Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Wednesday of the 22nd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

August 31, 2022

1 Cor 3:1-9, Ps 33, Lk 4:38-44

 

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

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The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* St. Paul in today’s first reading points to the type of spiritual growth he was seeking to help catalyze among the Christians in Corinth, something that indicates the spiritual growth God would like to see in all of us. He began by saying that when he was first evangelizing them, he needed to care for them spiritually the way parents care for newborns because they were still living according to the ways of the world rather than according to the Holy Spirit. “I could not talk to you as spiritual people but as fleshly people, as infants in Christ. I fed you milk, not solid food, because you were unable to take it.” So he went slowly. We always pass the faith on according to the capacity of people to understand. When we catechize young children, we don’t give them a copy of the adult Catechism of the Catholic Church. We speak to them very simply about God, about prayer, about charity, about the Bible, about the Sacraments. We “breast feed” them, digesting the truths of the faith and passing these truths on to them in ways they can assimilate. Of course we don’t want them to stay there. Just like a little child passes from milk to Gerber’s to normal food for children to more healthy food and a richer cuisine for growing children and adults, so a similar passage is meant to happen in us spiritually. And St. Paul was saying that that’s what was not happening among the Corinthians. “Indeed you are still not able [to take solid food], even now, because you are still of the flesh.” They were living according to their earthly, fleshy desires, instead of living according to the Spirit. He then says why: “There is jealousy and rivalry among you.” Such things are not manifestations of a life according to God. We’re called to look at each other as brothers and sisters, not as competition, and we’re supposed to be happy to see them grow and thrive, not jealous. When we’re living by the Spirit, we love each other rather than resent each other and we seek communion rather than harbor division.

* St. Paul gets specific about the envy and contention that was dividing the community: Some were saying “I belong to Paul” and others “I belong to Apollos” and later, as we’ll see, “I belong to Cephas” (Peter). St. Paul is clear that that’s the talk and behavior of spiritual infants, siding according to their preferences with “ministers through whom [they] became believers” instead of with the Lord who sent them to them and who caused the growth. They were focusing on earthly likes and dislikes rather than on God, and St. Paul wanted to provoke them by his strong language to grow up. There are many similar issues of living according to the flesh in a childish (rather than childlike) way that afflict the Christians of today. In an age of spiritual consumerism, people are led to focus more on their personal preferences rather than God when it comes to which Church they attend, which music is their favorite, which pew they want to sit in and more. Many pick and choose among popes, or bishops, or priests, or Church councils, rather than receive with gratitude and follow all the Lord sends. People define themselves less with the Lord than with the instruments of the Lord who most meet their tastes. They define themselves too much with the adjectives they put to their “Catholicism,” normally taken from political categories, rather than with the faith that transcends any constricting label.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Tuesday of the 22nd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

August 30, 2022

1 Cor 2:10-16, Ps 145, Lk 4:31-37

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/8.30.22_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today we meet Jesus teaching in a synagogue. After he was booted and almost killed from the Synagogue in Nazareth where he grew up — which we would have heard yesterday, if we didn’t have the proper Gospel for the Passion of St. John the Baptist — Jesus went to Capernaum, on the Sea of Galilee, where Peter, Andrew, James and John all lived and worked. In Nazareth when he taught, St. Luke tells us all were initially “amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth,” but eventually doubts entered because they thought they knew him and those doubts quickly passed to rage and homicidal intentions.  Today in Capernaum, St. Luke says that those in the Synagogue “were astonished at his teaching because he spoke with authority” and later, after he had rebuked a demon, they were “all amazed and said to one another, ‘What is there about his word? For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits and they come out!”

