Catholic Preaching

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Tuesday of the 23rd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

September 6, 2022

1 Cor 6:1-11, Ps 149, Lk 6:12-19

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/9.6.22_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* As we begin the academic year today at Columbia, and as students at every level start taking steps toward their future, it’s important for us to focus on our vocation as Christians. In today’s readings we see several important elements for us to grasp about the deepest realities of our vocation and mission to live in and spread Christ’s kingdom. We also see some who don’t live according to this vocation.

* The first lesson is that our vocation, our life, is a direct result of the prayer of the Lord Jesus. We see him at the beginning of the Gospel go up a mountain and spend all night in prayer to his Father. He who is the second Person of the Blessed Trinity was praying all night. What an example about the importance of prayer for us who are not God! Jesus seems to have been praying in discernment about whom he should choose as his apostles and praying in intercession for those whom he was about to choose. We should never forget that Jesus likewise prays for us. He’s ascended into heaven in order to intercede for us. For that reason, we should never really be afraid of living up to the vocation that God has given us, because just as much as Jesus prayed for the apostles, prayed for Peter that his faith may not fail but that after his conversion he would strengthen his brothers (Lk 22), he prayed to the Father for all those who would hear the Gospel through the work of the Apostles (Jn 17), and prays for us still.

* The second thing we see in this Gospel episode is what he did at dawn. From among his disciples, he selected twelve apostles. It says he “called [them] to himself” and “named [them] Apostles,” another way of saying what St. Mark describes: “He called them to be with him and so that they might be sent out” (Mk 3:14). We come here face-to-face with the mystery of divine election. God calls us all to him, but among all of us he chooses some for more intensely intimate cooperation with him. Out of all people he chose the Jews; out of all the Jews, some became his disciples; out of all those disciples, 12 became apostles; out of all 12, he chose three (Peter, James and John) to be with him in many of the most pivotal moments of his public life (healing the daughter of Jairus, the Transfiguration, the Agony in the Garden); and out of the three, he chose one, Peter, on whom to build his Church. Likewise we can say that Jesus calls all 7 billion alive today to come to the knowledge of the truth, but only 2 out of 7 is Christian and only half of them are Catholic. These facts don’t make us better than anyone else, but we are certainly fortunate. And just as the apostles responded to Jesus’ invitation and left other things to be with him and made themselves available to be sent out on mission, so have we, something that is a response to Jesus’ prayer and doubtless something that gives him great joy.

* The third thing we see in the Gospel is the way Jesus trained the twelve to carry on his mission. We see that he taught the crowds, he healed them of their diseases and cured them of demonic possession. Everyone, St. Luke tells us, wanted to touch him “because power came forth from him and healed them all.” The mission of the Church is to continue to teach as Jesus’ mystical body, to continue to heal through the sacraments and through charity, and to continue to make it possible for people to touch Jesus and be touched by him. For this to occur,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, New York

Monday of the 23rd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta (25th Anniversary of her death and birth into eternal life)

September 5, 2022

1 Cor 5:8, Ps 5, Lk 6:6-11

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/9.5.22_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following text guided today’s homily: 

* Jesus’ mission was not just to save and sanctify but to revolutionize, to turn right side up, the way his people had distorted religion, to give us new wineskins to receive new wine. This distortion was epitomized by the way many of the Scribes and Pharisees treated the Sabbath, making it a day of extraordinary rules about everything they couldn’t do, rather than a day of loving God with all they had and loving their neighbor. In today’s Gospel the Scribes and the Pharisees went to the Synagogue on the Sabbath, but they really weren’t going for that reason. St. Luke tells us that their main focus was to “watch Jesus closely to see if he would cure on the Sabbath so that they might discover a reason to accuse him.” The suffering of the man with the withered hand didn’t matter much to them. On this Labor Day in the USA, we can note that St. Luke’s term for this man’s hand was that it had “dried up”: in other words, it had once had life in it but no longer did. One of the apocryphal Gospels said that the man was a mason who had been injured on the job and could no longer work and support himself and his family. But the injured laborer’s plight didn’t concern the Pharisees at all. Even though they would rescue an animal from a trap on a Sabbath, they wouldn’t care for their fellow man, as if restoring him to health would somehow be offensive to God. So Jesus, reading their hearts, asked the question: “Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath rather than to do evil, to save life rather than to destroy it?” It was a poignant question because he was intending to do good and to save life, and they were intending to do evil and destroy life. What Jesus was doing they somehow found objectionable, but what they were doing — trying to prevent Jesus’ doing good and then conspiring to plot his demise — was somehow licit, even on the Lord’s Day. They didn’t answer Jesus’ question for obvious reasons.

