Catholic Preaching

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Thirty-Third Sunday of Ordinary Time, C, Vigil

November 12, 2022

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.12.22_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 the Church seeks to deepen our annual November meditation on the Last Things. In the Gospel, Jesus gives various details about the end times. He describes how the house 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. When Jesus’ listeners asked, “Master, when will this happen?” — presumably so that they could be prepared — he didn’t answer their question directly, not only because the time of the second coming was known only to the Father, but also, and perhaps most importantly, because he wanted them to be prepared for it always. If he had given some date weeks, decades or centuries 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 awaiting, 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 exclaim, “This is the day the Lord has made!” And the signs of the day of the Lord he gives us help us to maintain this awareness, because they are in fact events we see in every age, when there’s destruction, natural disasters, wars, famines, illness, betrayals, attacks on the Church, and the persecution and killing of Christians.

* But if pay close attention to this Sunday’s Gospel, theres seem at first glance to be a contradiction. How can Jesus affirm at the end of the Gospel simultaneously that some of his followers will be put to death but that not a hair on their head will be destroyed? In short, why would God allow so many terrible things to happen to those who trust in him? How’s that protecting them down to every last strand of hair?

* Let’s get specific with events in the news: Why would he allow Hurricane Ian or Nicole to rip through Florida and destroy so many homes? Why would he allow what’s happening in the Ukraine, China, Cuba, Venezuela, Madagascar, or Myanmar? Why would he allow the ballot measures and various candidates in favor of abortion to win on election day? Why would he allow so many attacks against Christians in Nigeria, where earlier this week 11 were killed and over 80 kidnapped? Why, in fact, would he allow so many periods of persecution and martyrdom throughout the centuries or allow half of all the martyrs in the history of the Church to have shed their blood in the last century?

* The answer is something we all have to grasp in order to grow in faith. While it’s not a contradiction, it’s a hard truth all the same. God permits these evils in order to help us become better disciples and better apostles, more fervent followers of him and more passionate proclaimers of his salvation. He who permits evil solely because he intends to bring from it a greater good, does so to help us become more faithful and bring other people to faith. He tells us in the Gospel that all of these disasters and sufferings “will lead to your giving testimony” — and not just any testimony.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Thursday of the 32nd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Alverna Center, Winona, Minnesota

Retreat for the Priests of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester

November 11, 2022

2 John 4-9, Ps 119, Lk 17:26-37

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.11.22_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following text guided today’s homily: 

* Yesterday the Church throughout the world pondered Jesus’ words that the kingdom of God is among us and why that is, because the King is here with us, he took our flesh, he remains with us in the sacraments, in grace, in the Church, in others; and we enter into that kingdom when we follow up our prayer “thy kingdom come!” with the complementary couplet “thy will be done!” We dwell within that kingdom when we’re with the King, when we allow his will to be done within us, when he reigns. That’s the definition of a truly Eucharistic Life, when we not only grasp that the King is among us, come to spend time with him and allow him to take up his glorious throne within us, but when we allow him to transform us to live fully in his kingdom and bring others into it as well. Today’s readings and feast provide a fitting commentary on these truths.

* In today’s Gospel, we see that even though Christ the King is present, some live in that kingdom and others don’t; others behave as if they are vincibly oblivious to it. Jesus contrasts Noah with those who perished in the flood, and Lot and those who perished in Sodom. Some were attentive and alert to God’s kingdom in their midst and some were not. Jesus encourages us to be similarly on guard. He says that when he comes at the time or the end of our life, whichever comes first, we shouldn’t head down into the house to get possessions or come in from the field, but we should go straight to the King whose kingdom we were seeking in action. He says that two will be sleeping, two will be cooking, but only one will be taken. This isn’t to be misinterpreted as if God’s going to do an arbitrary 50/50 split. Rather, it’s saying some in the very same circumstances will be ready because they’re connecting sleeping or cooking to God and his kingdom, and others won’t be ready, because all they think they’re doing is sleeping or cooking rather than doing it in communion with God in his kingdom. When they ask where this will take place, Jesus uses an aphorism, “Where the body is, there also the vultures will gather,” to indicate that just as vultures find a corpse, so we should find the kingdom! He also gives the principle of living in the kingdom: “Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses it will save it.” Those who are living in the kingdom are freely giving or “losing” their life for God and others, so that his kingdom will come and his will be done. Those who try to preserve their own kingdom, to hallow their own name, to do their own will, will be those who lose their lives.

