and Lord even though many still don’t know and acknowledge him, especially in his risen body and blood in the Holy Eucharist. And we pray that some, even many, may become believers, too.

* To the Greeks, especially those in Corinth, St. Paul proclaimed the reality of Christ the King in the reality of the Eucharist.

* He asked, “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?” Christ in the Eucharist, in other words, allows us to participate in his life, his passion, his death and resurrection. Through receiving Holy Communion worthily, we become partakers of his Body, his Blood, his Soul and His Divinity. This is an awesome reality that surpasses all other earthly gifts.

* Paul also testified to the Christians in Corinth, “For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over, took bread, and, after he had given thanks, broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.” He recalled for them the Masses he celebrated among them and the words of institution he would say. The Mass is a living memorial, what the Jews called a zikkaron, a means by which an event of the past would become live in the present. And St. Paul was saying that not only is this the greatest of human gifts, to become part of Christ’s body given for us and blood poured out for us, but that as often as we celebrate Mass we proclaim the Lord’s death and resurrection until his second coming. This is the greatest way we share our faith, by proclaiming this mystery. This is what we do every Mass we celebrate. This is also what we do when we take Jesus out of the Church on procession.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY

Solemnity of Christ the King, Year C

November 20, 2022

2 Sm 5:1-3, Ps 122, Col 1:12-20, Lk 23:35-43

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.20.22_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following text guided today’s homily: 

* Today the Church celebrates with great joy the Solemnity of Christ the King. It is the last Sunday of the liturgical year and, in many ways, the culmination of everything we have marked up until now — the goal of Advent and Christmas, Lent and Easter, Pentecost and Corpus Christi and of all the Sundays and feasts throughout the year. They have all pointed toward this reality, that Christ is the King of the Universe, the Lord of all, the judge of the living and the dead. All of time, all of history, is heading toward this climax when Christ will be revealed to people of every race, nation and religion as the universal King of Kings.

* This feast is relatively very young. It was instituted only 97 years ago by Pope Pius XI during the 1925 Jubilee at the request of many bishops and faithful from around the globe in response to a militant atheism spreading at the time that was trying to repress belief in Christ and suppress Christian presence in the world. Just eight years earlier, Bolshevik communism had begun to show its evil head and were seeking to “free” the people from the “opium” of faith in God. In Mexico, there had been a revolution against the “old order” and one of the first results was anti-clerical persecution based on a similar militant atheism. Religious orders were banned. Many priests, brothers and nuns needed to flee across the border into the United States. Churches, monasteries, convents and other religious buildings were confiscated by the State. The Church needed to go underground. Catholic priests like Blessed Miguel Pro, whose feast we celebrate this Wednesday, at the risk of their lives, donned various disguises to try to bring the sacraments to those who were dying, to celebrate Mass and confessions in people’s homes, to teach the catechism to young children, to care for the many orphans the government was creating by the summary executions of parents, to attend to the needs of the poor and destitute. After Blessed Miguel was arrested and hastily brought before the firing squad, he pronounced, as the soldiers raised their rifles and took aim, his emphatic valedictory, “Viva Cristo Rey!” — “Long live Christ the King!”

* Christ the King. The last thing that Jesus seemed at the moment that Blessed Miguel was murdered was to be reigning, but in fact he was, even though it did not correspond to anyone’s idea of what a king’s reign would look like. Similarly, when Jesus inaugurated his kingdom, it had nothing to do with anyone’s expectations either. The last thing Jesus looked like as he hung upon the Cross on Good Friday was a king. He was bathed in blood, not clothed with royal purple. He was hammered to a Cross, not seated on a throne. He was crowned with many thorns, not with many crowns of gold and diadems. To ridicule him and humiliate the Jews, Pilate had ordered that an inscription in three languages be placed above his head: “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” Rather than pay him homage, most in the crowd mocked him. The chief priests mocked him. The Roman soldiers and passers-by mocked him. Even the thieves crucified with him mocked him. And all of them derided him in the same way: “If you’re truly the king of the Jews, the Messiah, the Christ, come down from that Cross and save yourself.” Such visible force was the only demonstration of kingly power they could comprehend.

