Catholic Preaching

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 7, 2022

 

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Fr. Roger J. Landry

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

Votive Mass of the Holy Eucharist

Alverna Center, Winona, Minnesota

Retreat for the Priests of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester

November 7, 2022

Ti 1:1-9, Ps 24, Lk 17:1-6

 

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

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The following text guided the homily: 

* At the beginning of our retreat together, we make our own the words of the apostles in today’s Gospel: “Increase our faith.” And Jesus reminds us of the power of faith, that if we have even a little faith, we can do the impossible, like transplanting mulberry trees into the sea.

* The apostles were provoked to ask Jesus for that gift because of his words about scandal and then forgiveness, and we can ponder them a little together, but we can also apply this petition to the theme of our retreat, dedicated to imitating what we celebrate and becoming catalysts for the Eucharistic Revival of the Church in the United States.

* Jesus begins the passage talking about scandal and the damage it causes for others’ growth in faith. “Things that cause sin will inevitably occur,” the Lord says, “but woe to the one through whom they occur. It would be better for him if a millstone were put around his neck and he be thrown into the sea than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin.” Jesus is clearly describing the punishment scandalous behavior warrants. But at the same time that he mentions a millstone, he wants to help unshackle someone from that millstone through mercy. One of the most important parts of our life of faith, is our recognition that just as God never tires of forgiving us, we should never tire of asking him for forgiveness and of sharing a similar mercy with others. This is hard. It requires great humility to ask for forgiveness. It requires greater humility to give it. Jesus is calling us not merely to give people a second chance, but an eighth chance. And in another part of the Gospel he says, depending upon the translation, that we need to give a 78th chance or a 491st chance. In order to be capable of doing this, we need his help, we need the strength that comes from faith. That’s why we humbly beg, “Increase our faith!”

* In the first reading, St. Paul describes the qualities for the discernment of priests and bishops precisely so that they won’t cause scandal but rather bring people to imitate God. He says that they need to be blameless, which is the opposite of scandalous; married only once, meaning that they can live chastely and not be men who had to marry after the death of a first wife, because then probably they wouldn’t be able to live the continent chastity required; with believing children who are not accused of licentiousness or rebellious, because if a father can’t raise his own children in the faith, how can he raise others’ children in the faith?; not arrogant, because he must be a humble servant like Christ; not irritable, because he must love even those who annoy him; not a drunkard because he must be sober and alert; not aggressive, but meek; not greedy for sordid gain, but poor in spirit because the kingdom he seeks is the Lord’s; hospitable because he sees Christ in the stranger saying, “I was a stranger and you welcomed me”; a lover of goodness, so that his virtue is not just in seemingly virtuous needs but comes from a good fruit-producing tree; temperate since he must have self-mastery; just, since he should be right with God and fair with others; self-controlled since he must be disciplined to be a disciple and help form other disciples; hold fast to the true message as taught so that by his life he can exhort the faithful and refute opponents; and in short, holy,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

November 6, 2022

2 Macc 7:1-2.9-14, Ps 17, 2 Thess 2:16-3:5, Lk 20:27-38

 

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

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The following text guided the homily: 

* Most people, no matter what their age, prefer not to think about death, judgment and our eternal destiny. But it’s a particular temptation for young people, who spend far more time thinking about their short-term future on earth than about their long-term future in the new heavens and new earth. That’s why the Church wisely and mercifully has all of us focus on the last things every November as we conclude the liturgical year because throughout the Gospels, Jesus reminds us that we do not know the day or the hour and that we always have to be vigilant so that when Jesus comes for us, he doesn’t surprise us like a thief in the night, but finds us ready with outstretched arms. Today’s readings help us to focus on heaven and on the path and virtues that will lead us there, hoping that we will live each day with wisdom in mind.

* In the Gospel, Jesus speaks about heaven in conversation with a group called the Sadducees, who were members of the high priestly caste. The Sadducees accepted only the first five books of the Hebrew Bible — what are called the Torah in Hebrew or Pentateuch in Greek — and didn’t believe in the resurrection of the body because they erroneously thought that there no reference to it in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy and Numbers. To try to test Jesus and prove their point about the supposed impossibility of the resurrection of the body, they brought to Jesus the invented example of a woman who married successively seven different brothers after each previous brother had died. If according to the language of Genesis, she had become “one flesh” with seven different men until death they parted, they asked, then with whom would she be one flesh in the resurrection, if there were a resurrection? Since it is ridiculous to think that she would be united in one flesh to seven simultaneously, they concluded, there couldn’t be a resurrection.

