Catholic Preaching

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Immaculate Conception Seminary, Huntington, New York

Retreat for Columbia University Students

Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

October 9, 2022

2 Kings 5:14-17, Ps 98, 2 Tim 2:8-13, Lk 17:11-19

 

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

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The following text guided the homily: 

* As we approach the end of our retreat on going Into the Deep: Learning and Living the Art of Prayer, we have examples in today’s readings of prayers of intercession, petition and thanksgiving, the attributes of faith and perseverance, and the reaction we should have to the encounter with God in prayer. They lead collectively to what our fundamental response should be to the whole retreat. Let’s go into the deep with the help of the Word of God.

* In the first reading, we see the healing of Naaman the Syrian. We get only the end of the story in today’s passage, but the whole miracle is key for us to grasp for our Christian faith. When this powerful Army commander of the King of Aram was diagnosed with leprosy, he and the King who loved him had no idea what to do. Previously in a raid they had captured a girl from Israel who had become the servant of Naaman’s wife. Having doubtless heard Naaman and his wife lamenting the situation, the girl said, in an example of intercession, “If only my master would present himself to the prophet in Samaria, he would cure him of his leprosy.” The King told Naaman he should go and sent him, along with a letter of introduction and appeal to the King of Israel, with an enormous retinue as well as ten silver talents, six thousand gold pieces, and ten festal garments. The King of Israel, upon reading the letter, deemed it a provocation to war, since he knew he was not a god and had no means to cure Naaman of leprosy. When Elisha the prophet, however, heard about Naaman’s arrival and the King of Israel’s response, he said, “Let him come to me and find out that there is a prophet in Israel.” When Naaman arrived, however, Elisha, who obviously expected him, sought to test his faith. He didn’t even come to greet him. He simply sent a note saying, “Go and wash seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will heal, and you will be clean.” Naaman responded with anger, saying, “I thought that he would surely come out and stand there to invoke the Lord his God, and would move his hand over the spot, and thus cure the leprosy. Are not the rivers of Damascus, the Abana and the Pharpar, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them and be cleansed?” And in his indignation, he began to leave. His servants, however, came up to reason with him. “If the prophet had told you to do something extraordinary, would you not have done it?,” they asked. “All the more now, since he said to you, ‘Wash and be clean,’ should you do as he said.” And so Naaman went down and plunged into the Jordan seven times at the word of Elisha and, as we see in today’s excerpt, his flesh became again like the flesh of a little child, and he was totally cleansed.

* There are several lessons we learn from this in our Christian life, but one of the most important is to trust in the means God gives us. It might seem incredible, for example, that water over our forehead and the words,“I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” are enough to wipe away sin, make us God’s children, and fill us with the indwelling of the Trinity, but that is what in fact occurs. We might conceive of many other ways our post-baptismal sins might be forgiven than the Sacrament of Confession, like long years of difficult penances out of contrition, but Jesus wanted his mercy accessible and hence f...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Immaculate Conception Seminary, Huntington, New York

Retreat for Columbia University Students

October 9, 2022

 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.9.22_Final_Conference_1.mp3

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Immaculate Conception Seminary, Huntington, New York

Retreat for Columbia University Students

October 8, 2022

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.8.22_Forms_Expressions_Fonts_Guides_Obstacles_1.mp3

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Immaculate Conception Seminary, Huntington, New York

Retreat for Columbia University Students

October 8, 2022

 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.8.22_Christ_and_Prayer_1.mp3

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Immaculate Conception Seminary, Huntington, New York

Retreat for Columbia University Students

October 8, 2022

 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.8.22_Necessity_of_Prayer_1.mp3

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Immaculate Conception Seminary, Huntington, NY

Retreat for Columbia University Students

Saturday of the 27th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

October 8, 2022

Gal 3:22-29, Ps 105, Lk 11:27-28

 