* For most Jews at the time,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Solemnity of Christ the King, C, Vigil

November 19, 2022

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.19.22_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation Christ the King wants to have with each of us this Sunday as we celebrate the last Sunday of the liturgical year and, in many ways, the culmination of everything we have marked up until now — the goal of Advent and Christmas, Lent and Easter, Pentecost and Corpus Christi and of all the Sundays and feasts throughout the year. They have all pointed toward this reality, that Christ is the King of the Universe, the Lord of all, the judge of the living and the dead. All of time, all of history, is heading toward this climax when Christ will be revealed to people of every race, nation and religion as the universal King of Kings.

* This feast is relatively very young. It was instituted only 97 years ago by Pope Pius XI during the 1925 Jubilee at the request of many bishops and faithful from around the globe in response to a militant atheism that was trying to repress belief in Christ and suppress Christian presence in the world. Just eight years earlier, Bolshevik communism had begun to show its evil head and was seeking to “free” the people from the “opium” of faith in God. In Mexico, there had been a revolution against the “old order” and one of the first results was anti-clerical persecution based on a similar militant atheism. The Church needed to go underground. Catholic priests like Blessed Miguel Pro, whose feast we will celebrate on Wednesday, risked their lives and donned various disguises to try to bring the sacraments to those in need. After Blessed Miguel was arrested and hastily brought before the firing squad, he pronounced, as the soldiers raised their rifles and took aim, his emphatic valedictory, “Viva Cristo Rey!” — “Long live Christ the King!”

* Christ the King. The last thing that Jesus seemed at the moment that Blessed Miguel was murdered was to be reigning, but in fact he was, even though it did not correspond to anyone’s idea of what a king’s reign would look like. Similarly, when Jesus inaugurated his kingdom, it had nothing to do with anyone’s expectations either. The last thing Jesus looked like as he hung upon the Cross on Good Friday was a king. He was bathed in blood, not clothed with royal purple. He was hammered to a Cross, not seated on a throne. He was crowned with thorns, not with gold and diadems. To ridicule him and humiliate the Jews, Pilate had ordered that an inscription in three languages be placed above his head: “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” Rather than pay him homage, most in the crowd mocked him. The chief priests mocked him. The Roman soldiers and passers-by mocked him. Even the thieves crucified with him mocked him. And they all derided him in the same way: “If you’re truly the king of the Jews, the Messiah, the Christ, come down from that Cross and save yourself.” Such visible force was the only demonstration of kingly power they could comprehend. And a crucifixion would be proof that he was precisely notthe long-awaited Messiah-king for whom they had been waiting for centuries. The Jews anticipated that when the Son of David came, he would rule in the way that his ancestor David had ruled. He would use his power to subjugate all those who made themselves his adversaries, not take their abuse and die a horrible death to save his abusers.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Friday of the 33rd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Rose Philippine Duchesne

November 18, 2022

Rev 10:8-11, Ps 119, Lk 19:45-48

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.18.22_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted during the homily: 

* Today, as we prepare for the Solemnity of Christ the King, we see in the Gospel how the King wants to get us ready. First he wants to purify us, something we see in his cleansing of the Temple. Second, he wants to fill us with everything we need so that we can become a temple, a “house of prayer,” a dwelling place for God, by helping us to hang on his word, to devour it, so that we can become living commentaries of it. In the couplet of the Our Father Jesus taught us, we pray successively “Thy kingdom come!” and “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” To enter into the Kingdom of Christ the King, we must do God’s will, we must live his word, and that’s what the liturgy of the Word emphasizes for us today.

