Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Lent, C, Vigil

March 26, 2022

 

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The text that guided the homily was: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation Jesus wants to have with us in this Sunday’s Gospel, in which he engages us with perhaps the most famous short story of all time. It’s called the Parable of the Prodigal Son after the youngest of two brothers, but it could easily have been called the Parable of the Merciful Father or the Parable of the Merciless Brother. We know the details of the story so well that we can pass immediately to trying to understand better and apply it more fully.

* We begin with the younger son. His essential sin was not all that he did to blow his inheritance on a dissolute life. It was to treat his Father as if he were dead. To ask for the inheritance while the Father was still living was tantamount to saying, “You’re dead to me, Old Man. I don’t want to wait until you croak. Give me now what you’re planning to give me when finally you breathe your last.” And the Father, doubtless more concerned over the direction of his son’s life than nursing his own wounds at the son’s ingratitude and presumption, gave him the inheritance, probably figuring out it would be the only chance that the son might have of learning the lesson he had long missed. The son, as we know, went and squandered everything in an immoral life. Eventually when a famine hit the land where he was, he needed to do work that no Jew would ever have signed up for, to care for pigs (whom the Jews considered unclean animals). He was eventually so hungry that he longed for what the pigs were eating, something that indicated basically that he had become almost subhuman. But that’s when the grace of conversion hit him. “Coming to his senses,” St. Luke writes, he realized that his Father’s hired hands were always well fed and he decided to return to his Father’s house, to apologize for his sins, and asked to be treated like a hired hand. When we hear the word today, “hired hand,” most of us, I think, imagine he was asking to be treated as an “employee,” but it really “less than a slave.” Slaves were considered members of the household to some degree and they were taken care of and fed. The “hired hands” were not members of the family. They were responsible for their own upkeep, if they could get a job day-by-day. But the younger son recognized that the Father was kind and gave “more than enough food to eat” even to those who had no right to food. The son was beginning to reawaken to the Father’s goodness. But he still didn’t understand the Father. He rehearsed his speech as he was returning home, that he had sinned against God and against his father — both of whom he had treated as if they were dead to him — and didn’t deserve to be treated as a son. But the Father, seeing him far off, was filled with merciful love and ran to his son, probably hustling the way a child scampers across the airport to greet his or her father returning from military service overseas. The son began with his well-practiced confession, but the Father interrupted him. He called for the finest garment to be put around him to cover up all of the swine excrement with which doubtless he had been covered. He put a signet ring on his finger, to show that he still had “power of attorney” over the Father’s goods. He had sandals placed on his feet to symbolize that he was free to go about as he pleased — slaves never had sandals.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Third Sunday of Lent, C, Vigil

March 19, 2022

 

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The following text guided the homily: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation Jesus wants to have with us in this Sunday’s Gospel, when he will speak to us what are in my opinion his most forceful words of conversion that we hear in the 156-week cycle of the Church’s Sunday liturgical readings. Two and a half weeks ago, you recall, as Lent began, we were marked with ashes, reminded that we are dust and unto dust we shall return upon our death and instructed to repent and believe in the Gospel. We listened with fresh ears to St. Paul’s appeal as an ambassador of Christ calling us to be “reconciled to God,” appealing to us not to take this time in vain, and begging us not to procrastinate, saying, “Now is the acceptable time. Now is the day of salvation.”

* This Sunday’s readings shock us out of complacency — almost as defibrillator paddles for our souls — and get us to examine honestly before the Lord whether we have been responding to this acceptable time of mercy with the urgency and priority that God desires or whether we have been taking these 40 days and perhaps our whole Christian life and calling, for granted.

* In Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus begins with current events, referring to two tragedies that had captured the attention of the crowds in previous days. If Jesus were preaching today, he could easily make the same point referring to the appalling atrocities being committed in the Ukraine or about any fatal car accident we see on the news.

