Fr. Roger J. Landry

St. Francis de Sales Chapel

Archdiocese of Oklahoma City Pastoral Center

Retreat for the Sovereign Order of Malta

Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

June 24, 2022

Ez 34:11-16, Ps 23, Rom 5:5-11, Lk 15:3-7

 

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The following text guided the homily: 

* When Peter DeKeratry wrote me last October seeing whether I would be available to come to preach a retreat for the Knights and Dames of Malta here in the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City June 24-26, 2022, I was very excited that the retreat would fittingly begin on June 24, the day the Church each year celebrates the Birth of Saint John the Baptist, the patron of the Sovereign Military and Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and Malta. Neither he nor I had looked ahead at the liturgical calendar and the rare occurrence that the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which takes place on the Friday after Corpus Christi Sunday, would likewise fall on June 24. Because the Solemnities of the Lord Jesus take precedence over the Solemnities of the saints, the Church, as you know, moved the celebration of the birth of St. John the Baptist to yesterday. But I think St. John the Baptist is smiling. In life the Precursor to the Lord’s birth, time in the desert, preaching and death, humbly and proudly said about Jesus, “He must increase; I must decrease” (Jn 3:30). His whole life was to point to Jesus and say, “Behold the Lamb of God!” And he would be very happy, as his birthday present, to cede June 24 to the cousin and Lord whom he loved and to whom he wants to lead all those who look to him as patron. And so tonight we behold the Lamb of God together with John as that Lamb points to his heart and says to us, as he said to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque in June of 1675, “Behold the Heart that has so much loved men.”

* The Sacred Heart of Jesus, as Pope Benedict in a 2008 Sunday Angelus greeting, is the “center of the faith.” That might seem a little overstated, if we erroneously understand devotion to the Sacred Heart as something that basically began in the 1670s with St. Margaret Mary Alacoque. Pope Benedict, however, understood it far more broadly: The Heart of Christ, he declared, “expresses in a simple and authentic way the ‘glad tidings’ of love, summarizing the mystery of the Incarnation and the Redemption in itself. … God desired to enter into the limits of history and the human condition. He took on a body and a heart; thus we can contemplate and meet the infinite in the finite.” Benedict called every person to find his or her “center” in Jesus’ Sacred Heart, which he poetically said constitutes a “source of truth and goodness from which to draw in the flux of the different situations of everyday life and its toil. Everyone of us, when he pauses for a moment of silence, needs to feel not only the beating of his own heart, but more deeply, the beating of a trustworthy presence, perceptible to the senses of faith and yet more real: the presence of Christ, the heart of the world.”

* Tonight many of us begin a retreat focused on the Eucharistic Jesus as the Heart of the Church’s Charity. We will be pondering together how to grow in Eucharistic faith, amazement, love and life. The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council taught that the Eucharistic Jesus is the source, summit, root and center of the Church’s faith and life. And so we have to ask: how is it simultanteously true that the Sacred Heart of Jesus is the “center of our faith” and the Eucharist is the center, root, source and summit of the faith? It’s because Jesus himself connects his Real Presence in the Eucharist to devotion to His Sacred Heart.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

St. Francis de Sales Chapel

Archdiocese of Oklahoma City Pastoral Center

Retreat for the Sovereign Order of Malta

Opening Dinner Keynote

June 24, 2022

 

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The following text guided the talk:

* It is a real joy to be with you tonight here in Oklahoma City for this St. John the Baptist Feast Day Reception, made even more solemn by the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart.