* The Jesus in today’s Gospel is one with whom many, especially today, are unfamiliar. The same Jesus whom Isaiah prophesied would “not break a bruised reed nor quench a smoldering wick” (Is 42:3), the same Jesus whom the psalms would call “kind and merciful” (Ps 145:8) the same Jesus who called himself “meek and humble of heart” (Mt 11:29) started to overturn tables, tossing money on the floor, and making a whip of cords to drive the sheep and the cattle out of the temple. And there is no contradiction between the image of Jesus as the kind, merciful friend of sinners and Jesus as consumed with zeal for his Father’s house, because out of love for sinners and his Father, he really hated sin that can kill sinners and self-alienate them from God. Jesus’ mercy does not baptize our sin and indulgence, but rather seeks to eradicate it. The word St. Luke uses to describe how Jesus “drove out” the animals is ekballein, the same verb used when he did exorcisms. Jesus wants to exorcise whatever in us is not fit for  God. The Temple in Jerusalem, built in order to be the dwelling place of God on earth, constructed to be a place of encountering God in prayer, had become something very different by Jesus’ time. It wasn’t so much the fact that animals were being sold and money exchanged in the temple precincts that bothered Jesus. It was two things associated with this selling of animals and exchanging money: The first was that the moneychangers and animal sellers were drastically overcharging the people. The temple had become a “den of thieves.” When people came to the temple, they needed to sacrifice an animal to God, the size and value of the animal being determined by their personal means and the type of sacrifice being made. Rather than carry an animal with them for the many miles’ uphill walk to the temple — which was too much of a burden — most would buy one at the temple. But because there was such a demand, especially at the time of the Passover, the merchants had the market to charge the people who needed the animals whatever they wanted. Others who would try to save money by bringing an animal of their own often had to get the animals inspected by Temple officials who needed to verify that the animals were unblemished, as the Mosaic law stipulated. These inspectors often were on the take of the animal sellers to find blemishes that weren’t there and disqualify the affected animals. The poor who had saved their money over the course of the whole year for the trip to the temple, therefore, one way or the other, had to pay these enormous prices. While they were there, they also had to pay a temple tax,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Thursday of the 33rd Week of Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Elizabeth of Hungary

November 17, 2022

Rev 5:1-10, Ps 149, Lk 19:41-44

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.17.22_Homily.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today, as we draw closer to the Solemnity of Christ the King on Sunday, we have a scene in the Gospel that seems incongruous to the proclamation of Jesus King of the Universe: Jesus, the King of King and Lord of Lords, is weeping. Understanding his tears and responding with what alone will help turn his tears into joy is the point of the Christian life and the best means by which we will not only celebrate appropriately this upcoming feast but learn to live in his kingdom so that we may celebrate the reality of his kingdom eternally.

* We begin with Jesus’ tears. As he drew near Jerusalem, Jesus saw the city and wept over it. There’s a Church on the Mount of Olives overlooking the city called Dominus Flevit, “The Lord wept,” built on the spot traditionally where we believe this scene happened and where Christians are able to ponder the Lord’s tears. When I was there a few of years ago with a big pilgrimage group it was pouring outside, a meteorological event that movingly allowed us to ponder the immensity of the Lord’s weeping. St. Luke tells us why Jesus was weeping. “If this day you only knew what makes for peace,” Jesus lamented, “but now it is hidden from your eyes. For the days are coming upon you when your enemies will raise a palisade against you; they will encircle you and hem you in on all sides. They will smash you to the ground and your children within you, and they will not leave one stone upon another within you, because you did not recognize the time of your visitation.” Jesus was weeping because the inhabitants of Jerusalem, which in Hebrew means “City of Peace,” didn’t know what makes for peace. He was weeping because the city and its inhabitants would be destroyed. He was weeping because all of this would happen because they didn’t recognize the time of their “visitation.” In Catholic life, there’s a difference between a visit and a visitation. Anybody can pay a visit, but a visitation is something much longer. It’s a time when a diocese, a parish, a religious order, or some charity receives a visitator, when it submits to an evaluation, where it is commended for what it is doing well and corrected for what it needs to change. It’s a time, in short, when the Visitator helps the whole entity to take a good look at itself and where it’s going. In the incarnation God did not just “visit” his people but came for a “visitation.” The Prince of Peace has come to establish the definitive peace treaty between God and man, to help people see where they are in terms of peace with God and with each other. The inhabitants of Jerusalem, however, representing the vast majority of Jews, hadn’t embraced Jesus and the path to divine peace he had come to leave us and give us, as he would say during the Last Supper. Had they embraced the life he was announcing, had they grasped the type of kingdom he was inaugurating, the political tensions that had led to Rome’s destroying Jerusalem in 70 AD, Jesus was prophesying by implication, likely wouldn’t have come about. And Jesus was weeping over all of these realities.

