Catholic Preaching

Catholic Preaching

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  • Five Helps to a Great Advent and a Life-Changing Pilgrimage, First Monday of Advent, December 1, 2025

    Msgr. Roger J. Landry

    St. Stephen’s Chapel, Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, Rome
    Pilgrimage for the Acton Institute
    Monday of the First Week of Advent
    December 1, 2025
    Is 4:2-6, Ps 122, Mt 8:5-11

     

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

    https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.1.25_Homily_at_St._Pauls_Outside_the_Walls_1.mp3

     

    The outline for today’s homily was:

    • Today’s readings focus on six things we need for a great Advent and a life-changing pilgrimage:
      • The cloud symbolizing how the Lord accompanies us by day
      • The pillar of fire indicating the vigilance with which we should wait the Lord.
      • The joy with which we should go to the Lord and to his house
      • The humility with which we should approach the Lord
      • The faith we should have in him, like the Centurion
      • The recognition that the Lord wants people from everywhere to come to him, like we will see on pilgrimage.
      • We make our own the words of the Centurion as we prepare to receive Jesus.

        •  

        The readings for today’s Mass were: 

        Reading 1
        Isaiah 4:2-6

        On that day,

        The branch of the LORD will be luster and glory,
        and the fruit of the earth will be honor and splendor
        for the survivors of Israel.
        He who remains in Zion
        and he who is left in Jerusalem
        Will be called holy:
        every one marked down for life in Jerusalem.
        When the LORD washes away
        the filth of the daughters of Zion,
        And purges Jerusalem’s blood from her midst
        with a blast of searing judgment,
        Then will the LORD create,
        over the whole site of Mount Zion
        and over her place of assembly,
        A smoking cloud by day
        and a light of flaming fire by night.
        For over all, the LORD’s glory will be shelter and protection:
        shade from the parching heat of day,
        refuge and cover from storm and rain.

        Responsorial Psalm
        Psalm 122:1-2, 3-4b, 4cd-5, 6-7, 8-9

        R. Let us go rejoicing to the house of the Lord.

        I rejoiced because they said to me,
        “We will go up to the house of the LORD.”
        And now we have set foot
        within your gates, O Jerusalem.
        R. Let us go rejoicing to the house of the Lord.
        Jerusalem, built as a city
        with compact unity.
        To it the tribes go up,
        the tribes of the LORD.
        R. Let us go rejoicing to the house of the Lord.
        According to the decree for Israel,
        to give thanks to the name of the LORD.
        In it are set up judgment seats,
        seats for the house of David.
        R. Let us go rejoicing to the house of the Lord.
        Pray for the peace of Jerusalem!
        May those who love you prosper!
        May peace be within your walls,
        prosperity in your buildings.
        R. Let us go rejoicing to the house of the Lord.
        Because of my relatives and friends
        I will say, “Peace be within you!”
        Because of the house of the LORD, our God,
        I will pray for your good.
        R. Let us go rejoicing to the house of the Lord.

        Alleluia
        See Psalm 80:4

        R. Alleluia, alleluia.

        Come and save us, LORD our God;
        Let your face shine upon us, that we may be saved.
        R. Alleluia, alleluia.

        Gospel
        Matthew 8:5-11

        When Jesus entered Capernaum,

        a centurion approached him and appealed to him, saying,
        “Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed, suffering dreadfully.”
        He said to him, “I will come and cure him.”
        The centurion said in reply,
        “Lord, I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof;
        only say the word and my servant will be healed.
        For I too am a man subject to authority,
        with soldiers subject to me.
        And I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes;
        and to another, ‘Come here,’ and he comes;
        and to my slave, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”
        When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those following him,
        “Amen, I say to you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith.
        I say to you, many will come from the east and the west,
        and will recline with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
        at the banquet in the Kingdom of heaven.”

        The post Five Helps to a Great Advent and a Life-Changing Pilgrimage, First Monday of Advent, December 1, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

        15 min
      • Advent, St. Andrew and the Jubilee of Hope, First Sunday of Advent (A), November 30, 2025

        Msgr. Roger J. Landry

        Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY
        First Sunday of Advent, Year A
        November 30, 2025
        Is 2:1-5, Ps 122, Rom 13:11-14, Mt 24:37-44

         

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

        https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.30.25_Homily_1.mp3

         

        The following text guided the homily: 