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

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The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* In today’s Gospel, the conversation between Jesus and an anonymous woman from the crowd who sought to praise his mother Mary is very helpful to us as we seek on this retreat to go into the deep in prayer. “Blessed is the womb that carried you and the breasts at which you nursed!,” the unnamed woman called out. If any womb was blessed, it was the immaculate womb of Mary of Nazareth that tabernacled for nine months the Creator and Savior of the world. If any breasts were blessed, it would have been those that nursed and fed the one who gives us each day our daily bread. But Jesus wasn’t going to limit the praise of the mother whom he daily honored to her inimitable physical bonds to him as the Son of God made man. He replied to the woman by highlighting a far greater source of Mary’s blessing, something that each and every one of us not only can emulate but is called to emulate: “Rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it.” Prayer is the attentive listening to the word of God. In Hebrew, there is no distinction between the verb “to hear” and “to obey.” If we hear the Word of God as it’s supposed to be heard, we hear it as a word to be done. A similar distinction is found in Latin. The word to hear is “audire” and the word to obey is “ob-audire,” an intensified listening, almost like eavesdropping. Prayer is ultimately not just to permit us to enter into conversation with God, but as we seek him, find him, hear him, we’re also called to say, like Mary, “let it be done to me according to your word,” to love him and love his will such that we, like Mary, want to do it. The profoundest source of Mary’s beatitude was her faithful listening and response to God in her life. St. Athanasius described that before Mary had ever conceived the Word of God in her womb, she had already conceived Him in her heart through faith. So many medieval depictions of the Annunciation and the miraculous virginal conception of Jesus in the Incarnation show the Holy Spirit entering through Mary’s ears, to highlight this form of faithful listening. In a parallel scene, when Mary had come to see him together with many of his cousins from Nazareth, they told Jesus inside a crowded house where he was teaching and healing that his mother and relatives were outside waiting for him. Taking advantage of the teaching moment, he replied, “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?” And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my heavenly Father is my brother, and sister, and mother” (Mt 12:46-50). Mary is the paradigm of all those who do the will of God the Father, who hear what he asks and who act on it. To be a true brother or sister of Jesus in the family he came from heaven to earth to found, it’s not really enough just to be baptized, although that’s an essential start. We also have to listen to him as he describes for us the will of God and then, just as he did, say, mean and lovingly do the words “Thy will be done!” This is an essential aspect of going into the deep in prayer.

* In the first reading, we see how Saint Paul describes that the entire Old Testament, the Covenant God made with the Jews, was meant to train them to hear and observe the Word of God. “The law was our disciplinarian for Christ,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Immaculate Conception Seminary, Huntington, New York

Retreat for Columbia University Students

October 7, 2022

 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.7.22_Intro_to_Retreat_1.mp3

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

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

October 8, 2022

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.8.22_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, when we will not only witness the Lord’s power to heal people of the dreadful disease of leprosy, but the larger point of how we’re supposed to respond when the Lord gives us an incredible gift like that.

* Ten lepers approached Jesus. He would cure all ten of a disease that had been eating away their flesh and bones, that had made them stink worse than skunks, that had made them outcasts and forced them to stay at least 50 feet away from any non-leper and to cry out “unclean!, unclean!,” anytime someone was approaching. It cut them off from their family members. It also cut them off from the communal worship of God as they could never go to the Synagogue on Saturday or to the Temple on the major holy days. But at their insistent, even courageous, cry for mercy, Jesus healed them all and sent them to the priests, which was the means set up in the Mosaic Law to verify that the disease had stopped growing and they were no longer contagious. The text of St. Luke indicates that as they were heading to the priest, they were completely cured: they no longer had their leprous sores, and their bodies had been made whole again. After recognizing that the miracle for which they had prayed and longed for had been granted, we would have expected that all of them would have been rejoicing almost as if they had been raised from the dead. But only one of the ten returned to thank the Lord who had given them this gift. Jesus poignantly asked, “Ten were cleansed, were they not? Where are the other nine?”

* Jesus wished them all to return not because he had worked the miracle with impure motives to get them to thank him, but so that he might give them an even greater gift than their stupendous physical cure. He wanted to give them all what he gave the Samaritan who returned: the grace of salvation by faith. After the healed man fell down at his feet to thank him with all his heart, Jesus told him, “Stand up and go. Your faith has saved you!”

* This is a key point: Jesus came into the world not fundamentally to heal our bodies but to restore our souls. He came not to remedy our ills but to redeem our lives. In order to receive these greater gifts, however, we need gratefully to be in relationship with God. While all ten men were cured of the physical leprosy, nine retained a form of leprosy of the soul, an ingratitude that took for granted the greatest gift they had received in life until then. Only the grateful leper would receive the gift of salvation because only he had a heart that was opened to receive it. The other nine didn’t and Jesus made note of it, saying, “Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God?” The other nine lepers were presumably Jews and Jesus was implying that it was shocking that only the Samaritan returned because the Jews had been trained by God for centuries in the prayers of the Psalms and in the incredible events of salvation history to give thanks to the Lord for he is good, for his mercy endures forever. If anyone should have learned how to say thanks to God, it should have been the Jews. But many of them took God’s generosity, God’s goodness, for granted.

* I’ve always thought that the nine who didn’t return likely looked a...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Friday of the 27th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary

October 7, 2022

Gal 3:7-14, Ps 111, Lk 11:15-26

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.7.22_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today’s Gospel was the first Gospel I ever had the privilege to proclaim and today’s readings were the first ones about which I ever preached, 24 years ago (October 8 that year), the day after I was ordained a deacon. I’ve always thought that God was very good to me in giving me these readings because they’re not particularly easy to preach on, and so from the first time I ever had the chance to act on what I was instructed at my diaconal ordination, to “Believe what you read [and] teach what you believe,” I had to do so explicitly with far greater dependence on God, far greater cooperation with the Holy Spirit. Whenever I have had the chance to proclaim and preach, therefore, on the readings of the 27th Friday of Ordinary Time Year II, it always reminds me of the summons God gives to turn to him for light!