* Someone asked his opinion about massacre of Galileans by Pontius Pilate in the Temple whose blood had been mixed with animal sacrifices. Those pilgrims from Galilee had made the long journey to the Temple in Jerusalem to pray, but they had gotten caught up in a crowd where protestors were demonstrating against Pilate’s decision to raid the Temple coffers for funds to build a new water system. When Pilate sent his troops to quell the protest, the soldiers met resistance, unsheathed their swords and massacred not only the protestors but these Galilean bystanders. There was a superstition at the time that if people died in such a way, it had to be a sign that God was punishing them for some serious sins they had committed, as if they somehow “deserved it.” Jesus asks, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way, they were greater sinners than all other Galileans?” “No way!,” he replied. Then he raised another example of people who were bathing underneath the water tower at the pool of Siloam in Jerusalem, which they believed had miraculous powers to cure them of bodily illnesses. The shoddily constructed tower collapsed and crushed to death some of those bathing. Jesus asked again, whether the 18 people who died were “more guilty than everyone else who lived in Jerusalem!” “By no means!,” he said again. And he made a crucial moral point in response to both tragedies: “I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!” Jesus didn’t mean that we would all die by being in the wrong place at the wrong time as a victim of some terrible accident. He meant that unless we repent, we will die as unready as the pilgrims from Galilee in the Temple or those underneath the Siloam water tower. The only way we’ll be ready to die well, to die ready to pass to life, will be if we repent and believe in the Gospel,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Leonine Forum Lenten Day of Recollection

Church of the Holy Family, Manhattan

400th Anniversary of the Canonization of

Saints Isidore the Farmer, Ignatius Loyola, Francis Xavier, Teresa of Avila and Philip Neri

March 12, 2022

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Fr. Roger J. Landry

Leonine Forum Lenten Day of Recollection

Church of the Holy Family, Manhattan

400th Anniversary of the Canonization of

Saints Isidore the Farmer, Ignatius Loyola, Francis Xavier, Teresa of Avila and Philip Neri

March 12, 2022

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Fr. Roger J. Landry

Leonine Forum Lenten Day of Recollection

Church of the Holy Family, Manhattan

First Saturday of Lent

400th Anniversary of the Canonization of

Saints Isidore the Farmer, Ignatius Loyola, Francis Xavier, Teresa of Avila and Philip Neri

March 12, 2022

Dt 26:16-19, Ps 119, Mt 5:43-48

 

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The following text guided the homily: 

* The whole purpose of Lent is to bring us back to who we are, made in the image and likeness of God who is holy, holy, holy. We are reminded on Ash Wednesday of our beginning and our end, not just that we are dust and unto dust we shall return, but also that God breathed into us the breath of life, gave us an immortal soul, and wants us to use our freedom, will and relational nature to choose to live in a communion of love with him and others forever.

* Today’s readings drive the point home. Jesus calls us in the Gospel to “be perfect as our heavenly father is perfect,” which means ultimately to be holy as the Lord our God is holy. To be holy is to live as the Book of Deuteronomy summons us in the first reading. It means to observe the Lord’s commandments with all our heart and soul, to walk in God’s ways, to hearken to his voice, to be a people peculiarly his own. It means, as we prayed in the Psalm, to walk in the law of the Lord, to observe his decrees, to seek him with all their heart, to follow a blameless way.

* To be holy, Jesus intimates in the Gospel, is simply to live up to our identity as chips off the old divine block, to be like our heavenly Father. Before Jesus calls us to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect, he gives us specific exhortations so that we “may be children of [our] Father in heaven, who makes his sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.” Jesus implies that we will not really become children of God until we start behaving like God, that he can be our Father without our being his children unless we experience the inner revolution to which Jesus is calling us and unless we seek to act as his children, to behave like Jesus who shows us how to live as a Son of God. Just as God the Father loves everyone and does good to everyone, including those who curse him, including those who make themselves his enemy through sin and an evil life, including those who try to use him whenever they need him, Jesus calls us to do the same, to love our enemies, to pray for those who persecute us, to walk the second mile, to give our cloak as well as our tunic, to give generously to all those who need to borrow. We’re called to be good — to let our sun or life-giving rain fall — not just on those who are good to us but even on those who are not good to us, just like the Father does. This is the path to true holiness, this is the means by which we become, in action, sons and daughters of our heavenly Father, by behaving as he behaves.