* Jesus’ answer highlighted two essential things about heaven. First, he said that it’s only the children of this age who marry and remarry. In heaven, he states, there will be no marrying or giving in marriage because there will only be one wedding, the wedding feast of the Lamb and his Bride the Church. The institution and sacrament of marriage, Jesus indicates, is a reality for this world. The reason for this is pretty clear. Marriage has a two-fold purpose, love and life, or, in more traditional terminology, the mutual sanctification of the spouses and the procreation and education of children. In heaven, there’s no purpose to marriage because men and women no longer need to be sanctified since they’re already saints; and there will be no new children because saints aren’t having babies and baptisms in the afterlife! But while there will be no marriage or conjugal consummation in heaven, there will certainly be love! Marriage in this world is meant to prepare spouses and children to enter into that love, the perfect love of God and the love of the communion of saints. And marriage is particularly well-suited to achieve this purpose. Marriage is meant to help husband and wife get out of themselves, out of their own selfishness, and enter into a loving communion, so that each of the spouses and their children might be better prepared to enter now and eternally into the Communion of Persons in Love who is the Blessed Trinity. If marriage and family life are lived in the way God intends,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx

Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

November 6, 2022

2 Macc 7:1-2.9-14, Ps 17, 2 Thess 2:16-3:5, Lk 20:27-38

 

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

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The following text guided the homily: 

*

* Every November, the Church has us focus on the four last things — death, judgment, heaven and hell. At the beginning of the month, we celebrate All Saints’ Day, in which we remember and ask the intercession of all those who have arrived at the place to which we aspire. The next day we mark All Souls’ Day, and as we remember and pray for all the dead, especially those who are in need of our prayers and sacrifices to enter into paradise, we also ponder our own earthly end. Today’s readings strengthen those month-long meditations, teaching us some important truths about heaven and the path that will lead us there. We can focus on three crucial lessons.

* The first thing is about the way to eternal life. In today’s Gospel. Jesus teaches us that it flows from a personal, truly vital, relationship with God. The God of the universe is not the deity of a cemetery of dead bodies, but, as Jesus says to the Sadducees, “the God of the living.” And not just the living “in general”: He is the “God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,” which means, as Jesus illustrated, that these patriarchs — 1800 years deceased when Jesus was speaking — were not dead, but truly alive in God. The God who created us out of love did not create us with an expiration date to that life-giving love. His is a love that lasts forever. The whole point of our life is to receive and reciprocate that love, to accept his invitation to live in a deeply personal relationship with him that will not wane. The resurrection is not so much an event as a relationship with Jesus who says, “I am the Resurrection and the Life” (Jn 11:25). He declared during the Last Supper, “This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and the one whom you have sent, Jesus Christ” (Jn 17:3). Eternity begins when we enter into the deep intimate friendship with God, when we join our life to his, because once he’s truly living in us, we are beginning to live forever. We are wasting the gift of our life if we’re not responding to God’s call to develop this deep communion of life and love with Jesus that gives us a foretaste of of heaven right now here on earth. If we’re not living in Jesus, we are, in a sense, dead. We’re walking cadavers. Jesus, the Good Shepherd, who knows and calls us by name, wants to be able to say that God is not merely the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but the “God of Roger, Marcella, Fatima and Claire.” If he’s able to say in truth about us that we are living in an intimate friendship with him as the “God of the living,” then because his life is eternal, we are already experiencing in embryonic form eternal life!

* The second thing that Jesus teaches us in the Gospel is the connection between the sacraments — especially marriage — and heaven. Each of the sacraments is meant to help us enter into that living, loving, intimate relationship with God. Each of the sacraments is a bridge to the Trinity, to heaven, to eternity. That relationship begins on the day of our baptism, when God says of us, as he did of Jesus in the Jordan, “This is my beloved son [or daughter], in whom I am well pleased” (Mt 3:17). It grows every time he embraces us as his prodigal child in the Sacrament of Confession. It is intensified each time we have the awesome privilege of receiving the risen life, his resurrected body, blood, soul united to his divinity, within us in Holy Communion. In the Gospel, however,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Convent of St. Bridget, Darien, CT

Retreat for Columbia Graduate Students from Ford Hall

November 5, 2022

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Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

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

November 5, 2022

 

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

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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, when he will speak to us about the reality of heaven.

