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

Friday after Ash Wednesday, Extraordinary Form

March 4, 2022

Is 58:1-9, Ps 127:4, Mt 5:43-48.6:1-4

 

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

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The following text guided the homily: 

* On Ash Wednesday, Jesus spoke to us about fasting, telling us to not to neglect our appearance to gain the attention of others but to anoint our head and wash our face and fast in a hidden way for our Father. It was meant to communicate that the purpose of our fasting is to come into greater communion with God the Father, to learn how to hunger for what God hungers, so that every cell of our body desires what he desires. Our fasting is meant fundamentally not to tame our appetite for food and drink, but to stoke all the appetites of our soul to God’s desires.

* That’s the type of fasting God speaks about in the first reading through the Prophet Isaiah. The Israelites were fasting but God wasn’t pleased because they thought that their going without food during daylight hours alone was somehow enough to please the Lord and get him to listen to their prayers. God sent the Prophet Isaiah to sound his call to conversion so that they would grasp that the fasting the Lord desires is to change their hungers to align with his.

* “Cry out full-throated and unsparingly,” the Lord instructs Isaiah. “Tell my people of their wickedness. … They ask me to declare what is due them, pleased to gain access to God [by their bodily prayers]. Why do we fast, [they ask], and you do not see it? Why do we afflict ourselves and you take not of it?” The Lord then responds to their questions. He says, because “on your fast day you carry out your own pursuits, [not mine], and drive all your laborers [rather than treat them with charity and mercy]. Your fast ends [not in holiness, not in communion and love but] in quarreling and fighting, striking with wicked claw,” an image that brings to mind the way bears would attack each other to death. “Would that today you might fast so as to make your voice heard on high!” God obviously loved them and wanted to answer their prayers but not when they thought all they needed to do was to abstain from food while continuing with unjust and evil practices contrary to his will.

* God then tells them what he hungers for, and instructs them about the type of fast that will get them to hunger for the same things. It’s all about charity, especially for those in most need of it. “This is the fasting that I wish: releasing those bound unjustly, … setting free the oppressed, breaking every yoke; sharing your bread with the hungry, sheltering the oppressed and the homeless, clothing the naked when you see them, and not turning your back on your own.” God wants us to be starving for what he starves, for us to release his sons and daughters imprisoned unjustly, breaking the yokes that bind them to slavery and servitude, feeding his hungry children, clothing the naked ones, and in a particular way caring for our own, for our family members, natural or spiritual. Jesus himself would say that he had come to set the captives free. As we will hear in the Gospel on Monday, he personally identifies with all of those in such circumstances, reminding us we would be judged on how we responded to him in disguise when he was hungry, thirst, naked, on the move, imprisoned or sick.

* In the Gospel, Jesus gets even more specific about the type of hunger he wants to distinguish us, the type of appetite for charity he wants our fasting to lead to. In a context in which he speaks about almsgiving, not to win the praise of others but to please God,

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

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

Thursday after Ash Wednesday, Extraordinary Form

March 3, 2022

Is 38:1-6, Mt 8:5-13

 

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

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The following text guided the homily: 

* Today in the first reading the Prophet Isaiah tells the righteous king Hezekiah — the 10th generation grandson of David and 18th generation grandfather of St. Joseph in Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus —  “Put your house in order, for you are about to die.” This is a classic Lenten theme, as we were reminded yesterday as we were marked with ashes in the sign of the Cross and reminded that we are dust and unto dust we shall return. It’s also a lapidary retreat theme, as we remember that we, too, die — memento mori! — and learn truly how to live. That’s what so many retreatants have done, like famously St. John Paul II, revising his last will and testament at the beginning of Lent each year on his annual retreat. On this second day of the Lenten season, it’s important not to miss acting on the prophet’s message.

* In Thomas à Kempis’ spiritual classic, The Imitation of Christ, he urged all believers, “Very quickly will there be an end of you here; take heed therefore how it will be with you in another world. … O the dullness and hardness of man’s heart, which thinks only of the present, and looks not forward to the future. 
You ought in every deed and thought so to order yourself, as if you were to die this day. … Happy is the man who has the hour of his death always before his eyes, and daily prepares himself to die. … When it is morning, reflect that you shall not see the evening, and at eventide dare not to boast yourself of the morrow. Always be prepared, and so live that death may never find you unprepared. Many die suddenly and unexpectedly. For at such an hour as you think not, the Son of Man will come. … Strive now to live in such a way that at the hour of death you may rather rejoice than fear. Learn now to die to the world, so shall you begin to live with Christ. Learn now to spurn all earthly things, and then you may freely go unto Christ. … Think of nothing but your salvation; care only for the things of God. Make friends for yourself by venerating the saints of God and walking in their footsteps, so that when you die, you may be received into everlasting dwellings. Keep yourself a stranger and a pilgrim upon the earth, to whom the things of the world belong not. Keep your heart free and lifted up towards God, for here we have no lasting city. To Him direct your daily prayers with cries and tears, that your spirit may be found worthy to pass happily after death to its Lord.”

* Kempis’ spiritual wisdom, which has formed many saints over the last six centuries, is based on the insight that it is only when we realize that today may be our last day, that we may not have the opportunity to put off the truly important things until tomorrow, that we begin to think clearly and put our house in order today. We act differently toward people when we realize our interaction with them might be our last. We begin to look at time differently and no longer wish to waste it. We’re not tempted in the same way toward the harsh word, or the impure thought, or the vengeful action, knowing that that might be the last thing we ever do. We begin to have a far deeper appreciation for prayer and the Sacraments. We cease to sleepwalk spiritually and become fully alert to the meaning of every moment, thought, word and deed.

* A little over ten years ago, two days before he would retire as Archbishop of Philadelphia, Cardinal Justin Rigali wrote for the priests of his archdiocese a...