* Today during this day of recollection we’re going to be focused on holiness through the lives of five men and women who sought to be perfect as the heavenly Father is perfect, to love as Jesus has loved us, to be merciful as the Father is merciful, to be holy as the Lord our God is holy. They are five who were canonized 400 years ago today by Pope Gregory XV: Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits; Saint Francis Xavier, his former roommate, fellow Jesuit and, after St. Paul, the greatest missionary in Church history; Saint Teresa of Avila, the first female doctor of the Church and great reformer of the Carmelites; St. Philip Neri, the 16thcentury founder of the Oratorians and reevangelizer of Rome; and St. Isidore the Farmer,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Second Sunday of Lent, C, Vigil

March 12, 2022

 

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The following text guided the homily:

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation Jesus wants to have with us in this Sunday’s Gospel, as together with Peter, James and John and the whole Church, we behold Jesus transfigured among us. It’s a pilgrimage the Church has us make every year with Jesus up the Mount of Transfiguration to strengthen us for the journey of Lent and of human life. This year, as we continue to pray, fast and sacrifice for the people in Ukraine, as we begin to suffer the inevitable financial consequences here at home like higher gas prices, and as some wonder whether we are witnessing the first lethal stages of what could develop into World War III, the lessons we learn take on even greater relevance.

* The first lesson is about exertion, about the effort that a holy Lent and true Christian life entails. Jesus leads Peter, James and John on a hike up what St. Matthew calls an “exceedingly high mountain.” Christian tradition associates the mountain where Jesus was transfigured as Mount Tabor, which towers over Galilee and the Plains of Megiddo, and takes over ten minutes to climb in vans zig-zagging up narrow paths. It would take vigorous climbers at least a couple of hours to ascend on foot. They needed to leave civilization behind, they needed to leave their comfort zones behind, and climb with Jesus, sweating, probably gasping for air, to pray with Jesus. This Lent the Lord is likewise asking of us to make an exertion. He’s calling us to hard work. He’s calling us to be on the move. And the pilgrimage he seeks to have us make with him isn’t in a van. This annual spiritual altitude training, however, is meant to strengthen us for the uphill marathon of life and the inevitable vicissitudes that arise.

* The second Lenten lesson is the help God wants to give us as we make that spiritual and often physical climb. When they reach the top of the mountain, Saints Peter, James and John see something extraordinary. Jesus is transfigured. He and his clothes become radiant. St. Luke tells us that he speaks with Moses and Elijah, the greatest figures in Jewish history who symbolize the law and the prophets, about the “exodus” he was to accomplish in Jerusalem, when Jesus would lead us through the waters of Baptism through the desert of Lent to the Promised Land not flowing with milk and honey but the Living Water that wells up to eternal life. The experience of the various theophanies at the top of the mountain are so powerful they don’t know what to say, but it leads Peter immediately to want to get into real estate, building booths for Jesus, Moses and Elijah, to keep the experience going for as long as possible.

* Why did Jesus want them to have this experience? The reason was ultimately to strengthen them to remain strong in faith even when they would descend the Mount of Transfiguration to ascend Mount Calvary. When they would see Jesus transfigured in blood, they would be able to remember Jesus in glory, when they got a glimpse of his divinity. The Church helps us to capture the reason for Jesus’ transfiguration in the Eucharistic Preface for Mass, in which the priest prays, “For after [Jesus] had told the disciples of his coming Death, on the holy mountain he manifested to them his glory, to show, even by the testimony of the law and the prophets, that the Passion leads to the glory of the Res...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Leonine Forum Monthly Mass, IESE, New York

Thursday of the First Week in Lent

March 10, 2022

Esther 14:12.14-16.23-25, Ps 138, Mt 7:7-12

 

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The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today in the Gospel Jesus continues his lessons for us our prayer that he began on Ash Wednesday and built on two days ago at daily Mass. On Ash Wednesday he told us to pray differently from those who pray for show. He told us to go to our inner room, the place symbolized by the locked location in the house where where we hold our treasures, and pray to our Father in secret, because prayer is supposed to bring us into a loving, filial Communion with the Father. Two days ago, Jesus built on that lesson when he taught us how to pray, giving us the words of the Our Father, and forming us to seek the hallowing of the Father’s name, the coming of his kingdom, the doing of his will, and the daily natural and supernatural nourishment, the mercy, the strengthening in temptation and the deliverance from evil we need to do so.

* Today he speaks to us about the filial confidence we should have in prayer as he urges us to bring our needs and desires to God. Jesus wants us to seek God in our prayer, to knock on his door, to ask for what we need and desire. And he gives us a promise that no infomercial or used car salesman would ever be so bold as to make: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” That’s an almost incredible guarantee, that our prayers will always be heard. Notice that he doesn’t tell us, “Ask and you’ll get whatever you ask for.” He instructs us to seek but he doesn’t tell us exactly what we’ll find. He tells us to knock but he doesn’t say what will be waiting for us on the other side of the opened door. But he promises us that our prayers will be heard and God will respond. The reason why God will respond is precisely because God is a loving Father. Jesus says, “Which one of you would hand his son a stone when he asked for a loaf of bread, or a snake when he asked for a fish? If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him.” He will always give us what is good for us. In St. Luke’s version of an almost identical discourse, Jesus promises that the Father will always respond to our prayers by giving us the Holy Spirit. God responds to our petitions first and foremost by giving himself, because the greatest gift is the Giver himself. Jesus says all of this so that we will have no fear at all in praying but a great boldness, a boldness that translates into asking with filial confidence. And he wants us to ask!