* November, as you know, is the month in which the Church always focuses on the four last things — death, judgment, heaven and hell. At the beginning of the month, we celebrate All Saints’ Day, in which we remember and ask the intercession of all those who have arrived at the place to which we aspire. The next day we mark All Souls’ Day, and remember and pray for all the dead, especially those who are in need of our prayers and sacrifices to enter into paradise. And throughout the month, the Church keeps the four last things in front of us. First, the fact that each of us will die, some of us by surprise, much earlier than we think. Second, as soon as we die, we will be judged. Jesus gives us the criteria of that final exam of life, but we need to be ready for it, by a life of Christian faith, hope and love: he’ll separate us on the basis of our deeds, whether we’ve known and loved God and whether we’ve cared for him in our needy neighbors. Some of us will go to heaven, whether directly or through the purification of purgatory, and others will go to a place of definitive self-alienation from God. These are realities that Jesus affirms throughout the Gospel.

* In this Sunday’s Gospel, he speaks about heaven in conversation with a group called the Sadducees, who were members of the high priestly elites and didn’t believe in the Resurrection. They only accepted the Torah, or Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible — Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy and Numbers — and thought that there was no reference there at all to resurrection from the dead. To try to test Jesus and prove their point about the absurdity of the resurrection of the body, they brought to Jesus the invented example of a woman who married successively seven different brothers after each previous brother had died. If according to the text of Genesis, she had become “one flesh” with seven different men until death did they part, they asked, then with whom would she be one flesh in the resurrection, if there were a resurrection? Since it is ridiculous to think that she would be united in one flesh to seven simultaneously, they supposed, there couldn’t be a resurrection.

* Jesus’ answer highlighted two essential things about heaven.

* First, he said that it’s only the children of this age who marry and remarry. In heaven, he states, there will be no marrying or giving in marriage because there will only be one wedding, the wedding feast of the Lamb and his Bride the Church. The institution and sacrament of marriage, Jesus implies, is a reality for this world. The reason for this is pretty obvious: Marriage has a two-fold purpose, love and life, or, in more traditional terminology, the mutual sanctification of the spouses and the procreation and education of children. In heaven, there’s no purpose to marriage because men and women no longer need to be sanctified since they’re already saints; and there will be no new children because saints aren’t having babies in the afterlife! While there will be no marriage and conjugal sexual activity in heaven, however, there will certainly be love!

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Friday of the 31st Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Charles Borromeo

November 4, 2022

Phil 3:17-4:1, Ps 122, Lk 16:1-8

 

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

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The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today we are able to continue to meditate on the realities we celebrate on All Saints and All Souls Days. The  Gospel is meant to help us to prepare for our judgment by inspiring us toward a life of sanctity, minimally out of eternal self-interest. Jesus stresses in a brutal, cutthroat, bottom-line manner what we need to do and does so by means of what for many Catholics is the most confusing parable in the Gospel, what’s popularly called the Parable of the Dishonest Steward, something that can get some people to wonder whether Truth incarnate is praising a crooked business manager for deception, whether he who gave us the commandment “Thou shalt not steal” is himself praising someone for violating it. But Jesus is doing no such thing. In order to grasp what Jesus was and was not saying and what the crucial lesson is for us, however, we first need to understand better the literal sense of this passage through grasping something about the way loans were done in the ancient world.

* In the Parable, a manager is about to get sacked because he was squandering the property of his business owner. His boss gave him his pink slip and told him to do an audit of the books prior to his dismissal. So the man called in those mostly tenant farmers who owed his employer money or items and reduced their debts considerably. At first glance, this seems like dishonesty, like he was allowing these debtors to steal from his boss, but it wasn’t. In the ancient world, the way loans were conducted was that the manager or broker would be paid by adding on something to what was borrowed, rather than a percentage taken out of the master’s proceeds. For example, if someone borrowed 50 denarii or 50 barrels of oil, he would have to pay back the 50 to the master and another 10 — or 30 or 50 — to the broker, whatever the broker thought he could get. This dishonest steward was probably tacking on way too big of a commission, and, in order to maximize his profits, was probably, like Fannie and Freddie 15 years ago, lending out the master’s property to very bad risks, allowing people on the Master’s fields who were going to waste it rather than produce. Hence, when the manager called in those who owed, for example, 100 containers of wheat, and reduced the amount to 80, what he was almost assuredly doing was eliminating most or all of his commission. Therefore, he wasn’t allowing them to steal from the owner; he was eliminating his own take. Faced with the decision of saving his life by making friends who would take care of him after he was fired or trying to hold out to the end onto the possibility of making money via these commissions, he chose to save his life. His master — and Jesus through the master in the Parable — calls this prudent and wise.