* I’d like to focus on two huge lessons from today’s readings and then tie them to today’s Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary.

* The first is about faith. In today’s reading from St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians, the apostle talks to us about faith, saying that those who have faith are children of Abraham. St. Paul was writing this to the Christians he had evangelized on his first and second journeys, but whose faith had then been reprogrammed by Judaized Christians coming from Jerusalem, those who thought that in order to be a good Christian, you first had to be a perfect Jew. They didn’t realize that the Mosaic Law was a gift to prepare God’s people for the advent of the Messiah, who would bring the law to perfection. St. Paul will call the Mosaic Law, as we’ll see tomorrow, a pedagogue or tutor, someone who would travel with you to class to the master or professor, and then, after class, go over all of the lessons. St. Paul was stressing throughout this letter as well as his letter to the Romans that we are saved by God through faith: it’s God’s work that we receive through the gift of faith. The Judaizers, like the Pharisees of which he was once one, thought we were saved by our actions of fidelity to God’s law. We’re judged by them, but not saved by them. But the big takeaway is not just why the Judaizing Christians were wrong. The great takeaway is how we’re supposed to live. We’re supposed to live by faith just like Abraham. We’re constantly being asked by God to make journeys of faith like Abraham did at 75, leaving Ur of the Chaldeans, his security, his life as he knew it until then and journey to a place God would show him. God didn’t tell him the destination, but Abraham trusted in him enough to go. God promised that he would become the father of many nations and showed him the stars of the sky as a confirmation of how many descendants he’d have, but the text of Genesis is clear that he was asked to look into the heavens when the sky was blue, not dark, because dusk came afterward. Abraham knew the stars were there, but couldn’t see them, which is a good image of what faith means, a certainty without seeing with worldly eyes. He didn’t know that he would have to wait 25 years for the fulfillment of that promise, but he continued to believe. He didn’t realize that he would be asked to sacrifice the fulfillment of that promise, Isaac, 13 years after his birth, but he did so with incredible faith, knowing, as the Letter to the Hebrews tells us, that God would raise him from the dead if he should be sacrificed.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Thursday of the 27th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of Blessed Marie-Rose Durocher

Memorial of St. Bruno

October 6, 2022

Gal 3:1-5, Lk 1:69-75, Lk 11:5-13

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.6.22_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Yesterday when the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, he began by teaching them that the secret of prayer is to approach God as a loving Father. Once we do, almost everything flows. We begin to seek the glory and sanctification of his name and the building of his kingdom not only because we love Him but also because we know that, as his sons and daughters, we share that name and are heirs of that kingdom. Once we relate to him as a Loving Father than we trust in his providence to give us each day what we need and in his mercy to forgive us when we err because he loves us more than he detests the sins that hurt us and wound our relationship with him. When we relate to him as a Loving Father we trust him not to put us in a position in which we’ll fail the ultimate test but to challenge us and help us to meet those challenges that are beyond what we think are possible.

* Today Jesus continues his responding to our request to teach us how to pray by illustrating for us how to persevere in prayer. He gives us a parable based on middle eastern customs of hospitality. Especially during the summer months when the sun is most brutal, many Jews would travel at night and so it was not unheard of that a guest would arrive at your home — in the days before not only phones, texts and emails but also before a postal system that was affordable and efficient — unannounced at night, famished after a long journey. Because bread was baked normally in the morning, it’s possible that all the bread had already been eaten. That’s why you’d go to your neighbors to ask if they had anything to share. The second thing to understand about middle eastern culture is that their doors were open all day long but when they were shut and locked, that meant that the entire family and all their animals had gone to bed. They’d sleep together in an interior part of the house to stay warm during the typical middle eastern radiational cooling at night. To get up to answer the door when a neighbor was knocking at midnight meant that one would likely be stepping on one’s children, one’s animals and waking everyone up. It’s understandable that one would want to wait to share bread until the morning. But Jesus says that because of the perseverance of the neighbor, “I tell you, if he does not get up to give him the loaves because of their friendship, he will get up to give him whatever he needs because of his persistence.” Jesus mentions this as a lesson in prayer precisely in order to contrast that motivation with one of God. He was saying, “If a neighbor would eventually give in because of harassment, think about how God will respond out of love?” That led Jesus to say, “I tell you, ask and you will receive, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you, for everyone who asks receives, everyone who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks the door will be opened.” Notice that he doesn’t say that one will receive, find or have the door opened immediately. He also doesn’t say that one will receive and find exactly what one expected to find. But he does promise God will respond, precisely because God is a loving Father who always responds first and foremost by giving himself. That’s why Jesus said, “What father among you would hand his son a snake when he asks for a fish? Or hand him a scorpion when he asks for an egg?