* We turn to the Lord tonight in the midst of this wonderful meal and thank him for the gift of hunger, which opens us up every day in humility and gratitude to taste and see his goodness. With providential love he never ceases to respond to our filial prayer to give us each day our daily bread. He fills the hungry with good things and this bodily hunger continually reminds us how to yearn for every word that comes from his mouth, how to hunger and thirst for righteousness, how to make doing his will our food and drink, how to look with compassion on our brothers and sisters who are under- or malnourished in body or soul, and most of all how to crave the eternal wedding feast. In speaking about his self-gift in the Holy Eucharist in the Synagogue of Capernaum the day after the miracle of the multiplication of five loaves and two fish and exactly a year before he fulfilled his words during the Last Supper, Jesus told us, “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.” He wanted to transform our natural hunger into a supernatural one, for what he called the True Manna that the Father would give, what he taught us to ask the Father to bestow when he taught us how to pray in the Our Father, “Give us this day our epi-ousios or supersubstantial Bread.”

* Helping us traverse the bridge between natural and supernatural nourishment is one of the reasons why, I think, Jesus did so much of his saving work at meals. He unveiled his glory for the first time during a wedding banquet in Cana. He embraced sinners at table in the houses of Matthew the Publican and Simon the Pharisee. He deepened friendships over food in Bethany with Martha, Mary and Lazarus. He showed his lavish generosity on hillsides by multiplying loaves and fish. He anticipated and began the new and eternal Passover at table in the Upper Room, going from natural to supernatural through the words of consecration, a wondrous passage he repeated when he revealed Himself to the disciples in Emmaus through the Breaking of Bread. And over breakfast at a seashore he taught the apostles as shepherds how to tend and feed his sheep materially and spiritually and as fishers of men how to fill the nets to the breaking point.

* Jesus wants to make meals like the one we’re having tonight a sacred banquet, where, when two or more of us gather in his name, he joins us to continue his saving work. It’s here where, as we break bread, fruit of the earth and work of human hands, he seeks to make us companions, cum-panis. It’s at table, as we share our lives with each other, that he seeks to bring about a true convivium modeled and pointing to the sharing of life that is meant to take place at the altar, where he seeks to make us “one body, one Spirit” and be brought to fulfillment in the table of God the Father’s eternal home. So how good it is that we are here together, with each other, with the Lord, and we pray, with St. John the Baptist and all those interceding for us at the unending banquet of heaven!

* Peter DeKeratry has asked me to speak to you tonight about the banquet given by Christ with imperishable food, the True Manna, his flesh and blood given for the life of the world....

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Acton University, Grand Rapids, Michigan

June 22, 2022

 

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The Social Teaching of Pope St. John Paul II 2022

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Acton University, Grand Rapids, Michigan

June 22, 2022

 

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Tne Entrepreneurial Vocation 2022

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Chapel of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY

Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of the Lord, Year C

June 19, 2022

Gen 14:18-20, Ps 110, 1 Cor 11:23-26, Lk 9:11-17

 

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: 

* In the Gospel for the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of the Lord this year, the Church has us meditate on the miracle of the multiplication of the five loaves and two fish to feed the crowd of about 5,000. There are a few reasons why the Church wants us to ponder this miracle on Corpus Christi. First, since it happened immediately before Jesus’ Bread of Life Discourse, Jesus used it to teach us about his Body and Blood in the Eucharist and lead us to hunger not for food that perishes but the food that leads to eternal life. Second, the connection between the miracle of the multiplication of loaves and fish and the miracle of the Eucharist to which it points is seen in the sequence of verbs we encounter, when St. Luke tells us that Jesus took the bread and fish into his hands, looked up to heaven, blessed and broke them and gave them to his disciples, gestures and words that are identical to what happened in the Upper Room when he transformed bread and wine into himself. Third, throughout the centuries many great saints have looked at the miracle of loaves and fish as foreshadowings, respectively, of the multiplication of the Eucharist, represented by the bread, and of believers, represented by the fish caught by fishers of men.

