Catholic Preaching

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Acton University, Grand Rapids, Michigan

June 22, 2022

 

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The Social Teaching of Pope St. John Paul II 2022

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Acton University, Grand Rapids, Michigan

June 22, 2022

 

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Tne Entrepreneurial Vocation 2022

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Chapel of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY

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

June 19, 2022

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

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.19.22_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

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

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

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

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for Corpus Christi Sunday, Year C, Vigil

June 18, 2022

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.18.22_Corpus_Christi_C_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 as we celebrate together the feast of the Holy Eucharist, his Body and Blood.

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

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

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

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Catholic Medical Association Student and Resident Boot Camp

Ave Maria University

June 13, 2022

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

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Catholic Medical Association Student and Resident Boot Camp

Ave Maria University

June 13, 2022

 

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

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Catholic Medical Association Student and Resident Boot Camp

Ave Maria University

June 13, 2022

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

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Catholic Medical Association Boot Camp

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

Monday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

June 13, 2022

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

 

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

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The following points were attempted in the homily: 

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

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

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

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Chapel of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY

Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, Year C

June 12, 2022

Prov 8:22-31, Ps 8, Rom 5:1-5, Jn 16:12-15

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.12.22_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following text guided today’s homily: 

* Today we celebrate the feast of who God is. Every Sunday is, in a very real sense, dedicated to God and therefore every Sunday really is Trinity Sunday. But since the 1300s, the Church has celebrated on the Sunday immediately following Pentecost a feast dedicated to the Holy Trinity, to help all of us focus more explicitly on who God is in his profound mysterious depths, and therefore on who we’re called to be made in His image and likeness. In an age when many forget about God, when aggressive secularists are trying to drive even conversation about God from public spaces, it is important for believers to be humbly bold not just in reminding society that God exists as the Creator of all, not just in revealing him and his name and nature, but setting an example of how to worship and thank him.

* In today’s Gospel, Jesus says to us, “I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now. But when he comes, the Spirit of Truth, he will guide you to all truth.” Jesus goes on to say that just as he has given us what he has received from the Father, so the Holy Spirit will give us what he has received from Jesus. Each of the Persons of the Blessed Trinity exists in an eternal communion of giving and receiving, of loving and being loved, and toward us, they seek to bring us into that dynamic. The Father sends the Son who reveals the Father. The Father and the Son send the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit helps us to relate to the Father and remember the Son, guiding us not only to truths like the wisdom of creation announced to us in the first reading from the Book of Proverbs and Psalm 8, but into the most important truth of all, the very truth of who God is.

* “The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity,” we read in a very important paragraph in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “is the central mystery of Christian faith and life” (CCC 234).  It’s the central mystery, note, not just with regard to what we believe but how we live. The Catechism goes on to say why: “It is the mystery of God in himself. It is therefore the source of all the other mysteries of faith, the light that enlightens them. It is the most fundamental and essential teaching in the ‘hierarchy of the truths of faith.’” The mystery of the Trinity enlightens the mystery of creation, the mystery of redemption, the mystery of Sanctification. It illumines every page of Sacred Scripture. It helps us to understand the commandments. It sheds light on the four last things. It reveals what is at the root of all of the sacraments and prayer.

* The Catechism paragraph concludes, “The whole history of salvation is identical with the history of the way and the means by which the one true God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, reveals himself to men ‘and reconciles and unites with himself those who turn away from sin.” Underneath the history of the world, underneath our own personal history from the moment of our conception in our mother’s womb until now and beyond, everything has developed within this mystery of the Blessed Trinity. Therefore, it’s crucial for us as human beings, not to mention believers, to pour ourselves — mind, heart, soul and strength — into the mystery of the Trinity. The teaching on the Trinity is not meant be some footnote on a Christian life, but a central part. The Christian life is meant to be a Trinitarian life. Your life, my life, is meant to be a Trinitarian life.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for Holy Trinity Sunday, Year C, Vigil

June 11, 2022

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/6.11.22_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 as we celebrate Trinity Sunday.

* In the Gospel we’ll hear, Jesus will say to us, “I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now. But when he comes, the Spirit of Truth, he will guide you to all truth.” Jesus goes on to say that just as he has given us what he has received from the Father, so the Holy Spirit will give us what he has received from Jesus. The Holy Spirit, whose outpouring on Pentecost we celebrated last Sunday, will guide us not only to truths but into the most important truth of all, the very truth of who God is.

* “The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity,” we read in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “is the central mystery of Christian faith and life.” It’s the core mystery not just with regard to what we believe but how we live. The Catechism goes on to say why: “It is the mystery of God in himself. It is therefore the source of all the other mysteries of faith, the light that enlightens them. It is the most fundamental and essential teaching in the ‘hierarchy of the truths of faith.’” The Holy Spirit seeks to guide us into this truth at the top of the hierarchy and to help us to understand everything else in the faith in light of it. The Catechism paragraph concludes, “The whole history of salvation is identical with the history of the way and the means by which the one true God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, reveals himself to men ‘and reconciles and unites with himself those who turn away from sin” (CCC 234). Therefore, it’s crucial for us as human beings, not to mention believers, to pour ourselves — mind, heart, soul and strength — into the mystery of the Trinity.

* Since the 1300s, the Church has celebrated on the Sunday immediately following Pentecost a feast dedicated to the Holy Trinity, to help all of us focus more explicitly on who God is in his profound mysterious depths, and therefore who we’re called to be made in His image and likeness. Even though every Sunday is in some sense dedicated to God and therefore is in some way Trinity Sunday, the Church has wanted us to have at least one Sunday in which we focus on this central mystery of Christian faith and life, the most fundamental and essential teaching in all the truths of the faith. In an age in which many forget about God, when aggressive secularists are trying to drive even conversation about God from public spaces, it is important for believers to be bold not only in reminding society that God exists, as the Creator of all, but to help reveal him and his nature.

* God has revealed himself as a Trinity, a loving communion, one God in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. He’s not a distant life force. He’s not an arbitrary omnipotent despot. As St. John wrote in his first letter, “God is love” (1 John 4:16), a declaration that strongly implies that the one God somehow had to be a Trinity of Persons. For God to be love, he could not have been solitary, because no one can love in a vacuum. In love, there is always one who loves, one who is loved, and the content of their love for each other. God the Father and God the Son, in all eternity, loved each other so much that their love generated (“spirated”) a third person, the Holy Spirit. They exist in an eternal communion of persons ...