* It’s important for us to grasp that Jesus was not weeping over ancient Rome. He wasn’t weeping over modern day Amsterdam, Las Vegas, or San Francisco. He wasn’t weeping over the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or suffering cities in Ukraine, Venezuela, China, North Korea, Ethiopia, or Armenia .

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Wednesday of the 33rd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Gertrude the Great and St. Margaret of Scotland

November 16, 2022

Rev 4:1-11, Ps 150, Lk 19:11-28

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.16.22_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today in the Gospel we have the Parable of the Coins (on Minas), which is similar to that of the more famous Parable of the Talents we read in St. Matthew’s Gospel. The main difference between the two is in this Parable, everyone gets the same investment on the part of the Lord. One servant multiplies the gold coin by 10, another by 5, seven we don’t know about, and the tenth buries it. Whereas with the Parable of the Talents, we can often focus on how many talents we have relative to others “each according to his ability,” today’s Parable has us focus on the fact that the greatest gifts we’ve received, we have to a large degree received equally with others: the gift of our life, the gift of time, the gift of redemption, the gift of God’s word, the gift of the Sacraments, the gift of prayer, the gift of so many opportunities for charity. How are we investing these? Are we bearing great dividends from them? How are we planning to invest the gift of this day for loving God and others? We all know that there are some people who really profit from these common gifts and others who place them in handkerchiefs. Most of us would give the Lord somewhere between numbers 1 and 10. But the Lord wants to teach us how to bear great dividends.

* Before we move on, let’s first handle a couple of things for the setting of the Parable. The first is about life in general. Jesus told the people the Parable “because he was near Jerusalem and they thought that the Kingdom of God would appear there immediately.” The Parable of the Coins was given to help people know why the Kingdom of God wasn’t going to appear immediately, or, rather, how the Kingdom among them, as it awaits fulfillment, is a place in which people are advancing or growing the kingdom by investing the King’s gifts. How important this point is for us to grasp: that the time we have is a time of investing for the Kingdom. The second introductory point concerns the setting of the story, which involves history known very well to Jesus’ listeners but not to people today. Jesus was taking advantage of the well-known story of how after King Herod the Great’s death — the Herod who sought to kill him as an infant — Herod’s kingdom was divided into three parts, but each needed to go to Rome to be confirmed by the emperor in the kingship. The king of Judah, Herod Archelaus, went to Rome but the people sent a delegation saying that they didn’t want him as king. The emperor confirmed him without the title king — he named him tetrarch — and upon the return, Archelaus executed those who didn’t want him to be king. In this month of November, in which we meditate on death and judgment, there’s a spiritual equivalent for those who don’t want to accept God as King. He doesn’t punish or slay them because in a sense he doesn’t have to: they’re already spiritually dead because they’re not drawing their life from him.

* Let’s get into the heart of the Parable and what Jesus is teaching. Jesus gives each of the ten servants a treasure of a gold coin. The coin is actually a mina, which is one-sixtieth of a Talent. Since a talent was 6,000 days wages, a Mina is 100 days wages or a third of a year’s salary. For someone making $30,000 a year about $10,000: not an enormous sum but substantial enough. Those entrusted by the King with this Mina make different yields:  the fir...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Tuesday of the 33rd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Albert the Great, Bishop and Doctor

November 15, 2022

Rev 3:1-6.14-22; Ps 15, Lk 19:1-10

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.15.22_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today in the readings, we are able to focus on the heart of Jesus’ interactions with us, the meaning of the incarnation, of his public ministry, of his passion, death, resurrection and beyond.  It can be summed up by two phrases at the end of the Gospel and first reading respectively: “The Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was lost” and “I stand at the door and knock.” Those words of Jesus at the end of his interaction with Zacchaeus and the crowds and after his address to the Seven Churches of the Asian diaspora help us to grasp God’s great desire to save us in his mercy. He knocks, he invites, he wants to sit us on his throne and share with us the victory of his triumph over sin and death. Let’s enter into these readings and learn the lessons God wants us to capture.