        • We begin today, on this first Sunday of Advent, a new liturgical year, which is meant to give us all a new spiritual start. But this Advent is special, for two reasons.
        • The first is that it is taking place during the Jubilee of Hope. Advent is a special season of hope, in which, pondering the reality and meaning of Jesus’ first coming in Bethlehem, we run forth to meet him now in all the ways he comes to us — in prayer, in the Sacraments, in his holy Word, in others — and get ready like the wise virgins in Jesus’ Gospel parable (Matt 25:1-14) to sprint out to meet him with lamps lit when he comes at the end of time, or the end of our life, whichever comes first. For Missionaries of Charity, indeed for all religious, your whole life is meant to be a living Advent. John Paul II said that “the role of consecrated life” is to be “an eschatological sign” (Vita Consecrata 26), an anticipation of the life to come. It’s supposed to be a musical crescendo, chanting more loudly and more beautifully each Advent, “O Come, Divine Messiah!,” “O Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus,” “O Come, O Come Emmanuel!” You’re supposed to show us, St. John Paul II, that “‘here we have no lasting city’ (Heb 13:14), for ‘our citizenship is in heaven’ (Phil 3:20), [and that] the ‘one thing necessary’ is to seek God’s ‘Kingdom and his righteousness’ (Mt 6:33), with unceasing prayer for the Lord’s coming” (VC 26). Your lives of perpetual Advent is supposed to help everyone in the Church live with greater hope for God, for the Kingdom of Heaven, for the definitive fulfillment of all Christ’s promises. You are supposed to wake up the world and keep the world awake amidst the passing realities. The beginning of every new liturgical year is a time for renewal and recalibration in your eschatological vocations.
        • The second thing that is different this year is that the first Sunday of Advent takes place on the feast of St. Andrew. Normally, we wouldn’t mark it, but today, Pope Leo, the successor of St. Peter, is in Istanbul, Turkey, with Patriarch Bartholomew, the successor of St. Andrew — at this very hour, they’re having lunch together at the conclusion of Pope Leo’s time in Turkey — and hence it’s fitting today to honor the brother of St. Peter and look at his life as a great figure of Advent. St. Andrew was someone who longed for the Messiah, who hungered for him, who drew close to St. John the Baptist as the Elijah and precursor of the Anointed and Awaited One, and became a faithful follower once that Messiah was pointed out. Together with almost certainly St. John, Andrew immediately began to follow Jesus, entered into conversation with him, came and saw where he was staying, and was changed forever. St. Andrew then spent his life, like John the Baptist, as an Advent announcer, preparing people to embrace Jesus as the Christ. As soon as he was able to travel after the completion of the Sabbath, he ran to his brother Simon and announced, “We have found the Messiah!” and brought Simon to Jesus. Little did Andrew know what Jesus’ plans would have been for his brother, that he would become the rock on whom Jesus would build his Church, the one to whom he would give the keys of the kingdom of heaven. All he did was bring Simon to Jesus and Jesus did the rest. Similarly, he brought the young boy with the five loaves and two fish to Jesus, who took those meager materials and — in a Messianic foreshadowing of the Eucharist on earth and the eternal banquet in heaven — multiplied them to feed the vast throng to more than satiation. He finally brought the Greeks who wished to see Jesus (Jn 12:20-24) to him and that was the trigger for Jesus’ Messianic hour when the Son of Man would be glorified by his being lifted up in crucifixion and resurrection (Jn 12:20-24). St. Andrew was — like you’re called to be, sisters — an Advent sign, someone who pointed to Jesus, the long-awaited anointed one, the one for whom the heart of every Jew, and more broadly of every human being, has been created to beat. And just as much as Andrew responded to the fulfillment of that first Advent by bringing others still waiting to Christ, so we’re sent out every Advent, as “fishers of men” like the apostle, to bring others — including, like in Andrews’ life, family members, young people, and even seekers from other countries — to meet Jesus. Christ comes for all and in Advent we seek to bring him all.
        • The Jubilee of Hope and the Feast of St. Andrew help us to adopt better and more profoundly the attitude God wants us to have as we begin with this season of Advent. At the start of this new liturgical year, something that blends both kairos and chronos, we can ask, “What time is it?, and St. Paul replies in today’s second reading: “You know the time. It is the hour now for you to awake from sleep, for our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed.” The whole Jubilee has been ultimately to wake us up to reality of Jesus’ being with us now, as a result of his birth, as a result of the sacraments, and the reality that he is coming again, and wants us to be as alert for his arrival as St. Andrew was at the Jordan. Advent is a time of spiritual reawakening, as we return to what should be the proper foundation of our life. In it, we retrace the centuries long waiting of the Jews for Jesus’ first coming so that we might learn from them how to stoke our hunger for Jesus’ second coming. Rather than sleep through the gift of life, we go out to meet Christ the Bridegroom like the five wise bridesmaids, to enter into his victory feast. Sometimes many of us spiritually are like slumbering teenage boys for whom you need a bucket of ice water to get them out of bed! We hit the snooze button on the Lord’s calling us to become fully alive. Advent is like a set of spiritual defibrillating pads meant to jolt us out of the spiritual comas into which out of weakness we can fall. So Advent is first a time to wake up.
        • Second, it’s a time of excitement. Salvation, St. Paul says today, is nearer to us that when we became believers. It’s nearer to us because we’re a full-year closer to meeting Christ face-to-face at his second coming or at the end of our life. Advent is a time when we look ahead, with truly Christian joy, hope and eagerness, to Christ’s second coming. Salvation is nearer to us now than last first Sunday of Advent. That’s something that should get us more excited than the most energetic sports fan for their favorite team’s winning a championship. We get excited by stoking our love for God, for his promises, for heaven, for holiness, for happiness. This requires a choice to start placing our heart more where our true treasure ought to be.