* Jesus then worked his miracle of mercy, not only to do good to the man with the withered hand and restore his livelihood but do good to his objectors and to all of us, by showing us the true meaning of the Sabbath and God’s desire to make us whole. He had the man with the injured hand come and stand before everyone, the first of the two steps of faith by which the man would cooperate in his own healing. Then he said to the man, in the second step of faith, “Stretch out your hand!” He was telling someone who hadn’t been able to move his hand for who-knows-how-long to make an act of the will and do the impossible. And St. Luke the beloved physician noted something beautiful: not “his hand was restored and he did so,” but, “he did so and his hand was restored.” He extended himself in faith and that was part of his restoration. As this man was stretching out his hand in response to Jesus’, we can, in a sense, imagine an act of recreation in which, reminiscent of Michelangelo’s scene of creation, God stretched forth his hand as his creature likewise did and it was in that action that the breath of life was given.

* As we celebrate today the feast of Saint Mother Teresa Calcutta and mark the 25th anniversary of her being called home by Christ, we recall how her 51 years as a Missionary of Charity were an extended commentary and continuation of the mercy we see from Jesus in today’s Gospel.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

September 4, 2022

Wis 9:13-18, Ps 90, Philemon 9-10.12-17, Lk 14:25-33

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/9.4.22_Homily_CCM_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* As we begin this new academic year and many of you begin this big new phase of your life as an undergrad, transfer or graduate student here at Columbia, Jesus in the Gospel speaks to us with two memorable images about what we could call “starting with the end in mind.” Before starting to build a tower, he says, we need to make sure we have enough bricks to complete it. Likewise, before the first battle is waged, we need to know that we have enough troops to win the war. It’s important advice in any endeavor. Students need to know, for example, that they will have enough time to complete their work, enough sleep to focus, enough credits to graduate. Jesus was applying those metaphors to what it takes to be a faithful student of us. The word disciple in Greek, as many of you know, means student, and the Latin word for student comes from the word for “zealous.” To be a true student of Jesus the Master means to be filled with love for the Teacher and the subject matter and Jesus gives three conditions in the Gospel to see if we’re that type of student, to determine if we’re sagely beginning with the end in mind, to help us know whether we’ve got the bricks to finish the job and the troops to fight the good fight. The conditions are challenging, but Jesus regularly challenges his disciples in the Gospel. Besides, when have Columbia students ever backed down from a challenge?

* The first condition is to love God above every reality. Jesus says, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” In order to understand what he is saying here, we have to grasp the Hebrew term for “hate.” It doesn’t mean to “detest” but to “put in second place.” Jesus, after all, calls us to honor our parents, not hate their guts. If he calls us to love even our enemies then we are certainly called to love our siblings. The point of Jesus’ expression is that he must be our greatest love, our supreme good. To be a good student of the Master, a disciple of the Lord, we must love him more than we love ourselves or our loved ones. Jesus cannot just be a part of our life but the center. If we love others more than him, if we love our life more than him, we won’t have enough fuel in the plane to cross the Atlantic.

* The second condition concerns our willingness to suffer for him who suffered all for us. Jesus says, “Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” To be a faithful student of the one who saved us on Calvary, we need to be prepared to suffer out of love for him and others; otherwise, we will not be able faithfully to fulfill the journey of the Christian life. The clearest example of this is the martyrs, who were prepared to die rather than to sin, who were prepared to embrace the Cross all the way because they knew that the Cross would unite them to Christ. But we see this as well in Christian doctors, medical students and pharmacists who refuse to take part in any way in any practices that harm or take life, even if they might suffer professionally; we see this in people who stick up for Christ and his teachings even when they suffer derision as a result at university, work or in their families; we see this in those who sacrifice money and time to care for others and for the mission of the Church. If we’re not willing to endure suffering,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Chapel of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY

Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

September 4, 2022

Wis 9:13-18, Ps 90, Philemon 9-10.12-17, Lk 14:25-33

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/9.4.22_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* Today in the readings the Church has us focus on what it means to be a faithful disciple of Jesus Christ and how our faith in him is meant to transform, to radicalize, every aspect of our life, from our approach to our loved ones, to our possessions, to those who have wronged us, to our sufferings, even to our own life and death. This morning in St. Peter’s Square, during the beatification of Blessed John Paul I, Pope Francis focused on the demanding nature of choosing to follow Jesus on how his predecessor “lived … in the joy of the Gospel, without compromise, loving to the end [and] embodied the poverty of the disciple, which is not only detachment from material goods, but also victory over the temptation to put oneself at the center, to seek one’s own glory.” This morning we will focus not on Blessed John Paul I but on a radiantly smiling religious sister and spiritual mother (well known to you!) who was canonized six years ago today, the 25th anniversary of whose birth into eternal life we will celebrate tomorrow, who similarly illustrates for us the transformative call flowing from our baptism, how to overcome the various excuses some give to responding to the Lord as he deserves and desires, and essentially how to live as a faithful disciple of the Lord.