* The Lord’s merciful desire to save was on full display in the Gospel with Zacchaeus. His love for sinners was so profound that he literally went to the deepest place on earth in search of perhaps the greatest public sinner of that city, to reconcile him to the Father. Jesus went to Jericho, the lowest city on the planet — 853 feet below sea level — to find Zacchaeus, who was not just one of a bunch of tax-collectors loathsome to the Jewish authorities, but the chief tax collector of the region, which was the equivalent of the don of the mafia. He conspired with the Romans to rip off his own fellow Jews through the crooked Roman tax system. Jesus had promised that he, the Good Shepherd, would leave the ninety-nine sheep in his fold to search out and save one lost sheep, and this is what he did, leaving the crowds behind and entering alone with Zacchaeus into his home and into his life. He called Zacchaeus, his lost sheep, by name and heaven rejoiced on that day more for him than for all the others. So, too, today and everyday, Jesus takes the initiative of knocking at the door of our souls, asking for entry, coming to us wherever we are, no matter the depths to which we’ve sunk, no matter the fact that perhaps everyone else around us might despise us. Jesus never abandons us. To the extent that we repent of whatever sins we’ve committed and accept Jesus’ gracious invitation by “welcoming him with delight,” we, too, like Zacchaeus, can have salvation come to us.

* The diminutive Zacchaeus’ climbing of the tree, moreover, is more than merely an interesting detail. The text tells us that he was trying to see Jesus, but couldn’t because of the crowd, so he ran ahead and climbed a tree along Jesus’ route in order to be able to see him. We, too, often cannot see the Lord because other people get in the way. They block our sight in various ways. We’re often too small of stature to see over such obstacles, and, unfortunately, too often others are too selfish, distracted, sinful, judgmental or out-of-it, to do anything to help us and bring us into the presence of the Lord. Like a little child, however, Zacchaeus climbs a tree to see the Lord. Such an act could have led to great mockery for a middle-aged public figure. But Zacchaeus didn’t care. He wanted to see the Lord and no obstacle was going to stop him. His example challenges each of us to consider the extent to which we go, the trees or obstacles we’ll climb, in order to see Jesus more clearly. In our prayer, we regularly “leave the ground,” separating ourselves from the crowds,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Monday of the 33rd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Votive Mass for the Faithful Departed

November 14, 2022

Rev 1:1-4.2:1-5, Ps 1, Lk 18:35-43

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.14.22_homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in today’s homily: 

* On Saturday Jesus gave us the parable of the importune woman bothering the unjust judge in order to convey to us the necessity of “praying always without losing heart.” Immediately thereafter is the Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican — which the Church doesn’t give us to ponder today probably because we meditate upon it on Saturday of third week of Lent each year — which shows us of the importance of humbly begging the Lord for mercy. Today we encounter the living illustration of what Jesus was teaching about persevering, faithful, humble prayer for mercy in the blind man by the side of the road whom St. Mark in his version of the same scene identifies as Bartimaeus.

* As rabbis were accustomed to do on their three-times-per-year pilgrimages to Jerusalem for the major feasts, Jesus was teaching the crowds along the journey. Bartimaeus was sitting by the roadside begging. He heard the commotion of the crowd and asked what was happening. Upon hearing that “Jesus of Nazareth was passing by,” he immediately began to cry out, “Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me!” He had doubtless heard of Jesus’ reputation for working miracles in Galilee to the north and was responding in faith. The fact that he called him “Son of David” was a sign he believed Jesus was the Messiah. But his cries for Jesus were annoying those who were trying to hear Jesus’ teaching. So the first people in the group rebuked him and told him to shut his trap. But that only led him to cry out all the more, “Son of David, have pity on me!” The word St. Luke uses means basically an animal cry, something coming deep from his woundedness.