* One of the most important aspects of our Christian response in faith is to be amazed and astonished at Jesus and at his words. This astonishment is an experience most of us, I hope, had when we first started living by faith, when our parents read to us from the Bible or from Bible stories and told us that the Bible contains the words of God himself; when we first began to pray and we recognized that God was listening to us with love; when we first discovered that the Eucharist is God and comes down from heaven on the altar, and dwells within the tabernacle, or loves us from the monstrance; when we first started to hear about Jesus’ great miracles, his multiplication of the loaves and fish, his walking on water, his casting out the devil like he does in today’s Gospel, his healing the sick, and his rising from the dead. This is an amazement and astonishment that likewise would have enveloped us at the time of our becoming aware of God’s calling us to follow him in a special way as his disciples on the road to holiness. But we are vulnerable and prone to losing that amazement and astonishment. The things of God can start to become routine. We can cease to view with amazement the fact that God has spoken to us in Sacred Scripture, that he listens to us in prayer, that he awaits us with love in the Eucharist wanting to nourish us with the only nourishment worthy of our souls, that he thirsts to forgive us in the Sacrament of his Mercy, that he is risen and alive and seeks to walk with us throughout each day, that he can continue to work great miracles if we approach him with faith and it really is in alignment with what’s best. We can begin to take things for granted, to “domesticate” Jesus, and lose our awe. It’s one of the saddest things that can happen in the life of faith. Real faith always brings with it this childlike astonishment and amazement before God and what God has done and is doing. It’s important for us all to ask the Lord for the gift never to lose this holy awe and to help us grow in it each day. How can God, who never gives us stones when we ask for loaves of bread, refuse such a humble, filial prayer?

* There’s a particular type of awe that we’re called to ponder in today’s Gospel. It’s astonishment at Jesus’ teaching, at the power of his word. St. Luke tells us that the people in the Capernaum synagogue were amazed because “he spoke with authority.” Most of their rabbis — as well as the Scribes,

Fr Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Memorial of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist

August 29, 2022

1 Cor 2:1-5, Ps 119, Mk 6:17-29

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/8.29.22_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today, as I begin my service as Catholic chaplain here at Columbia, we have the chance to focus on St. John the Baptist, St. Paul and the one they proclaimed: Jesus. In the Gospel, we see the final way by which St. John the Baptist made straight the paths of the Lord. He had been his precursor in birth, making a joy-filled in utero proclamation of Christ’s presence. He was his forerunner in preaching the message of conversion, with the Word-made-flesh himself eventually echoing what the “Voice of One crying out in the wilderness” was crying out: repent, change your ways, have a revolution in your conduct. He was his predecessor in the work of baptizing, showing in a non-sacramental anticipation what Christ himself would sacramentally institute, do and send his Church to continue to do to the ends of the earth and the end of time. And today we mark how he was his precursor in imprisonment, death and in a vague sense his resurrection, with Herod saying of Jesus the very words that the angels at the tomb would say, “He has been raised from the dead,” applying them to Jesus whom he viewed in the paranoia coming from a guilty conscience as John the Baptist redivivus. Tertullian said that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of future Christians, and the blood of this protomartyr was what prepared the way for Christ’s own martyrdom and the martyrdom of St. Stephen, the apostles, and so many others after Christ. Christ himself made that link after the Transfiguration, when Peter, James and John asked him about whether Elijah whom they had just seen speaking to Jesus would precede Jesus as the Messiah. Jesus replied, “I tell you that Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him but did to him whatever they pleased. So also will the Son of Man suffer at their hands” (Mt 17:12).

* So we need to look at John the Baptist’s martyrdom in a Christological key. On the one hand John’s beheading seems like a sickening tragedy. But it contains within a power and a wisdom, as St. Paul told us on Friday, and continues today in the first reading. Like St. Paul, St. John the Baptist didn’t come “with sublimity of words or [worldly] wisdom,” because he likewise knew only “Christ crucified,” foreshadowed in John’s seeing Jesus as the “Lamb of God who had come to take away the sins of the world,” something that would be culminated on Calvary at the Crucifixion. John’s work was to prepare everyone for the sin-saving mercy of God. He even allowed himself to become a martyr in the call to conversion so that Herod and Herodias might open themselves up to receive the merciful love that Lamb would be crucified to give. The martyrdom of the Friend of the Bridegroom happened because he pointed out the truth about Herod and Herodias’ putative marriage: John was trying to prepare even Herod and Herodias through conversion for the real love they were seeking down a dead end: to marry the true Bridegroom. What John preached by his suffering and death was a foretelling of what Jesus himself would do out of love for the Bride.