* In the second reading, St. Paul tells Philemon that the way he should relate to his escaped slave Onesimus, who had cared for Paul in his Roman imprisonment, should be marked far more by the reality of their common baptism than by Roman class structure and law. Onesimus had escaped and for that reason needed at a minimum to be marked for life by a red-hot iron with a F for “fugitive” on his forehead and he could even be crucified at Philemon’s whim. But Paul sent Onesimus back to Philemon and asked Philemon to receive Onesimus not as a slave but as a brother in the Lord, to welcome him as he would welcome Paul himself or even Christ himself. This is amazing: The reality of the indelible mark of baptism on Onesimus’ soul was to be far weightier, Paul suggested, than the branded F that should be seared into his forehead. And we have every reason to believe that that is exactly how Philemon welcomed Onesimus back, otherwise we almost certainly wouldn’t have had this personal letter of St. Paul preserved. This points to the type of revolution the Christian faith is supposed to work. Our faith in Christ, and what we know he asks of us, is supposed to be the central reference point for how we look at ourselves, how we look at others, and how we make our decisions. Philemon received God’s grace to welcome Onesimus no longer as a piece of property, no longer as someone who had stolen from him, but as a beloved spiritual sibling. The Christian faith is always supposed to transform the way we look at others. It certainly had that impact in Mother Teresa’s life. She took seriously Jesus’ words that whoever receives a little child in his name, receives him, and that whatever we do to the least of his brothers and sisters, we do to him. And she behaved accordingly, finding and loving Jesus Christ in the “distressing disguise” of lepers, the dying, those covered in maggots drowning in their own urine in gutters, those with AIDS/HIV, refugees, the disabled, the untouchables, abandoned, orphaned, unwanted and unborn children, and so many others. No one was a mere mortal, to use CS Lewis’ memorable expression: everyone was special for God and t...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

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

Memorial of St. Gregory the Great

September 3, 2022

1 Cor 4:6-15, Ps 145, Lk 6:1-5

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/9.3.22_Homily_1.mp3

 

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* We have been pondering all week the contrast between thinking as God thinks versus thinking as human beings do, between being wise in the mentality of the world versus truly wise in seeing everything from the perspective of God in faith. Today brings those considerations to a head and make them personal. When we live according to God’s way, when we think as God thinks and live according to his ways, the worldly wise will often think we’re weird. As a result, they may look down upon us, tease or mock us, oppose us, and perhaps even harass, persecute us or worse. That’s what they did to Jesus. That’s what happened to the first disciples and apostles. That’s what can happen in any age. We need to be prepared not just to endure these contradictions, but, like Jesus, like St. Paul in today’s first reading, like Pope St. Gregory the Great whom the Church remembers today, to embrace them and eventually to find joy in suffering them out of love for God, for others and for the truth.

* Today in the Gospel we see how Jesus  was opposed by some of the Pharisees, among the religious leaders of his day, based on the contrast between the way God envisions true worship and the way human beings can sometimes form their own religion pretending it’s what God wants. God gave us the gift and the command to keep holy the Sabbath Day so that we would be able to be with God and allow him to refresh us in the “rest” that he gave us as an example by himself resting on the seventh day of creation. To keep the Sabbath holy, according to the Jewish conception of holiness (qadosh) was to consecrated it to God, to sever it from profane purposes so that it can be better united with God. After the exile, when the class of scribes arose to study the law and make sure the Jews weren’t violating it — because they recognized it was because of their infidelity that the exile happened in the first place — they began to create all sorts of regulations to keep themselves and their fellow Jews’ from getting anywhere close to breaking the law. So while God commanded, “Keep Holy the Sabbath Day” so that they wouldn’t return to the slavery of constant work like they experienced in Egypt, the scribes said that they couldn’t do basically any work at all. With regard to today’s Gospel, they said that you couldn’t do any reaping (plucking), threshing (rubbing it in their hands), winnowing (chucking the husks) and preparing (eating), all things that Jesus and his disciples did in today’s Gospel. Their understanding had become that to honor God and grow in holiness, they couldn’t do any work at all to prepare the food that God had given them, as if wanted his sons and daughters to starve on the day he had created to refresh them. But these Pharisaical restrictions weren’t God’s wisdom, but man’s foolishness. Those who were spying on Jesus recognized that he and his disciples “violated” all of these manmade restrictions and confronted him. Jesus tried to take them back to the meaning of the law. Jesus reminded them that David had eaten the “bread of presence” in the temple, the 12 loaves that would remain there as a sign of God’s provision, and that were to be eaten after their service only by the priests. Jesus was showing himself the new David and showing that his disciples were like David’s soldiers in fighting the battles of the Lord.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