* Jesus stopped and ordered that Bartimaeus be brought to him. For Jesus, caring for this man was more important than whatever else he was teaching at that moment. Likely, it was also a “coincidental” opportunity for him put flesh on his parables by showing how God responds to persistent, faithful, humble prayer for compassion. Jesus asked Bartimaeus, “What do you want me to do for you?,” and Bartimaeus said, “Lord, please let me see!” To some degree, Bartimaeus was already seeing by faith but he wanted to see Jesus with physical eyes so that he would be able to do exactly what he did once cured, to “follow him, giving glory to God.” He saw something with inner eyes, but was asking to see more. Jesus replied, “Have sight; your faith has saved you.”

* This cry of Bartimaeus is one of the most beautiful and frequent Christian aspirations: Domine, ut videam!, “Lord, I want to see.” It’s a beautiful response to Jesus’ perennial question to us in prayer, “What do you want me to do for you?” If Jesus were to ask many of us that question, many might waste his attention on lesser things, asking for him to return us to the shape we were in at 21, or to resolve a particular issue, or other relatively small stuff. Every day, however, we should ask the Lord for the gift to see, for the grace to see what we don’t see, to see things as they really are, the way he sees them. We should beseech the grace to see him and to see ourselves aright. We should ask for the grace to recognize him in the Holy Eucharist, in Confession, in prayer, in others, in the various events of the day, and especially in the beatific vision. He won’t allow us to see everything, because then we wouldn’t have the grace to live by faith, believing in things unseen,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Thirty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

World Day of the Poor

November 13, 2022

Mal 3:19-20, Ps 98, 2 Thes 3:7-12, Lk 21:5-19

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.13.22_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* During the month of November, the Church leads us in a meditation on the Last Things. This is always helpful for Catholics no matter what their stage in life, but it’s particularly helpful for young Catholics who can sometimes be tempted to defer pondering death, judgment, heaven and hell out of a lack of urgency, assuming that they will have seven or eight decades before they must. Today, however, the prophet Malachi describes that the day of the Lord will come suddenly, blazing like an oven scorching proud evil doers but rising like a sun of justice with healing rays on those who fear God’s name. In the Gospel, that long awaited Sun of Justice, Jesus himself, gives far more details about the end times. He describes how the temple of God will be attacked, how there will be imposters claiming to be speaking for God and asking us to follow them, how there will be wars, insurrections, earthquakes, famines, plagues, persecutions, hatred, betrayals by family members and friends, and how even some of his followers will be put to death. It’s a harrowing account demonstrating, essentially, that the foundations on which we’re often tempted to place our stability and security — from physical health, to food and drink, property, family, governments, religious practices and edifices — will be shaken and collapse. The only thing left will be the only true and secure foundation, the one on which we should be constructing our life now, God himself.

* The immediate reaction of Jesus’ listeners was to ask, “Master, when will this happen?,” presumably so that they could be prepared. Jesus didn’t answer their question directly, because he wanted them to act on the information right away. If he had given a date weeks, decades, centuries or millennia later, the temptation would have been just to go on with life as normal. But Jesus had come to establish a totally new normal: a norm of faith, a norm of vigilant waiting, a norm of full-time Christian behavior. He wanted the day of the Lord to be a perpetual state, so that each day would be the Lord’s day, a day in which we could exclaim, “This is the day the Lord has made!” And the signs of the day of the Lord Jesus gave us help us to maintain this awareness, because they are in fact events we see in the newspaper almost every day: destruction, natural disasters, wars, famines, illness, betrayals, attacks on the Church, and the persecution and killing of Christians.

* Instead Jesus gave them three ways to respond to what he was saying.

* The first was, “See that you not be deceived!” and described that many would come, supposedly in his name, to try to exploit the situation. “Do not follow them!,” Jesus tells us emphatically. In every age there are many false prophets and Jesus tells us to be on guard against them. Pope Francis called the attention of the whole Church to this in his homily this morning in St. Peter’s Basilica, when he said Jesus is warning us to be on guard against “interpret[ing] dramatic events in a superstitious or catastrophic way. … If we think in this way, we let ourselves be guided by fear, and we may end up looking for answers with morbid curiosity in the ever-present chicanery of magic or horoscopes … as if they were the voice of God … [or] rely[ing] on some last-minute ‘messiah’ who peddles wild theories, usually conspiratorial and full of doom and gloom.” Jesus,