* Despite all of these connections, what we can focus on today, however, is the great contrast between the miracle of the loaves and fish and the miracle of the Eucharist. After the Twelve approach Jesus to encourage him to dismiss the crowd so that the multitude could go to the surrounding villages and farms to get provisions, Jesus told them, “Give them some food yourselves.” They could only scrouge up five small buns and two fish, which would have been inadequate to feed the apostles not to mention several thousand, but Jesus wanted to incorporate their meager offerings into the miracle, much like in the Eucharist, he starts not with grains and grapes but with bread and wine, which are not only the fruit of the earth and vine but the work of human hands. But whereas the apostles could actually give the crowds something themselves, however meager, in the Holy Eucharist there was no way the apostles directly could give the crowds the spiritual nourishment they needed even more. Jesus alone could do that. And one year after the miracle of the multiplication, during the next Passover, Jesus took bread and wine into his hands in the Upper Room, totally changed them into his Body and Blood, and said not just, “Take and eat, this is my body,” and “Take and drink, this is the chalice of my blood,” but also, “Do this in memory of me.” Rather than starting with the raw materials of fish and bread the apostles brought him to multiply, Jesus began the miracle himself and then gave the apostles the command, though the Sacrament of Holy Orders, to multiply his Body and Blood, bringing it to feed the crowds throughout time until the ends of the earth. With regard to the spiritual nourishment we need, Jesus doesn’t say, “Give them some food yourselves,” but rather, “This is my Body,” “This is my Blood,” and “Give them this food!”

* What Jesus did is the fulfillment of what Melchizedek did in the first reading. Melchizedek brought out bread and wine to offer to God. Christ, a priest forever in the line of Melchizedek as we prayed in the Psalm, took bread and wine into his hands in the Upper Room but gave the apostles — and through them,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for Corpus Christi Sunday, Year C, Vigil

June 18, 2022

 

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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 as we celebrate together the feast of the Holy Eucharist, his Body and Blood.

* In the Gospel for this year, the Church has us meditate on the multiplication of the five loaves and two fish to feed the crowd of about 5,000. There are a few reasons why the Church wants us to ponder this miracle on Corpus Christi. First, it happened immediately before Jesus’ Bread of Life Discourse, as Jesus used it to lead us to hunger not for food that perishes but the food that leads to eternal life, the True Manna, his own flesh and blood. Second, because of the verbs we encounter, when St. Luke tells us that Jesus took the bread and fish into his hands, looked up to heaven, blessed and broke them and gave them to his disciples, gestures and words that are identical to what happened in the Upper Room when he transformed bread and wine into himself. Third, many great saints have looked at the miracle of loaves and fish as foreshadowings, respectively, of the multiplication of the Eucharist, represented by the bread, and of believers, represented by the fish caught by fishers of men.

* Despite all of these connections, what I would like to ponder, however, is the great contrast between the miracle of the loaves and fish and the miracle of the Eucharist. In this Sunday’s Gospel, after the Twelve approach Jesus to encourage him to dismiss the crowd so that they could go to the surrounding villages and farms to get provisions, Jesus told them, “Give them some food yourselves.” Even though they could only scrouge up five small buns and two fish, which would have been inadequate to feed the apostles not to mention several thousand, Jesus wanted to incorporate their meager offerings into the miracle, much like in the Eucharist, he does seek to incorporate our efforts, starting not with grains and grapes but with bread and wine, which are not only the fruit of the earth and vine but the work of human hands. But whereas the apostles could actually give the crowds something themselves, however meager, in the Holy Eucharist there was no way the apostles directly could give the crowds the spiritual nourishment they needed even more. Jesus alone could do that. And one year after the miracle of the multiplication, during the next Passover, Jesus took bread and wine into his hands in the Upper Room, totally changed them into his Body and Blood, and said not just, “Take and eat, this is my body,” and “Take and drink, this is the chalice of my blood,” but also, “Do this in memory of me.” Rather than starting with the raw materials of fish and bread the apostles brought him to multiply, Jesus began the miracle himself and then gave the apostles the command, though the Sacrament of Holy Orders, to multiply his Body and Blood, bringing it to feed the crowds throughout time until the ends of the earth. With regard to the spiritual nourishment we need, Jesus doesn’t say, “Give them some food yourselves,” but rather, “This is my Body,” “This is my Blood,” and “Give them this food!”