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

September 3, 2022

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/9.3.22_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 he will speak to us, with challenging or perhaps even scary words, about what being his disciple involves, what Christian faith really means and requires. He uses the images of how a contractor building a tower must make sure he has enough bricks to complete the work, and of a king going into battle ensuring he has enough troops to defeat his adversary to drive home the point. Jesus wants us to know the resources and commitment we will need to build a life of true faith and the type of strategy we will need to be successful in fighting the good fight, finishing the race and keeping the faith. Jesus challenges us this way not to scare us away, but to give us proper expectations so that we will open ourselves to receive the help he’ll give to complete the building project of Christian life and win the battle against the flesh, the world and the evil one.

* As we examine what Jesus tells us, I’d like to contextualize it within the life of St. Teresa of Calcutta, without doubt one of the greats and most compelling saints of modern times, the twenty-fifth anniversary of whose death, and birth into eternal life, the Church will celebrate this Monday. The saints are the living commentaries on the Gospel. Mother Teresa shows us how Jesus’ words — although perhaps initially scary because they are addressed to freeing us from the idols that we can occasionally make of our families, pleasures, health, possessions, and even life — are actually the path of happiness, holiness and heaven. Jesus out of love exposes the various excuses we can give to acting on the call he gives us by our baptism to be, like Mother Teresa, holy as God is holy, and to love others as he has loved us first. He describes for us that our Christian faith is meant to be the most defining reality in our life, more powerful than family, material goods, comfort, safety and even our life. Let’s ask Mother Teresa’s intercession as we seek to follow what Jesus tells us this Sunday, with as much faith, hope and love, with as much courage and commitment, with as much joy and fruit, as she did.

* Jesus gives us three conditions to being his faithful follower. The first is to love God above every reality. He says, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” In other words, Jesus must be our greatest love. The word “hate” in Hebrew does not mean “detest” but to “put in second place.” Jesus, after all, calls us to honor our parents, not hate their guts. If he calls us to love even our enemies then we are certainly called to love our siblings. The point of Jesus’ expression is that we must love him more than we love ourselves or our loved ones. Jesus cannot just be a part of our life but the center. He clearly was for Mother Teresa, who was willing to leave her home in Albania and go first to Ireland, then to India and then to the ends of the earth because she knew that Jesus was calling her to satiate his infinite thirst for souls. Each of us in a similar way must put Jesus first — and this, frankly, will help us to love our loved ones more, not less, and to seek their ultimate good and happiness through a ...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

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

September 2, 2022

1 Cor 4:1-5, Ps 37, Lk 5:33-39

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/9.2.22_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Four times a year at daily Mass — on the 2nd Monday of Ordinary Time, on the Friday after Ash Wednesday, on the 13th Saturday, and on the 22nd Friday — the Church has us focus on Jesus’ words about feasting and fasting and the parables of the patch and of the wineskins. It is one of the most common themes we have, because it’s central to our life as believers. Jesus, in them, teaches us about how he wishes us to relate to him. He has come to give us new life but the new life is not a minor revision to our “operating system,” to eliminate some “bugs” in the software; rather it’s a thorough revamp. He wants new skins, not old, to receive the newness he constantly gives. At the time of Jesus there were three purposes for fasting: reparation for one’s sins and those of others; supplication, or prayer in the body, for some petition; and the desire for authentic self-mastery through the capacity to say “no” to one’s appetite for food and “yes” to some other purpose, developing a moral muscle that can help to say no to other temptations in order faithfully to say yes to God. These purposes flowing from Old Testament times were not bad or immoral. But Jesus today gives thoroughly new purpose. He says the purpose of fasting is to help us hunger for him in his absence and, when his presence is restored, ultimately to learn how to hunger for what he hungers. When he is “ripped away” — the same verb that is used for his arrest in Gethsemane — it is then that we fast. With regard to fasting, we need to do more than just copy what they did in previous times. We need more than a minor correction or  “patch.” We need a new heart. We need a new longing. We need a new hunger.