        • Third, Advent is a time of journeying. Christ is indeed coming and we are called not to stay where we are, but to journey toward him and journey with him. In today’s opening prayer, we turned to God the Father and asked him to grant us “the resolve to run forth to meet” Christ “with righteous deeds at his coming.” Advent is the gun at the beginning of a race that gets us to begin a spiritual sprint, to go with haste, to meet Christ as he comes. Isaiah in today’s first reading, looking forward to the coming of the Messiah, compared Advent to a spirited and speedy hike: “Come, let us climb the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and we may walk in his paths.” Advent is a time for an uphill exertion to meet the Lord, to learn his ways more deeply and begin to walk in them more faithfully. Isaiah says, “The mountain of the Lord shall be established as the highest mountain and raised above the hills,” which is an indication that the Lord should be our highest priority, Someone that towers over all other goods, as we strive to achieve the summit of Christian life and respond to Isaiah’s and the Church’s summons, “Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!” At a practical level, Advent is a time when we make the exertion to go meet Christ in prayer, to receive him, if we can, at daily Mass, to be forgiven by him in a good and devout Confession, to spend time before him in loving adoration, to embrace and serve him in the disguise of our neighbor in need, and to follow in his footsteps by walking with him on the holy, exciting, luminescent adventure of faith.
        • So Advent, in short, is a time of hope when we, like Andrew before us, get up, get excited, and get moving. We know that none of these verbs happen without a subject. They demand our free choice. Advent is the time God helps us recalibrate our whole life and make resolutions to give him his proper place.
        • Jesus teaches us in today’s Gospel that there are great stakes in whether we wake up, get excited and make that journey. At the time of Noah and the great flood, Jesus says, there were only a few alert to what was really going on and the rest perished. So, he says, unfortunately, the same thing will happen at his second coming. Two, he noted, will be working in the field, one will be taken, the other left; two will be preparing food in the kitchen, one will be taken, the other left. In St. Luke’s account, Jesus adds, “There will be two in one bed. One will be taken and the other left.” Jesus describes that two people doing the same thing at the same time will have two totally different outcomes. We might add, according to the same logic, that two priests will be celebrating Mass; one will go with Jesus and the other left behind. Two religious will be in the chapel, one will be taken and the other abandoned. That doesn’t mean that the decision over our ultimate destiny is going to be arbitrary, as if God is just going to flip a coin and determine who heads with him to eternal happiness and who gets left alienated from him forever. The ones who will go with the Lord will be those who are not asleep, who are not dead to what really matters, but awake and alive. They’ll be the ones who are excited for the things of God rather than who treat what God asks of us as a burden and life with him as a boring imposition. Those taken will be the ones who seek God, who are striving to grow spiritually, rather than being content with doing the minimum. They will be those making the effort to climb the mountain of the Lord rather than other hills, who are making the effort to come to meet him, and who even when they’re working the fields, or grinding meal in the kitchen, or resting in bed are seeking to unite their whole life to him. They will ultimately be the ones who are living with hope, who are stoking their hope, who, like St. Andrew, are exciting others to hope.
        • Jesus today uses an analogy of the owner of a house who stays awake and alert so that his house doesn’t get broken into. Advent is like a burglar alarm that goes off to reawaken us to the reality that there is a burglar (the devil) who is out to steal or get us to waste the treasure of our soul. Perhaps even better, Advent is like an alarm clock that helps us wake up from our dream world so that we might seize the gift of the day and whole new year God has given us during which he wants to love us and strengthen us to use the talents he’s lent us to help him redeem the world. Advent is a dynamic season meant to feature a double-desire — Christ’s thirst for us and our thirst for him — and a triple movement: Christ’s journeying toward us; our going out of ourselves, out of comfort zones, out of our old habits, to meet him; and then, transformed by him, journeying with him all the way to his eternal embrace. Advent is a time of conversion, of turning away from sin, turning toward God, and then turning with God full-time.
        • Paul tells us in the second reading that Advent is a time to “throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.” When St. Augustine read these words, they spoke right to his heart and helped him find the courage to take the last steps on the path of conversion. You remember that he wanted to serve God but couldn’t give up his sexual sins. He’d pray with a vague desire to God, “Give me chastity, but not yet.” But after hearing what was likely an angel encouraging him to “take up and read” Sacred Scripture, he picked up the Bible providentially to this passage and heard the Lord through St. Paul say to him, “Let us conduct ourselves properly as in the day, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in promiscuity and lust, not in rivalry and jealousy, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the desires of the flesh.” The great twentieth-century English convert, priest and author Msgr. Ronald Knox commented that most of us approach Advent in the same way the pre-converted Augustine did the virtue of chastity. We say, “We want our Lord to come, but not just yet.” The reason that we prefer him to wait is because we don’t want our life to change as fully as we know God wants. We don’t want to die to the parts of our lives that are not yet full of God’s light. We want to remain in control, because we don’t trust God yet enough to lead us in light up his holy mountain. But God this Advent wants to give us a conversion as profound as St. Andrew’s in 30 AD and St. Augustine’s in 386. He wants to protect us with the armor of light and help us clothe ourselves with his virtues, his thoughts, and his desires. The spiritual new year we begin today is a time of setting “New Year’s Resolutions” and responding to God’s help to keep them so that we might in fact stay alert, excited and moving. That way, no matter when the Lord comes, we’ll never find him a thief but a Friend. That way he’ll never catch us off-guard but find us ready to continue with him the journey we have been seeking to walk with him each day. That way he’ll find us full of hope and desiring above all his kingdom and eternal life (CCC 1817).
        • For Catholics, every Mass is meant to be a little Advent, when we run forth to the “fulfillment of our blessed hope, the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” More than any place, this is where we are supposed to wake up and become alive and alert for the presence of God in our life and world. This is where the Holy Spirit comes to try to help us and our brothers and sisters to become genuinely excited about our faith. This is where we go out to encounter the Lord Jesus who comes to meet us and lead us in light to the highest mountain of all, the celestial Jerusalem. Today, as we begin that journey, we rejoice that we have come to the house of the Lord where Christ teaches us his ways and helps us to walk in his paths. What time is it? It’s time to get up, get excited, and get moving. Emmanuel is coming. Let us go out full of hope, and, like Andrew, encourage others to go out with us, to meet Jesus with all the love and excitement we can muster.