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

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

Alexandria, South Dakota

March 1-8, 2022

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.2.22_Conference_2_Tree_of_Life_Abel_1.mp3

 

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Carmelite Monastery of Our Mother of Mercy and Saint Joseph

Alexandria, South Dakota

Ash Wednesday, Extraordinary Form

March 2, 2022

Joel 2:12-19, Matt 6:16-21

 

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

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The following text guided the homily: 

* The message of Ash Wednesday is given to us by the Prophet Joel: “Return to me with your whole heart.” Our God is who “gracious and merciful, slow to anger, rich in kindness and relenting in punishment,” summons us to come back to him not half-heartedly, but with our whole heart. This calling means several things:

* To return to him with love, indeed, all of our love. Sometimes we can approach the Lord out of a sense of duty, we can go through the motions, we can even regard him with fear. He fills us with his love so that we can indeed approach him with love.

* To return to him with purity of heart. We can’t love him with our whole heart if our heart is set on other objects, full worldly cares and anxieties, the lure of earthly pleasures or even spiritual goods like consolations. We can’t come back if our heart carries the baggage of sinful desires consented to.

* To return to him with the whole of our being. In the Bible, the heart always symbolizes the core of the person, where reason, will and emotions converge. The Lord wants us back body and soul fully.

* To return to him with courage. He wants us not to lose heart, but to be lionhearted in hearing and heeding his call to a spiritual renewal. He wants us to put our heart into the good fight, to be valiant in the Lenten discipline he gives us to make us greater disciples.

* God through the Prophet Joel then sketches for us various means to return to him wholeheartedly:

* With fasting — to help us hunger for him

* With weeping — out of contrition for our sins and the sins of the world, seeking to allow him to bring good out of evil through a medicine of mercy greater than our illness

* With mourning — for so many opportunities and graces lost, seeking to make up for lost time, and conscious that those who mourn are blessed and will be consoled.

* To bring offerings and libations — a prophecy, of course, to the self-offering of Jesus’ body and blood in the Eucharist, together with our own self-offering on the paten.

* To gather the people, notify the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the children — Conversion is not meant to be a solo or individualistic process, but an ecclesial one

* To have the bridegroom and bride leave the honeymoon suite — indicating that there’s a greater love involved even than the most fresh experiences of human love, because human marriage is meant to remind us of God’s plan for the maker to marry us, to heed and live the spousal message of Hosea and Isaiah.

* To have priests on behalf of everyone cry out before the altar for mercy and asking God to manifest his loving forgiveness before all peoples, so that we may no longer be a source of reproach but a source of inspiration and sanctification.

* This is what it means to return to the Lord with our whole heart: with our stomachs, tear ducts, pierced hearts, with sacrifice, with others, with spousal commitment and love, in communion with our clergy, with an awareness that God calls us to reflect light to the world not scandal.

* Jesus in the Gospel intensifies this message. The Son of God took on our nature precisely to show and help us to return to God with our whole heart. He reminds us today, “Where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.” Lent is about rediscovering the extraordinary treasure to which God has ma...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

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

Alexandria, South Dakota

March 1-8, 2022

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/3.1.22_Introduction_Conference_1_1.mp3

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

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

February 26, 2022

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/2.26.22_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

 

 

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 about a few of the central things we are going to need to live a good and holy Lent, which begins in just three days on Ash Wednesday.

* Lent is a spiritual boot camp in which we strive, with God’s help, to become more and more like Christ. Jesus tells us in this Sunday’s Gospel, “No disciple is superior to the teacher, but when fully trained, every disciple will be like his teacher.” Lent provides the training for us to become like Christ. Just as he went to the desert for 40 days to pray, so we make the commitment to improve the quality — and for most of us — quantity of our prayer time. Just as Jesus fasted so much that the devil’s first temptation to him was to try to have him transform stones into bread, so we take on the self-discipline of fasting, which helps us to say “yes” to God and “no” to sin by training us to say “no” to our appetite for food and drink. Just as Jesus generously gave everything down to the last drop of his blood, so in Lent we seek to imitate his merciful love, giving of ourselves, our time, our gifts and our material resources, to those who are in need. The main purpose of Lent is to become like the praying, fasting, almsgiving Jesus and Jesus seeks to give us that training so that we can become like him, our teacher. He wants us, however, to make a commitment to receive that training, a dedication similar to how rookies approach training camp, 18-year-olds approach boot camp for the Marines, like hard-working students approach exam period.

* Lent is, second, about recognizing our blind spots, the sins that cloud our vision, and striving by God’s mercy to eliminate them. Jesus asks in the Gospel we’ll hear this Sunday, “Can a blind person guide a blind person? Will not both fall into a pit?” He adds, “Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own? … Remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter from your brother’s eye.” If we are to become like Jesus through the training of Lent and the discipline of the Christian life as a whole, then we are meant to guide others in Jesus’ footsteps on the narrow way that leads to eternal life. But in order to lead others, we need to see clearly. That’s why in Lent we first need to examine our consciences, to recognize our sins, which Jesus compares to wooden beams in our eyes that prevent us from seeing God in all parts of our life, from noticing what he sees in others and in situations, and with God’s help to remove those planks. That’s the process we call repentance. Just like Jesus cured many blind men in the Gospel, so he wants to heal us. He says elsewhere in the Gospel that the eye is the lamp for the body, but if the eye is bad, the whole body will be in darkness; and if the light in us is darkness, he continues, how deep will the darkness be. In Lent Jesus wants us to see everything in his light so that our whole life will be filled with light, rather than darkness. And this is essential if we’re ever going to set the example for others that he wants us to set. If our eyes and souls are in darkness, we can’t help others remove the sins from their eyes.