* John had reminded Herod Antipas that it was not lawful for him to marry his brother Philip’s wife. The book of Leviticus had said clearly, “You shall not have intercourse with your brother’s wife, for that would be a disgrace to your brother” (Lev 18:16). Herod Antipas had gone to Rome to visit his brother and while there seduced his sister-in-law, persuaded her to leave his brother,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY

Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

August 28, 2022

Sir 3:17-18.20.28-29, Ps 68, Heb 12:18-19.22-24, Lk 14:1.7-14

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/8.28.22_Homily_1.mp3

 

The text that guided today’s homily was: 

* In Jesus’s parable in today’s Gospel, the Lord is doing far more than giving his disciples — those 2000 years ago and us today — advice on how to achieve the best seats at a wedding reception. As valid and applicable as that counsel is for human situations, Jesus’ real point was to teach us how to be exalted at the eternal wedding banquet to which the Host, his Father, has invited “the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind.” In order for us to hear those words from God the Father, “Friend, move up higher,” which is the deepest longing that exists in the human heart, for definitive happiness and holiness in heaven, Jesus says that there is only one way: we must recognize that we’re poor in need of the Lord’s true riches, crippled in need of the Lord’s help to straight ourselves out, lame desperate for the Lord’s grace to walk by faith, and blind crying out for the light of faith to see things clearly. We must, in short, humble ourselves, for it is only the humble who will be so exalted.

* These are very hard and challenging words in our culture, which so much prizes human exaltation. We see it in the ever-growing number of award shows indulging the egos of those in film, television and music, as they give out awards for best actors, actresses, directors, producers, graphic artists, costume designers, film editors, hairstylists, production designers, sound mixers, screen play writers, you name it. We see it in the honors we give to the students who are “Most Popular” and “Most Likely to Succeed,” to the “Best Looking” women in beauty pageants, to the “Most Successful” sales representatives, to the “Most Valuable Player” in sports leagues, and even to the “best groomed” dogs. So many of us have been raised with the desire not only to be the best, but to be acknowledged as the best, and if we recognize begrudgingly that we’re not the best, we at least want to be betterthan those with whom we come into contact. We want to get our own way, rather than conceding to the wishes of another. We want to get the last word, rather than concede it to someone else. We want to be the ones noticed and thanked, and resent it if others get the credit we think we deserve. In short, we hunger to be noticed, esteemed, and exalted. We want the places of honor at table, first class seats on airplanes and front row seats at concerts. We long for positions of power and influence and titles of status and worldly honor.

* To all of us in this culture, Jesus says to us in the words of today’s Alleluia verse, “Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart” (Mt 11:29). Jesus’ whole life is a lesson in humility and he turns to each of us and says, “Follow me!”

* St. Paul described Jesus’ humility best in his letter to the Philippians, grounding our humility on the unbelievable humility of the Son of God: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death — even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Twenty-Second Sunday of Ordinary Time, C, Vigil

August 27, 2022

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/8.27.22_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 the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday as Jesus, by means of a parable on seats at a dinner gathering, teaches us about the humility necessary to come to the eternal wedding banquet.

* The parable flatly contradicts the way many in the world, including sometimes many of us Christians, behave. We see it in the ever-growing number of award shows indulging the egos of those in film, television and music, as they give out awards for best actors, actresses, directors, producers, graphic artists, costume designers, film editors, hairstylists, production designers, sound mixers, screen play writers, you name it. We see it in the honors we give to the students who are “Most Popular” and “Most Likely to Succeed,” to the “Best Looking” women in beauty pageants, to the “Most Successful” sales representatives, to the “Most Valuable Player” in sports leagues, and even to the “best groomed” dogs. So many of us have been raised with the desire not only to be the best, but to be acknowledgedas the best, and if we recognize begrudgingly that we’re not the best, we at least want to be better than those with whom we come into contact. We want to get our own way, rather than conceding to the wishes of another. We want to get the last word, rather than concede it to someone else. We want to be the ones noticed and thanked, and resent it if others get the credit we think we deserve. In short, we hunger to be noticed, esteemed, and exalted. We want the places of honor at table, first class seats on airplanes and front row seats at concerts. We long for positions of power and influence and titles of status and worldly honor.