* On Corpus Christi, we focus on this tremendous self-gift of Jesus and what our response should be. In St. Thomas Aquinas’ famous Lauda Sion Salvatorem that the Church proclaims as a Sequence before the Gospel,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Catholic Medical Association Student and Resident Boot Camp

Ave Maria University

June 13, 2022

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.13.22_Forms_Expressions_Fonts_Guides_of_Prayer_1.mp3

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Catholic Medical Association Student and Resident Boot Camp

Ave Maria University

June 13, 2022

 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.13.22_Jesus_and_Prayer_1.mp3

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Catholic Medical Association Student and Resident Boot Camp

Ave Maria University

June 13, 2022

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.13.22_Necessity_of_Prayer_1.mp3

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Catholic Medical Association Boot Camp

Ave Maria University St. Francis Xavier Chapel, Ave Maria, FL

Monday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

June 13, 2022

1 Kings 21:1-16, Ps 5, Mt 5:38-42

 

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The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* At first glance, today’s readings are bound to make us physically and spiritually nauseous. In the first reading, we encounter the story of Naboth, whose vineyard Ahab, the king of Samaria, coveted. Ahab told Naboth, “Give me your vineyard to be my vegetable garden, since it is close by, next to my house. I will give you a better vineyard in exchange, or, if you prefer, I will give you its value in money.” But Naboth refused, not because of selfishness, but because he believed that it was God who had given that land to him and his family to be treasured almost as a covenantal relationship: “The Lord forbid that I should give you my ancestral heritage.”  Ahab was so disturbed and angry he lay down on his bed and refused to eat. We see how coveting for material goods can destroy someone: as King of Israel, he had so many pieces of property and so many possessions, but he was unhappy because of what he didn’t have, rather than grateful for what he did. When his wife Jezebel asked why he wasn’t eating and found out the reason, she set herself on a plan of calculated evil to obtain the vineyard, writing letters in the king’s name and with his seal calling on the “elders and nobles” to secure two scoundrels to frame Naboth for the capital crime of having “cursed God and king.” The nobles went along with this abomination, Naboth was stoned to death, and Jezebel told her husband to go to acquire Naboth’s familial vineyard. The whole scene points to the revolting ugliness of wickedness and corruption, of those in positions of authority abusing their offices to trample on those, especially the worldly insignificant, who impede their insatiable will to have more power, popularity and property.

* And yet, when we read the first reading through the prism of the Gospel, it seems at first glance that Jesus is calling us not to resist this corruption and injustice but to enable it. From the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells us, “Offer no resistance to one who is evil. When someone strikes you on your right cheek, turn the other one to him as well. If anyone wants to go to law with you over your tunic, hand him your cloak as well. Should anyone press you into service for one mile, go with him for two miles. Give to the one who asks of you, and do not turn your back on one who wants to borrow.” It would appear that Jesus is saying, when a covetous, evil, corrupt King asks you for your ancestral land, give it to him, and give him your house, and your clothes and everything else besides. That’s certainly the way some people have misinterpreted this Gospel passage, but that’s not what Jesus is affirming. Jesus’ message is highly challenging all the same — he’s calling us to live by his standards, to have our righteousness surpass that of the Scribes and Pharisees as we heard last week, to go beyond a pagan sense of justice and love for those who love us, as we’ll hear tomorrow —  but he’s not telling us to become a punching bag or a defenseless victim before those who would seek to harm us or others.

* To grasp Jesus’ message, we first need to see the way he introduces it. He cites the “law of talion,” something that goes back to the Hammurabi Code of the 23rd century BC, but that was incorporated into the Mosaic law: “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” This was an ancient limit on vengeance, against a tribal notion of vendetta,