* What’s the application to us? Jesus wants us to examine whether we are in the place of that dishonest steward. God has given each of us tremendous gifts on the basis of which we have made profits, or tried to make profit. He has given us our hands, which we use to work. He has given us our brains, which we use to think. He has given us our families and friends, our education, our lives, and so many other blessings. He has given us our vocation! With these gifts, we have profited! But have we been using those gifts fundamentally to build up our kingdom or to build up the Master’s? If we’ve been squandering his gifts on ourselve...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Corpus Christi Monastery of the Dominican Nuns, Bronx, NY

Thursday of the 31st Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Feast of St. Martin de Porres

November 3, 2022

Is 58:6-11, Ps 145, Gal 3:26-28; 4:6-7, Luke 10:25-37 (or Mt 11:25-30)

 

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

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The following points were attempted in the homily:

*

St. Gregory the Great told us vita bonorum, viva lectio, that the life of the saints is a living reading of Sacred Scripture, a living, walking, breathing commentary on the living and saving Word of God. Today, on this feast of St. Martin de Porres, we can reread his life based on the readings chosen for his feast.

*

With the Psalms there are five different proper readings in the Dominican lectionary for this feast. In St. Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus speaks about how God hides things from the clever and worldly but reveals them to the childlike. Saint Martin de Porres was childlike. He learned from Christ who was meek and humble of heart, he took on Christ’s own yoke, which is the cross and learned in that school, the art of cruciform love. He was someone who had been cared for by the Lord the Good Samaritan, Jesus Himself, and was so changed by that encounter that he went in did likewise, turning the Convent of the Holy Rosary in Lima into one big Inn in which he cared not only for his fellow Dominicans, but used to constantly get in trouble with his superiors by bringing half of Lima into the convent to care for them when they were sick, including very often giving them his own bed. Like the Good Samaritan, even though he was an outsider — a mulatto son of a slave woman who had been freed, so that wasn’t even able, under Peruvian law technically, to enter that convent, a law that thankfully his Dominican superior broke to allow him to make vows — he drew near to the sick. In the first reading from the Prophet Isaiah, we see why his prayers were heard, especially his prayers for miracles, because he did more than fast and abstain from meat his entire religious life, but he fasted in the way the Lord wanted, fasted through hungering for what God Himself hungered, to care for all those who are in need of the Lord’s mercy, as he turned basically, all of Lima into an extended convent. And in the letter the Galatians, we see how in a Christ there is no Jew or Greek, there is no slave or free person. And he himself though the son of a slave, shows us all the freedom for which Christ has set us free.

*

Today on his feast day, we remember that our lives too, are supposed to be living readings of the Word of God, that we’re called to learn from St. Martin how to open ourselves up with spiritual childhood, to all that God wants to reveal to us, to take on Christ’s sweet and well-fitting yoke, so that we might learn like Martin, how to love like Christ. St. Martin is interceding for us that we might love God with all our mind, heart, soul and strength and learn how to love each other like he cared not just for all his Dominican brothers. Today, the same Lord Jesus, who told this scholar of the law, go and do the same, who helped St. Martin de Porres to do the same, comes here to feed us, so that we might do likewise as well.

 

The proper readings for this Mass were: 

A Reading from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah

This, rather, is the fasting that I wish: releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke; Setting free the oppressed, breaking every yoke; Sharing your bread with the hungry, sheltering the oppressed and the homeless; Clothing the naked when you see th...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Thursday of the 31st Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Martin de Porres

November 3, 2022

Phil 3:3-8, Ps 105, Lk 15:1-10

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.3.22_Homily_CCM_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* In today’s Gospel, Jesus communicates something that we can never truly grasp deeply enough, which is just how much he passionately cares for those who are lost. He gives us two Parables, the Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin, both of which — together with the Parable of the Prodigal Son that immediately follows (and that the Church strangely excises from the lectionary) — communicate to us two of the most important spiritual lessons as we relate to God.

* The first lesson is how precious we are to him. We’re not just a number. If we’re lost, he cares about us so much that he’ll leave everything else behind to come for us. He doesn’t say, “I still have 99 sheep. Let the lost one learn his or her lesson the hard way.” No, he leaves the others and, just like Mary and Joseph scampered ancient Jerusalem in search of the adolescent Jesus, the Good Shepherd goes in search of us. The Parable of the Lost Coin gives us a sense of why. This is not a story about losing one of ten silver dollars. The coins Jesus was referring to comprised the typical Jewish ten-coined headdress that a woman would wear for her wedding. To lose one of those coins would be like losing a wedding ring, something that would cause a wife or even a husband to overturn every rug and retrace every step. For Jesus, he would search for us with even greater passion because we’re not just a symbol of love and commitment like a ring or a coin from a spousal headdress, but we are his Bride, for whom he would always lay down his life. That’s the first point, how precious we are.