We see this prayer of fearless petition exemplified for us in the first reading. Queen Esther, a Jew living in Babylon, risks her life to try to save the Jewish people from one of King Ahasuerus’ assistants, Haman, who was seeking to have all the Jews executed by decree of the deceived King. Before, however, she would risk her life going into the King’s presence unbidden, she and all the Jews prayed and fasted for three days. Today we have the bold prayer she makes in the presence of God the Father as she lay prostrate with all her attendants from morning to evening: “God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob, blessed are you. Help me, who am alone and have no help but you, for I am taking my life in my hand. As a child I used to hear from the books of my forefathers that you, O Lord,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Retreat for the Carmelite Monastery of Our Mother of Mercy and Saint Joseph

Alexandria, South Dakota

March 1-8, 2022

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Fr. Roger J. Landry

Carmelite Monastery of Our Mother of Mercy and Saint Joseph

Alexandria, South Dakota

Tuesday of the First Week of Lent, Extraordinary Form

March 8, 2022

Is 55:6-11, Mt 21:10-17

 

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The following text guided the homily: 

* In today’s first reading from the Prophet Isaiah, we hear a powerful Lenten summons: “Seek the Lord while he may be found, call him while he is near.” The Lord has not only drawn near waiting for us to discover him, he’s not just listening waiting for us to call, but’s himself very active. He who is generous in forgiving wants us to turn to him for mercy. He whose thoughts are not our thoughts and ways are not our ways wanted to help us lift our thoughts and improve our ways. That’s what he says in the second half of today’s reading. Just as rain and snow come down from heaven to irrigate the earth and make it fertile and fruitful, so does God word, which accomplishes God’s will and achieves the end God intends. God through his word will help us to purify our thoughts by his thoughts and align our ways to his. His word shows us the way and his promise gives us hope.

* We see this truth at work in the Gospel, when Jesus, the Word made flesh, cleanses the Temple area of moneychangers and animal sellers. He reminds us of the purpose of the temple. God wants it to be a “house of prayer.” It had not only become a commercial setting where people were paying the temple tax in temple currency for which every other currency needed to be exchanged, and where people were buying the animals they needed to sacrifice rather than trying to bring them unblemished from wherever their home was, but where, because of the demand in that particular spot, the sellers had the buyers right where they wanted them and were charging exorbitant exchange rates and prices, a greed that was particularly injurious to the poor. Jesus was outraged that instead of the Temple being the place where people’s thoughts became more and more like God’s and where their ways were strengthened to follow the divine, they were neck deep in the morass of worldly corruption. So Jesus helped the scoundrel forsake his way and the wicked man his thoughts. He cleansed the temple of the den of thieves. It was the anticipation of the way that he would seek to cleanse each of us from our worldly desires and practices to align them to his will and ways. We see in St. John’s Gospel that when he was asked by what authority he was cleansing this temple and what sign he could give for that authority, he said, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up,” talking about the temple of his body. He was the definitive meeting place of God and humanity, the true house of prayer for all peoples. When he would be raised up, he would make it possible for all of us to become temples, too, through the mystery of the Holy Eucharist, by which he comes to abide in us and make it possible for us to be true houses of prayer, filled with his thoughts, who serve him in all our ways. But each Lent he comes to cleanse us, like he cleansed the Temple in Jerusalem, of the times in which we don’t seek him while he may be found, we don’t call him when he is near, we’re not soil thirsting for the rain and snow of the word coming from his mouth to make us fertile and fruitful. We turn to him for mercy, as Isaiah beckons us, because he is generous in forgiving.

* We see in the Gospel those who were seeking him when he could be found. As soon as he was done cleansing the temple, the blind and lame approached him, and he cured them. Likewise the children came to him, shouting out, “Hosanna to the Son of David,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Retreat for the Carmelite Monastery of Our Mother of Mercy and Saint Joseph

Alexandria, South Dakota

March 1-8, 2022

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