          •  

          The readings for today’s Mass were: 

          Reading 1
          IS 2:1-5
          This is what Isaiah, son of Amoz,
          saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.
          In days to come,
          the mountain of the LORD’s house
          shall be established as the highest mountain
          and raised above the hills.
          All nations shall stream toward it;
          many peoples shall come and say:
          “Come, let us climb the LORD’s mountain,
          to the house of the God of Jacob,
          that he may instruct us in his ways,
          and we may walk in his paths.”
          For from Zion shall go forth instruction,
          and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
          He shall judge between the nations,
          and impose terms on many peoples.
          They shall beat their swords into plowshares
          and their spears into pruning hooks;
          one nation shall not raise the sword against another,
          nor shall they train for war again.
          O house of Jacob, come,
          let us walk in the light of the Lord!
          Responsorial Psalm
          PS 122: 1-2, 3-4, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9
          R. Let us go rejoicing to the house of the Lord.
          I rejoiced because they said to me,
          “We will go up to the house of the LORD.”
          And now we have set foot
          within your gates, O Jerusalem.
          R. Let us go rejoicing to the house of the Lord.
          Jerusalem, built as a city
          with compact unity.
          To it the tribes go up,
          the tribes of the LORD.
          R. Let us go rejoicing to the house of the Lord.
          According to the decree for Israel,
          to give thanks to the name of the LORD.
          In it are set up judgment seats,
          seats for the house of David.
          R. Let us go rejoicing to the house of the Lord.
          Pray for the peace of Jerusalem!
          May those who love you prosper!
          May peace be within your walls,
          prosperity in your buildings.
          R. Let us go rejoicing to the house of the Lord.
          Because of my brothers and friends
          I will say, “Peace be within you!”
          Because of the house of the LORD, our God,
          I will pray for your good.
          R. Let us go rejoicing to the house of the Lord.

          Reading 2
          ROM 13:11-14

          Brothers and sisters:

          You know the time;
          it is the hour now for you to awake from sleep.
          For our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed;
          the night is advanced, the day is at hand.
          Let us then throw off the works of darkness
          and put on the armor of light;
          let us conduct ourselves properly as in the day,
          not in orgies and drunkenness,
          not in promiscuity and lust,
          not in rivalry and jealousy.
          But put on the Lord Jesus Christ,
          and make no provision for the desires of the flesh.

          Gospel
          MT 24:37-44
          Jesus said to his disciples:
          “As it was in the days of Noah,
          so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.
          In those days before the flood,
          they were eating and drinking,
          marrying and giving in marriage,
          up to the day that Noah entered the ark.
          They did not know until the flood came and carried them all away.
          So will it be also at the coming of the Son of Man.
          Two men will be out in the field;
          one will be taken, and one will be left.
          Two women will be grinding at the mill;
          one will be taken, and one will be left.
          Therefore, stay awake!
          For you do not know on which day your Lord will come.
          Be sure of this: if the master of the house
          had known the hour of night when the thief was coming,
          he would have stayed awake
          and not let his house be broken into.
          So too, you also must be prepared,
          for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.”

          The post Advent, St. Andrew and the Jubilee of Hope, First Sunday of Advent (A), November 30, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

          23 min
        • Choosing Anew the King, Full of Joy, Gratitude and Hope, Silver Jubilee Mass of Thanksgiving for the Consecration of Adrienne Rolwes, November 29, 2025

          Msgr. Roger J. Landry

          Holy Infant Church, Ballwin, Missouri
          Silver Jubilee Mass of Thanksgiving for the Consecration of Adrienne Rolwes
          November 29, 2025
          Phil 3:8-14, Ps 63, Jn 15:9-17

           

          To watch a livestream of the Mass, please click here and go to 11/29/25 at 1:50 pm.

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

          https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.29.25_Adrienne_Rolwes_25th_Anniversary_Mass_1.mp3

           

          The following text guided the homily: 

          Two days ago our country celebrated Thanksgiving and we Catholics, like the former leper who returned to thank Jesus for his miraculous healing, pondered how it is right and just, our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere to give God thanks. That man’s gratitude opened him to receive an even greater present that a miraculous bodily cure from Hansen’s Disease: the healing of his soul and the unsurpassable gift of salvation by faith.