* Jesus, however, calls us to a different standard, a higher standard that is at the same time, paradoxically, a lower one. He tell us in this Sunday’s Gospel, “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” He who elsewhere in the Gospel told us, “Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart”(Mt 11:29), whose whole life was a lesson in humility, wants to help us learn from him how to serve rather than to be served, to seek the lowest place rather than the highest, to treasure God’s esteem rather than others’ adulation so that God may say to us, in this world and the next, the words of the host in this Sunday’s Gospel: “My friend, come up higher!” The way to be exalted at Jesus’ right side forever is humbly to serve at Jesus’ side here on earth, and to follow him not just in seeking the lowest places at table but in getting up from the table like he did at the Last Supper, picking up the basin and towel to wash others’ feet, and serving them in such self-effacing ways.

* To become meek and humble of heart like Jesus, especially in a proud and self-exalting age, is obviously easier said than done. We must first know what humility is and then know and choose the means by which we can grow in humility.

* Let’s begin with what humility means. Humility comes from the Latin word, humus, which means ground or dirt. It has various connected spiritual meanings. It means, first, that we have both of our feet on the ground, that we have a deep sense of who we are. As we hear every year on Ash Wednesday, we recognize we’re dust and unto dust we shall ret...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Chapel of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY

Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

August 21, 2022

Is 66:18-21, Ps 117, Heb 12:5-7.11-13, Lk 13:22-30

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/8.21.22_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* In today’s first reading, God through the Prophet Isaiah — much like God would similarly say through Daniel, Jeremiah and Ezekiel — announced that salvation was not merely for the Jews but for everyone. “Thus says the Lord,” Isaiah enunciates: “I come to gather nations of every language; they shall come and see my glory.” He says he will send missionaries, “fugitives,” to “Tarshish, Put and Lud, Mosoch, Tubal and Javan,” in other words to Spain, North Africa, Southern Turkey and Greece, “to the distant coastlands that have never heard of my fame or seen my glory and they shall proclaim my glory among all the nations.” He continues, “all your brothers and sisters from all the nations” will become an “offering to the Lord.” It’s a powerful message of hope and God’s will, as St. Paul would write to St. Timothy, that “all be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim 2:4). God wills all to be saved. God wants all the nations to praise him, all peoples to glorify him, like we prayed in the Psalm. As we heard in the Gospel, he wants those “from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south” to recline at table in the Kingdom alongside Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and all the prophets. As we live this Octave between the Solemnity of the Assumption body and soul on Monday and the Coronation of our Lady tomorrow as Queen of heaven and earth, we can’t help but focus on heaven and how God wants to gather all nations of every language, all our brothers and sisters, body and soul, together with Mary, the patriarch, prophets and saints, to come and see his glory forever and offer themselves to him with unceasing love.

* In response to this universal saving plan of God, each of us is called to say, “Thy will be done!,” to order our life and our choices to this mind-blowing summons, to receive the gift and respond with faith. In the Gospel today, Jesus speaks about the response. In other parts of the Gospel, including in passages we’ve heard this week at daily Mass, Jesus sends out his “fugitives” to invite people to his eternal banquet, but many make excuses about other things, seemingly more urgent and important, they have to do, whether taking care of their businesses or animals or prioritizing human relationships. In Jesus’ words today, he helps us to become more mature and intentional in how we respond to the incredible offer he gives.

* Jesus is heading up to Jerusalem teaching the multitudes along the way. A person from the crowd asks him how many actually make it to heaven. “Lord, will only a few be saved?,” the person inquires. It seemed to be a question flowing from curiosity. How many from Tarshish, Put and Lud, Mosoch, Tubal and Javan? How many from the Bronx, from Washington, Chicago and LA? How many from India, China, Russia, Italy, Argentina, Yemen and Papua New Guinea? Jesus did not come down from heaven, however, to satisfy our curiosity. He came actually to save us and so he responded not by stating how many will be saved, but how that interlocutor and all or any will be saved: “Strive to enter through the narrow gate.” A similar thing happened at another time when the disciples asked the Lord about the timing of the end of the world. “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” (Mt 24:3). Jesus replied not by supplying information they could put into their calendars,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Diocese of Albany Step Up Men’s Conference

Shrine of Our Lady of the Martyrs, Auriesville, New York

August 20, 2022

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/8.20.22_Auriesville_Courage_1.mp3

 

To download a PDF of the notes that guided the talk, please click below: 

Imitating the Manly Faith and Courage of the North American Martyrs

 

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Twenty-First Sunday of Ordinary Time, C, Vigil

August 20, 2022

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/8.20.22_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

 

The text that guided the homily was: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday, when Jesus will speak to us about the path to eternal life. On Monday, as you remember, we celebrated the solemnity of Mary’s Assumption, body and soul, into heaven. The Son of God came into the world so that each of us might spend eternity, body in soul, in heaven alongside her. In this Sunday’s Gospel, as Jesus is heading up to Jerusalem teaching the multitudes along the way, a person from the crowd asks him how many actually make it to heaven. Jesus’ response is as relevant to us today as it was to his auditors 2000 years ago.