* In today’s first reading, the only passage we have in the two-year liturgical cycle of daily Mass readings from St. John’s Second Letter, the Apostle, who was present when Jesus said the words in today’s Gospel, makes plain what living in the kingdom is all about. He phrases it as “walking in the truth just as we were commanded by the Father,” following in the footsteps of the Incarnate Truth. He describes that that involves not a new commandment but the one to “love one another” that Christ gave us, reminding us that love means to “walk according to the commandments” because the commandments train us to love God with all our mind, heart, soul and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves. To walk in the truth means to grow in a Eucharistic life, to grasp the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist w...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Retreat for the Priests of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester

Alverna Center, Winona, Minnesota

Imitating What We Celebrate: Priests as Catalysts for the Eucharistic Revival of the Church in the United States

November 12, 2022

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.11.22_Eucharistic_Pastoral_Plan_1.mp3

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Retreat for the Priests of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester

Alverna Center, Winona, Minnesota

Imitating What We Celebrate: Priests as Catalysts for the Eucharistic Revival of the Church in the United States

November 10, 2022

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.10.22_Eucharistic_Apostolate_1.mp3

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Retreat for the Priests of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester

Alverna Center, Winona, Minnesota

Imitating What We Celebrate: Priests as Catalysts for the Eucharistic Revival of the Church in the United States

November 10, 2022

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.10.22_Eucharistic_Charity_1.mp3

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Thursday of the 32nd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Alverna Center, Winona, Minnesota

Retreat for the Priests of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester

November 10, 2022

Plhm 7-20, Ps 146, Lk 17:20-25

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.10.22_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* Today as pundits and citizens continue to ponder the present and future meaning of Tuesday’s election results, the readings that we have today indicate to us in a special way the vocation of Christian leaders and faithful at this time. The Pharisees asked Jesus when the Kingdom of God would come. They were doubtless asking this within messianic expectations, that the kingdom of God would erupt by building the type of momentum to fulfill Jewish hopes in evicting the Romans from Israel and reestablishing the Davidic throne. For them, the messianic age was fundamentally a political reality, basically a theocracy. In the question, they were egging Jesus on to see whether he thought he was the Messiah and, if so, what his future program might be. But Jesus, as he is wont to do, transcended the question. He said that the inauguration of the Kingdom wouldn’t be a spectacle to be observed. There wouldn’t be trumpets sounding. There wouldn’t be “Hail to the King!” There wouldn’t be heralds indicating that the kingdom is “here” or “there.” Rather, Jesus says, “Behold, the Kingdom of God is among you.”

* This means two things. First, that the Kingdom had already come because the King was present. The Kingdom is where the King is and Jesus was already present. Secondly the Kingdom had already come because people had already embraced it, entered it and were living in it because they were living with the King. There’s a couplet in the Our Father in which we pray first, “Thy kingdom come!,” and then repeat it in other words, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” The Kingdom of God is wherever God’s will is done, whenever one begins to live in relationship with God and his kingdom. Jesus reveals to us various other qualities about his kingdom and the conditions for entering it and living in it. He says that the kingdom of heaven belongs to those who are “poor in spirit,” to those who treasure God more than all the wealth of the world. He says that it belongs to those who convert and become like little children, who trust in God and accept it as a gift. He says that the kingdom is like a wedding banquet full of joy and those who live in the kingdom are those who are profoundly and serenely joyful. He says the kingdom grows like a mustard seed or yeast, imperceptible to people on the outside but the growth is real. He says it’s like a buried treasure or a pearl of great price, a net cast into the sea or a field with wheat and weeds. By each of these realities Jesus was indicating qualities of the Kingdom. Cardinal Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI, said very powerfully back in 2000 in a talk to catechists from around the world, “The kingdom of God … is ‘not a thing.’ The Kingdom of God is God. The Kingdom of God means: God exists. God is alive. God is present and acts in the world, in our – in my — life. God is not a faraway ‘ultimate cause,’ God is not the ‘great architect’ of deism, who created the machine of the world and is no longer part of it; on the contrary: God is the most present and decisive reality in each and every act of my life, in each and every moment of history.” The kingdom has come to a person when God is truly Lord of that person’s life. The Kingdom of God is living within the reality of the incarnate King of Kings.

* When we enter into that kingdom, everything changes, and all other fiefdoms are relativized.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Retreat for the Priests of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester

Alverna Center, Winona, Minnesota

Imitating What We Celebrate: Priests as Catalysts for the Eucharistic Revival of the Church in the United States

November 9, 2022

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.9.22_Eucharistic_Adoration_1.mp3

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Retreat for the Priests of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester

Alverna Center, Winona, Minnesota

Imitating What We Celebrate: Priests as Catalysts for the Eucharistic Revival of the Church in the United States

November 9, 2022

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.9.22_Eucharistic_Preaching_1.mp3

 

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Retreat for the Priests of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester

Alverna Center, Winona, Minnesota

Imitating What We Celebrate: Priests as Catalysts for the Eucharistic Revival of the Church in the United States

November 8, 2022

 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.8.22_Eucharistic_Plan_of_Life_1.mp3

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Retreat for the Priests of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester

Alverna Center, Winona, Minnesota

Imitating What We Celebrate: Priests as Catalysts for the Eucharistic Revival of the Church in the United States

November 8, 2022

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.8.22_Ars_Celebrandi_1.mp3