          Today we come to Adrienne’s home parish of Holy Infant in Ballwin to thank God with her for all the gifts with which he has blessed her: the gifts of life, of her large, loving family and so many friends, of her baptism, of his sealing her with the fire of the Holy Spirit; of so many times when he’s nourished her with his own Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity and healed her of her sins by his Divine Mercy; the gifts of so many graces in prayer, of her vocation to sanctity within his Mystical Body the Church, of her spiritual family of Consecrated Women of Regnum Christi, of his conforming her to his own poverty, chastity, obedience, of yoking her to himself in the light and sweet burden of the Cross; the gifts of his intense and unwavering fidelity to her and the grace of her persevering fidelity to him. We do so with faith that whenever we thank him, we, like the healed leper, open ourselves to even greater gifts, and we pray for the abundance of those gifts for Adrienne, for the Church and Regnum Christi, and for all of us.

          We come here likewise to thank God for Adrienne and for all the ways that he, through her love for him and her love for us, has blessed us, has reminded us of him, has helped us learn how to relate to him, to pray to him, to follow him, to serve him, to speak of him, to love him and to spread love of him.

          We come here also to thank you, Adrienne, for the ways you have corresponded to God’s graces and for the innumerable ways, big and small, you have sought to love us with the love with which Christ has filled you.

          There are many Christians, not to mention priests, religious and consecrated men and women, who love only a little or by halves, who seek to follow God at a comfortable distance, who live life content just to pass, barely, on the bell curve of human behavior. Not you! You heard God’s word calling you to love him with all your heart, mind, soul and strength, and to love your neighbor, and you have tried to do so with all you are and have. You’ve poured yourself with all the gifts God has given you into your vocation and already produced so much fruit, both visible and known only to God. Through teaching, preaching retreats, and giving spiritual direction, you’ve formed so many young women to desire God and holiness, to come to know what he is asking of them in life and to ask for the courage to respond wholeheartedly. Through community life and friendship, you have helped them persevere and remained firmly set on the rock who is Christ, even amid storms. Several of your friends have recently told me how grateful they are for your strengthening them in their own vocations through the way you use your very sharp and fast mind, vast reading, extraordinary ability to listen, incisive and commentaries, feminine and maternal intuition, and capacity to get to know people deeply and read them; through your sense of humor and occasional silliness, your patience, practicality, organizational ability and strategic intelligence, your loyalty and freedom; through your faith and trust that God can do anything, your love for God and hunger for holiness, your courage in the face of physical sufferings, and your childlike joy.

          And so, first and foremost, we give thanks. We thank the Lord for all that he, the Almighty, has done for you, as we’ll sing later this Mass, echoing Our Lady’s Magnificat. We also sincerely thank you for showing us all how to receive well whatever God gives, how to respond to him with gratitude and grit, how to prioritize him and how to seek, humbly, prayerfully, and generously, to share him and his love with others.

          The second overarching theme that frames our joy today is Regnum Christi, literally “The kingdom of Christ.” You consecrated yourself to Jesus a quarter of a century ago on November 26, 2000, which in the liturgical calendar of the Great Jubilee was the Solemnity of the Christ the King. We celebrated that Solemnity for the 100th time this past Sunday. Pope Pius XI in 1925 established this new, annual liturgical observance — in the midst of so much political and social confusion due to the ravages of World War I, the rise of Bolsevik communism in Russia and anti-clericalist secularism in Mexico, and other forces — to help Catholics better serve as agents of the peace of Christ in the kingdom of Christ, which was his papal motto. Upon establishing the Solemnity, Pope Pius said he was praying for three benefits. The first was freedom for the Church to fulfill the task given to her by Christ. The second was that rulers would recognize that they, too, are answerable to God for all their decisions. The final was that the faithful would “gain much strength and courage, enabling them to form their lives after the true Christian ideal,” allow Jesus to reign in their minds, wills, hearts, and bodies, and thereby draw others into Christ’s kingdom, so that together in this world they might become Christ’s good and faithful servants and inherit the kingdom prepared for them since the foundation of the world.

          To understand you, Adrienne, we have to understand, first, the kingdom of God and how you see your life in relation to it. Jesus told so many parables of the Kingdom of God, about how to prepare for it, receive and enter it, about how it grows, about how to work for it. But he gave two small parables of its unsurpassable value. “The Kingdom of heaven,” he said, “is like a treasure buried in a field, which a person finds and hides again, and out of joy goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant searching for fine pearls. When he finds a pearl of great price, he goes and sells all that he has and buys it” (Mt 13:44-46). The Kingdom Christ gives, he indicates, is worth more than all of the other pearls in our collection, more than all of the other treasures we may have in life. Selling everything else we have for that kingdom is the wisest decision and greatest deal we can ever make. And like the man who discovers the buried treasure, we’re persuaded by its value “out of joy” to trade everything else for it.

          You realized this at a young age, in fact at the age of 12, when Regnum Christi introduced you to Christ the King in a way you had never experienced before with such clarity, as a real Person who wanted a true friendship with you. You chose for today’s Gospel Christ the King’s words from the Last Supper that drove home to you what was life’s greatest treasure and most precious jewel. Jesus said to you, “Just as the Father loves me, so I love you. Remain in my love.” Jesus wanted you to grasp that he loved us — he loved you, Adrienne Rolwes — just as much as God the Father loved him. That he wanted you to remain in his love, not to run away from it, not to squirm saying, truthfully, you were unworthy of it, but to abide in his love, and to make his love the defining characteristic of your life. You heard him intimate to you he didn’t want you to relate to him as a slave or a servant, responding to him out of fear or duty, but a friend, approaching him as the best of friends. You saw the significance of the fact that, as a friend, he laid down his life to save yours, and you, as a grateful friend, wanted to give your life back with love to and for him. You heard his “new commandment,” his synthesis of the Christian life, and longed to love as he has loved you first. You learned that the Kingdom of God is indeed a kingdom where love reigns, where the love with which God the Father loves Jesus becomes the love with which Jesus loves us and the love with which we in turn love others. You discovered in that love that he was calling you, saying, as he does in the Gospel, “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain,” and you knew that that fruit would be the expression of the cooperation between his love and yours. And culminating all of this, you understood that this was the path to true and lasting happiness for which he had created you within the love of your parents Jim and Laura: “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy might be complete.” Your joy is the fruit of that life of love, of that friendship, of that calling.