* Today the readings specify three “new” ways we need to relate to Christ.

* First, as “friends of the bridal chamber,” which is what is poorly translated as “wedding guests.” Because Jesus the Bridegroom is with us, pouring himself into our life, we must like groomsmen and bridesmaids be full of joy. That’s the first type of wine he wants to pour into us anew. A Christian must be defined by a sense of joy because of the presence of the Bridegroom. To be a Christian is, to some degree, always to be living out the joy we see on wedding days, as friends of the Bridal Chamber as Christ unites himself to others, and as Bride, as the Bridegroom unites himself to us. Sometimes as Christians we do better at fasting than we do at feasting in the Lord’s presence. We behave as if the Lord is absent more than we live in his presence, pondering in depth what his presence means and making abiding in his presence ever more concrete. Today is an opportunity to receive new wineskins from Christ so that we might live out that spousal mystery.

* Second, St. Paul in his First Letter to the Corinthians says we’re called to be servants of Christ. The word servant he uses is not diakonos or doulos, the common Greek words for “servant” or “slave.” It’s huperetes, which means the slave who mans the rudder in a big ship, whose doesn’t establish the direction (the captain does) but helps head in that direction. That’s what we are called to do for Christ, trying to point our lives and those of others in the direction Jesus sets, not steering off course. This is true in this life and toward the eternal port. Jesus wishes to renew us in that direction today so that we can steer others along his narrow way.

* Third, St.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan

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

World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation

September 1, 2022

1 Cor 3:18-23, Ps 24, Lk 5:1-11

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/9.1.22_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* In today’s first reading, St. Paul tells the Corinthians and us, “If anyone among you considers himself wise in this age, let him become a fool, so as to become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in the eyes of God.” We see an illustration of how God’s wisdom turns human wisdom upside down in today’s Gospel. After having borrowed Peter’s boat as a floating pulpit to preach to the crowds, Jesus tells Peter to take his boat and put out into the deep water, lowering his nets for a catch. Peter had already worked all night and caught nothing. He wasn’t just tired but discouraged. The command of the Lord was absurd to anyone experienced in fishing on the Sea of Galilee, where people caught fish in shallow water at night time, not deep water in daylight. It would be as if a fisherman had told Jesus, a carpenter, to drive in nails by holding the head of the hammer and striking the nail with the handle. Peter, however, at the Lord’s word, put out into the deep and caught the biggest catch of his life. The wisdom of this world is indeed foolishness in the God-man’s eyes! That trust in the Lord that led Peter to put out into the deep was meant by the Lord to teach him and Andrew, James and John, about the life of faith and the work of evangelization: even when it seems that fishing-for-men “won’t work,” God can bring extraordinary results.

* We see this truth contrasting God’s wisdom versus worldly wisdom throughout this scene and throughout salvation history. Worldly wisdom would choose a good man rather than one whose first words were “depart from me for I am a sinner,” a rabbi rather than a fisherman, a nobleman rather than someone most considered a nobody. As St. Paul told us last Saturday, however, “God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise.”

* If we wish, like Peter, to be Jesus’ followers, we need to learn to trust in his wisdom far more than the world’s. We need to learn how to become a fool for and with him. To the Jews, as St. Paul described last Friday, the Cross is a scandal, to the Greek’s it’s folly, but to those with faith, to those who are fools full of God’s wisdom, it’s the “power and the wisdom of God.” It’s craziness to have Jesus’ version of talent recruitment, choosing the weak and ignobly born ignoramuses to shame the strong and worldly wise nobles of the world, but that’s precisely what God did. Perhaps most strikingly, to worldly wisdom the beatitudes are farcical. To be happy, worldly wisdom says we need to be rich, whereas Jesus’ wisdom says we need to be poor in spirit; worldly wisdom says we need to be strong and powerful, Jesus’ wisdom says we need to be meek and peacemaking; worldly wisdom says we need to have all our desires satiated,  whereas Jesus’ wisdom says we must starve for holiness; worldly wisdom says we need to give our libido free rein, whereas Jesus says we need to be pure in heart; and worldly wisdom says we need to be popular and liked by everyone, whereas Jesus’ wisdom says we need to be willing to be persecuted and reviled because of him.

* The question for us is whether we’re wise according to God’s wisdom or the world’s. Many consider themselves wise in this age and judge the wisdom of God by those standards rather than the other way around. They look at the world through the lens of politics and try to box everything in the Church into conversatives versus ...

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: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/8.31.22_Homily_1.mp3

 

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,