* The second point is about the extraordinary joy of God when we’re found. The joy in these parables is off the charts. Both the shepherd and the woman call all their friends and neighbors to celebrate with them. And Jesus says, in the moral of the Parables, “In just the same way, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous people who have no need of repentance!” This is an extraordinary truth. We know how much joy Mary, for example, gave God by her constant yes. She was the supremely righteous person who because of her sinlessness did not need to repent of anything. And yet her Son, Truth incarnate, tells us, that heaven rejoices more whenever any of us repents than the yeses and faithfulness of even 99 Blessed Virgin Marys. That is not meant to downgrade in the least God’s joy at Mary’s or our fidelity. But it’s meant to highlight, with Jesus’ own words, his desire for mercy. Based on these Parables, Pope Francis has underlined, “God’s greatest joy is forgiving!” It’s so important for us to recognize how much God loves each one of us, especially when we’re lost, and in response, to give God this joy by allowing him to bring us back to the fold and renew us in our spousal covenant, and to help us bring others back to him so that he may forgive them, too. When we think of all of the blessings God has given us over the course of life and the thought wells up in us to thank him, the thanks he most desires, what will give him the most joy, is when we come to receive his forgiveness and help lead others to that same font of love.

* Paul was someone who gave God this joy by his conversion. He tasted the joy of God as he converted. And then he spent the whole rest of his life crisscrossing the ancient world appealing to others as an ambassador of Christ to ...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

The Commemoration of All The Faithful Departed, All Souls’ Day

November 2, 2022

2 Macc 12:38-46, Ps 25, 1 Thess 4:13-18, Lk 23:33.39-43

 

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

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The following text guided the homily: 

* Today we come together to fulfill the sweetest of all the spiritual works of mercy, which is to pray for the dead. With Catholics throughout the world, we commemorate all the faithful departed — those who died yesterday and this morning, the beloved deceased members of our families, those who have died of natural causes as well the victims of war, violence and genocide, those who have died of hunger, disease and neglect, the infants who have died in miscarriages or who have been killed through exposure or abortion, the seniors who have been tragically killed through euthanasia, the Christians who have died for the faith in persecution, the anonymous who rest in common graves, and those forgotten by the world and whose names are known only by God. The Church remembers the faithful departed not just on this day but throughout the entire month of November in a special way. We begin the month, as we did yesterday, by celebrating the saints — those who are definitively in heaven, the canonized and un-canonized saints — and by invoking their intercession as we continue on our pilgrimage of faith in this world. But then we immediately turn in suffrage for all those who have died, those who long to share in the communion of the saints but who are not yet experiencing their joy. To pray for the dead is the main purpose of All Souls Day. We pray for the dead because we know in faith three truths: first, contrary to the popular heresy that presumes that everyone who dies automatically goes to a “better place,” the Catholic faith does not believe everyone who dies goes to heaven, especially immediately; second, the dead may need our help; and third our prayers and sacrifices can in fact help them. All Souls Day is an occasion to examine more deeply these three truths of faith.

* First, the Church teaches that to enter heaven, one must be completely attached to God and radically detached from all sin and everything that is not of God. “Nothing unclean shall enter heaven,” the Book of Revelation tells us (Rev. 21:27). There are many who do not live and die with that type of purity of life and hence they need to be purified to enter into the kingdom in which God is all in all. This state in which the dead are decontaminated from all sin and worldliness has been traditionally called by the Church “Purgatory” from the Latin term purgare, which means “to cleanse.” In 2007, Pope Benedict wrote an encyclical letter on Christian hope in which he talked about what happens after we die and who goes to Hell, Heaven and Purgatory. He described Hell as that state where those people go “who have totally destroyed their desire for truth and readiness to love, people for whom everything has become a lie, people who have lived for hatred and have suppressed all love within themselves.” He commented, “This is a terrifying thought, but alarming profiles of this type can be seen in certain figures of our own history.” He doesn’t mention anyone by name, but we can think that some genocidal leaders, sadistic serial killers, abortionists, if their deeds correspond to what was really in their hearts and they failed to repent, would end up there. “In such people,” Pope Benedict added, “all would be beyond remedy and the destruction of good would be irrevocable. This is what we mean by the word Hell.” Hell, the Catechism tells us, is the place of “definitive self-alienation” from God.