          Having gotten a taste of the joy of Christ’s kingdom of love, you gradually were helped by God to seize it, like the wise pearl merchant or lucky treasure hunter. That’s one of the reasons why you chose St. Paul’s words to the Christians in Philippi today’s words as your first reading. The apostle testified, with words you wanted to make your own, “I consider everything as a loss because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” Once he came to know Jesus Christ, to experience his love, to taste and see his goodness, to understand the value of his kingdom, he treated all the other great experiences and blessings of his life until then as refuse in comparison. That’s why, he said, “I have accepted the loss of all things … that I may gain Christ and be found in him. He wanted “to know him and the power of his resurrection,” even to have a share of “his sufferings by being conformed to his death” so that “somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”

          You told me, Adrienne, in preparation for this Mass, “With the first reading I want to say that every sacrifice of these last 25 years has been absolutely worth it to me, not because the things I gave up were of little value, but because [Jesus] is everything and nothing compares to the gift of loving Him and being loved by Him, ‘because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.’  He alone is worthy of this kind of sacrifice.” It’s because you came to know Christ as your King, Friend, Good Shepherd, Loving Savior, Way, Truth, Resurrection, Life and Pearl of Great Price, that you were able to become his true disciple. Jesus told us in St. Luke’s Gospel that to be his disciple we must love him more than even mother and father, brothers and sisters, spouse and children, health and well-being, possession and lands, and even his or her own life (Lk 14:26-33). You grasped that and have sought to live that, and you have done so with attractive joy. You told me, “I know I am called to remain in His love, to be led to the heart of the Father through this love of Jesus, and to be the love of Jesus for all those He places in my life. This love is what gives meaning to my life and to all consecrated life.”

          Often people are confused about what the Kingdom of Christ means, which is one of the reasons why many don’t seize it even after they hear Jesus’ words. In order to understand the kingdom, Jesus reminded us today in the Alleluia verse, we have to become childlike, to look at him and his kingdom with the wonder and trust of children rather than with the skepticism and cynicism of worldly adults. It’s only “little ones,” he said, who understand the “mysteries of the kingdom,” because he said clearly that his kingdom “does not belong to this world” (Jn 18:36). We can’t understand it in worldly categories, because it’s in, but not of, the world.

          25 years ago next Month, just 17 days after you were consecrated, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI, described in a homily to the catechists of the world what the kingdom is. He said, “The Kingdom of God is God. The Kingdom of God means: God exists. God is alive. God is present and acts in the world, in our, in my, life. God is not a faraway ‘ultimate cause.’ God is not the ‘great architect’ of deism, who created the machine of the world and is no longer part of it. On the contrary, God is the most present and decisive reality in each and every act of my life, in each and every moment of history.” To live in the Kingdom of God, which is the vocation not just of those in Regnum Christi but of every Christian, is to live with God in the present, to cooperate with his help and choose to make him the most decisive reality in every part of our existence. To make him the King of our mind, of our heart, of our time, of our energies, of our wallet, of everything we are and have.

          This is something you have done through your consecration. Consecration means that something or someone has “cut oneself off” (sacer) in order to be “with” (con or cum) or for God. In your consecration, you have separated yourself from so many of the good things of the world to belong to God. While all of us are actually consecrated to God in this way in the Sacrament of Baptism, you have made a more intense form of consecration, to embrace evey more fully Christ in his poverty, in his chastity and in his obedience, because you have found in the poor, chaste and obedient Christ what you know is the truest wealth, truest love and truest freedom. You have espoused yourself to the divine Bridegroom in this way and made him the most present and decisive reality in who you are, how you live, what you choose.

          You told me in preparation for this Jubilee Mass, “Though from the outside consecrated life can seem to be a waste, the love I have experienced in my vocation has made me happier than I ever could have imagined. It has given me the joy of which Jesus speaks: ‘that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete.’”

          That’s why, today, you will renew, once more, this covenantal commitment to him. Just like married couples renew their vows on their major anniversaries as an act of gratitude to God and love for each other, just as priests renew their commitments every year at the Chrism Mass, so today you renew joyfully the profession of your commitment to Christ— your yes, your Amen, your fiat — praying for the grace to be ever more consecrated with him within his consecration to God the Father. Today through this renewal you ask to become ever more fully his so your life can become an even greater commentary on the couplet he taught us to pray: “Thy Kingdom come! Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven!”

          So the first word today that frames our prayer with you is thanksgiving. The second is the kingdom of Christ. The third and last, briefly, is hope.