* “Lord, will only a few be saved?,” the person inquires. It seemed to be a question flowing from curiosity. Jesus did not come down from heaven, however, to satisfy our curiosity. He came to save us and responded not by stating how many will be saved, but how that interlocutor and others will be saved: “Strive to enter through the narrow gate.” A similar thing happened at another time, when the disciples asked the Lord about the timing of the end of the world. “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” (Mt 24:3). Jesus replied not by supplying information they could put into their calendars, but by telling them how to be ready no matter when it occurred. In both cases, Jesus was not being evasive; rather he went beyond trivia to what is most important: making us aware of what we need to know and to do in order to experience the salvation he won for us.

* We can say, almost as an aside, that many in our world would do well to pay attention to what Jesus does not answer in the Gospel. Jesus’ failure to answer the question about the number of those to be saved shows the absurdity of groups, like the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who want to claim that they know the exact amount of people who are saved (144,000, taking literally a symbolic number used in Rev 14:1). It also shows the absurdity of many of those who found storefront churches and claim that they know for certain when the end of the world will be. Not only does Jesus not give us or them that information, but Jesus said in the Gospel that not even he knew when that would occur — only His Father knows (cf. Matt. 24:36 ).

* Even more than paying attention to what Jesus, in his answer, does not say, we must pay attention to what he does: “Strive to enter through the narrow gate.” This word, “strive,” in Greek is the same word we have for “agonize” and it’s used in a tense that means “keep on agonizing.” It points to the type of struggle and suffering Jesus says it will take to enter into his kingdom. To be saved, to enter the Kingdom, to get to Heaven, in other words, we need continuously to agonize, like Jesus did in the Garden of Gethsemane, to conform our will to the Father’s. We need to go into agony, to make the greatest, possibly most painful exertion of our life, to fit through a gate that is “narrow.” We need to work harder than an undrafted free agent gives everything he’s got in training camp to make the cut, harder than gymnast works to make the Olympics and win the gold, harder than an immigrant father of large family works to ensure his family’s survival. The width of the narrow door to Heaven is the span of a needle’s e...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Twentieth Sunday of Ordinary Time, C, Vigil

August 13, 2022

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/8.13.22_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 the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday as Jesus tells us emphatically in the Gospel why he left heaven, became man, lived, preached, suffered, was murdered, rose and ascended. It’s something every Catholic needs to ponder deeply, prayerfully and frequently. “I have come to set the earth on fire,” Jesus says, “and how I wish it were already blazing!” Just like the Holy Spirit was sent down as tongues of fire to ignite the members of the early Church with the passion to live and preach the Gospel until the ends of the earth, Jesus came down with the same holy ardor, the same white-hot love, to make us his torch bearers and set the world ablaze with the light of his truth and the fire of his mercy. He wants to do to us in life what happens symbolically at our baptism and is renewed every year at the Easter Vigil, when Jesus, like the flame of the Paschal Candle, comes to light us — symbolized by a taper or baptismal candle — on fire with true Christian combustion and make us living tapers, who receive the flame of faith from him and then pass on that passion to those around us.

* Ten years ago, Pope Benedict, commenting on Jesus’ words from this Sunday’s Gospel, spoke about the fire of faith and how important it is for each of us to allow the Holy Spirit to melt whatever in us is cold or frozen. In doing so he pointed out the greatest danger for us as Christian disciples and the biggest obstacle to our proclaiming the faith and bringing people to Christ. “There’s a passion of ours,” Pope Benedict said, “that must grow from faith, which must be transformed into the fire of charity. Jesus said: ‘I came to cast fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled.’ Origen [the great third century theologian] has conveyed us a word of the Lord: “Whoever is near me is near the fire.” The Christian must not be lukewarm. The Book of Revelation tells us that this is the greatest danger for a Christian: not that he may say ‘no,’ but that he may say a very lukewarm ‘yes.’ This being lukewarm is what discredits Christianity. Faith must become in us a flame of love, a flame that really fires up my being, becomes the great passion of my being, and so that it fires also my neighbor.”