          We are celebrating your silver Jubilee within the context of the Jubilee of Hope. That’s so fitting because your whole life, like that of every faithful consecrated and religious, is meant to be a sign of hope. Hope, St. Paul suggested to the Ephesians, is, essentially, to live with God in the world (see Eph 2:14), to proclaim by one’s body language and words that God-with-us, Emmanuel, is still very much with us. The Season of Advent, which begins in just a few hours, prepares us, through pondering Jesus’ first coming in Bethlehem, to run forth to meet him now in all the ways he comes to us — in prayer, in the Sacraments, in his holy Word, in others — and also to be ready like the wise virgins in his Gospel parable (Matt 25:1-14) to sprint out to meet him with lamps lit when he comes at the end of time, or the end of our life, whichever comes first.

          St. Paul described that hope in today’s first reading. He humbly wrote about his yearning to conform himself to the risen Christ and the power of his resurrection in day-to-day life, stating, “It is not that I have already taken hold of it or have already attained perfect maturity, but I continue my pursuit in hope that I may possess it, since I have indeed been taken possession of by Christ Jesus.” He doubled-down, declaring, “Forgetting what lies behind but straining forward to what lies ahead, I continue my pursuit toward the goal, the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus.” Each year, in fact every day, is one year, one day, closer to that prize and goal of God’s upward calling. Every anniversary, every Jubilee, every renewal of vows for a consecrated woman, is a time to recommit oneself to the “pursuit in hope” of what all the spiritual blessings in this life are just a foretaste.

          That’s one reason why St. John Paul II said that “the role of consecrated life” is to be “an eschatological sign” (Vita Consecrata 26) Eschaton in Greek means “last” or “final.” In a theological context, it means you’re supposed to be a sign of our “end” of the “fulfillment” of human life. Jesus told us in the Sermon on the Mount, “Where your treasure is, there also will your heart be” (Mt 6:21) and consecrated and religious are meant to show what every Christian is called to, how to place our heart, our treasure, in God, in his life and love, in a desire to be definitively and totally his. You’re meant to show us not only the path to holiness and lasting happiness, but are also meant to radiate for us a glimpse of the future joy of heaven.

          Your whole life is meant to be a living Advent, an anticipation of the life to come. It’s supposed to be a musical crescendo, chanting more loudly and more beautifully what we sang in today’s Psalm, “O God, you are my God whom I seek; for you my flesh pines and my soul thirsts like the earth, parched, lifeless and without water. … My soul clings to you. Your right hand holds me fast!” You told me Adrienne that you love Psalm 63 because it expresses “my longing for Heaven, and also the longing for God which we should all have, of which consecrated persons by their vocation should remind the world.”

          John Paul II had said in his beautiful 1996 exhortation on the consecrated life, “Immersed in the things of the Lord, the consecrated person remembers [and reminds everyone] that ‘here we have no lasting city’ (Heb 13:14), for ‘our commonwealth is in heaven’ (Phil 3:20), [and that] the ‘one thing necessary’ is to seek God’s ‘Kingdom and his righteousness’ (Mt 6:33), with unceasing prayer for the Lord’s coming” (VC 26). But he added that consecrated persons are more than simply “signs of the Spirit pointing to a new future enlightened by faith and by Christian hope.” He emphasized, “Eschatological expectation becomes mission, so that the Kingdom may become ever more fully established here and now. The prayer, ‘Come, Lord Jesus!’ is accompanied by another, ‘Thy Kingdom come!’  (Mt 6:10). Those who vigilantly await the fulfilment of Christ’s promises are able to bring hope to their brothers and sisters, … a hope founded on God’s promise contained in the revealed word: the history of humanity is moving towards ‘a new heaven and a new earth’ (Rev 21:1), where the Lord ‘will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away’ (Rev 21:4).The consecrated life is at the service of this definitive manifestation of the divine glory, when all flesh will see the salvation of God (cf. Lk 3:6; Is 40:5)” (VC 27).

          And so we thank you, Adrienne, for being for us what a consecrated woman is called to be, an eschatological sign pointing toward God, toward his kingdom, toward heaven. We thank you for translating your ardent desire and eschatological expectation into mission, so that the Kingdom of Christ might be established more firmly here on earth, including among and within us here with you.

          I personally rejoice that, by God’s providence, on February 16, 2012, you decided to come to a Theology on Tap talk I was giving on Conscience in the Public Square in all places, Providence, Rhode Island, so that a few months later (May 20), he might nudge you to email me asking for spiritual direction. For the second half of your first 25 years of consecrated life, as I’ve sought to help you grow in the meaning and fruitfulness of your vocation, I myself have been so blessed by seeing up close, even from what might be called the inside, your relationship to God — your fidelity to, and love for, Him, and the many ways he has graced you and challenged you — and have been inspired, by the way you have lived out your vocation, to be more wholehearted, committed, generous and faithful to the way I live my own.

          As you prepare now to renew out of devotion the public profession of your vows by which you were consecrated to the Lord a quarter of a century ago, we promise to pray for you, as you will soon say, that you “may be faithful to the spirit that God has given to the Society [of Apostolic Life “Consecrated Women of Regnum Christi”], at the service of Christ and his Church, and thus achieve perfect charity.” We pray that the Lord will bless anew your “mission of making the Kingdom of Jesus Christ present” through service, humility, and availability, as you strive to bear witness, in communion with others, to love in word and deed, that Jesus speaks about in the Gospel. With you we ask Jesus, “the son of Mary and spouse of consecrated women” to be your “joy and crown on this earth until he brings us to the eternal wedding feast in his Kingdom.”