* It is crucial for us to understand what Pope Benedict underlined. First, to be near Christ, he said, is to be near the fire. If we’re truly drawing close to Christ in prayer, in the Sacraments of the Eucharist and Confession, in charity toward others, in the communion that is the Church, then we can’t help but get fired up. The problem is that often we try to draw near to God with asbestos around our hearts. We say our prayers, but rush through them without love. We show up to Mass but leave our enthusiasm at home. We should be more passionate about God speaking to us and feeding us at Mass than the biggest baseball fans rejoice to be at their home park for the World Series.  The fact that few of us behave this way in God’s presence is a sign of tepidity.

* Second, Pope Benedict said that lukewarmness is the “greatest danger for a Christian,” that in response to God and the gift of his love, we give only a half-hearted yes with a shrug of our shoulders. In the Book of Revelation, Jesus said to the Church in Laodicea,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Saint Athanasius and St. John Church, Rumford, Maine

Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, C

August 7, 2022

Wis 18:6-9, Ps 33, Heb 11:1-2.8-19, Lk 12:32-48

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/8.7.22_homily.mp3

 

The text that guided the homily was: 

* “Blessed the people the Lord has chosen to be his own,” we prayed several times in today’s psalm. How blessed we are to know God, to know how loved we are by him, to know what he asks of us, to have the joy of helping others to know him. The second reading from the Letter to the Hebrews describes how blessed Abraham was to have been chosen by God and to respond with faith in him, the faith that led him to leave all he knew in his 70s and go to a place God would show him, the faith that helped him and his wife Sarah to trust in God that, even in their old age, they would have a son through whom Abraham would become the father of many nations, the faith that led him even to be willing to sacrifice that long-awaited son, confident that God would be able to raise Isaac from the dead. The first reading from the Book of Wisdom describes how blessed the Jews were, for having been chosen by God and having trusted in him to follow Moses’ instructions, celebrate the Passover and follow Moses through the Red Sea, into the desert, to the Promised Land. The Psalm itself describes how blessed all believers are, trusting in God to “deliver them from death and preserve them in spite of famine.” All of these readings are illustrations of what the Letter to the Hebrews says about faith, which it says is the “realization of what is hoped for and the evidence of things not seen,” faith is when we trust in God to know he will keep his promises and live in accordance with them. How blessed we are that God has chosen us to receive the gift of faith in him!

* In the Gospel today, Jesus makes plain that blessing and the way we are supposed to respond in faith. Everything begins with his extraordinary words, “Your Father is pleased to give you the kingdom!” God the Father wants to give us something greater than he gave Abraham and the Jews. He wants to give us what they and their descendants longed for: to make us, in this world and forever, heirs of his Kingdom. The kingdom of God is ultimately God, who chooses us to be his own and makes us members of the royal family. Bestowing on us that gift, Jesus says, gives God the Father great joy. Jesus tells us, therefore, “Don’t be afraid any longer.” Sometimes we are afraid of God, we are afraid of displeasing him, we are afraid of our weaknesses and our capacity to choose against God, others and ourselves, we are afraid of the eternal consequences of our sinful choices. But Jesus encourages us not to be afraid, because his Father is delighted to give it all to us, shown in his sending his Son into the world to announce to us that the Kingdom is at hand, to teach us how to enter it, and, at great personal cost on Calvary, to make it possible for us to live with the King always.

* Jesus wants us to be as happy about receiving that gift of the kingdom as God the Father is to give it. That’s why he tells us that we need to let go of a desire to build our own material kingdom here on earth and use everything we have to obtain God’s kingdom. “Sell your belongings and give alms,” he says. “Provide money bags for yourselves that do not wear out, an inexhaustible treasure in heaven that no thief can reach nor moth destroy.” The way to seize and live in the the kingdom is through Christ-like charity, to use the money we have, the time we have, the goods we have, to lift others up. To love in this way is like transferring all we have to an account in the national bank of the kingdom th...