          May he help you to thirst ever more for him like a desert for water, and eventually quench that thirst with his Living Water, as you continue your pursuit toward the prize of God’s upward calling, as your King and Bridegroom now comes from heaven to earth in the awesome eucharistein, this great Thanksgiving, which is the most fitting way to thank Him for all the ways he has blessed you and, through you, continues to bless us.

           

          The readings for today’s Mass were: 

          Reading I

          Philippians 3:8-14

          Brothers and sisters:

          I consider everything as a loss
          because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.
          For his sake I have accepted the loss of all things
          and I consider them so much rubbish,
          that I may gain Christ and be found in him,
          not having any righteousness of my own based on the law
          but that which comes through faith in Christ,
          the righteousness from God,
          depending on faith to know him and the power of his resurrection
          and the sharing of his sufferings by being conformed to his death,
          if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

          It is not that I have already taken hold of it

          or have already attained perfect maturity,
          but I continue my pursuit in hope that I may possess it,
          since I have indeed been taken possession of by Christ Jesus.
          Brothers and sisters, I for my part
          do not consider myself to have taken possession.
          Just one thing: forgetting what lies behind
          but straining forward to what lies ahead,
          I continue my pursuit toward the goal,
          the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus.

          Responsorial Psalm — Ps 63:2, 3-4, 5-6, 8-9

          R/.  My soul is thirsting for you, O Lord my God.

          O God, you are my God whom I seek;

          for you my flesh pines and my soul thirsts
          like the earth, parched, lifeless and without water.  R/.

          Thus have I gazed toward you in the sanctuary

          to see your power and your glory,
          For your kindness is a greater good than life;
          my lips shall glorify you.  R/.

          Thus will I bless you while I live;

          lifting up my hands, I will call upon your name.
          As with the riches of a banquet shall my soul be satisfied,
          and with exultant lips my mouth shall praise you.  R/.

          You are my help,

          and in the shadow of your wings I shout for joy.
          My soul clings fast to you;
          your right hand upholds me.  R/.

          Alleluia (See Matthew 11:25)

          Blessed are you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth;

          you have revealed to little ones the mysteries of the Kingdom.

          Gospel (Jn 15:9-17)

          Jesus said to his disciples:

          “As the Father loves me, so I also love you.
          Remain in my love.
          If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love,
          just as I have kept my Father’s commandments
          and remain in his love.

          “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you

          and your joy might be complete.
          This is my commandment: love one another as I love you.
          No one has greater love than this,
          to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
          You are my friends if you do what I command you.
          I no longer call you slaves,
          because a slave does not know what his master is doing.
          I have called you friends,
          because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father.
          It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you
          and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain,
          so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you.
          This I command you: love one another.”

          The post Choosing Anew the King, Full of Joy, Gratitude and Hope, Silver Jubilee Mass of Thanksgiving for the Consecration of Adrienne Rolwes, November 29, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

          30 min
        • Mater Populi Fidelis: Reflections on the New Vatican Doctrinal Note About Our Lady, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, NYC, November 25, 2025

          Msgr. Roger J. Landry

          Our Lady’s Chapel, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, New York
          November 25, 2025

           

          To watch the talk and the question-and-answer period, please click below: 

           

          To listen to the audio recording of the talk, please click below: 

          https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.25.25_Mater_Populi_Fidelis_1.mp3

           

          The outline for the talk was: 

          • Background and declared aims of the Doctrinal Note
          • Illustrative images of Mary’s role from St. Mary Major and Santa Maria in Trastevere Basilicas in Rome
          • Summary of the Main Points of the Document with particular focus on the titles given to Mary as Co-Redemptrix and Mediatrix of All Graces
          • Four ways to help all Christians, particularly our Protestant brothers and sisters, relate to Our Lady: Disciple, Apostle, Mother and Intercessor
          • The illustration of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal, whose feast is coming up this week
          • Constructive Criticisms and Praise of the Doctrinal Vote from various loyal sons of the Church
          • Questions and Answers

            • The post Mater Populi Fidelis: Reflections on the New Vatican Doctrinal Note About Our Lady, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, NYC, November 25, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

            1 hr 30 min
          • Daily Reflection for the Pontifical Mission Societies, November 23, 2025

            Msgr. Roger J. Landry

            National Director, The Pontifical Mission Societies
            Daily Reflection for November 23, 2025

            Here is the video of today’s reflection.

            The Youtube generated transcript for today’s reflection is:

            I am Monsignor Roger Landry, national director of the Pontifical Mission Societies. It’s the Solemnity to Christ the King November 23rd and I’m coming to you from the ravine on the property of the shrine of the North American Martyrs in Auriesville, New York. Here you see the recollections of St. Isaac Jogues about the death of St. Renee Goupil September 29, 1642. He was tomahawkked after having finished the rosary. And as he was dying, he just cried out, “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.” He used the holy name of Jesus, the word that means God saves, entrusting himself to salvation to the Lord whom he had spent his life giving witness to. Today on this Solemnity of Christ the King, we remember that Jesus is the God who saves us too. And in the gospel, we see not only the depiction of Jesus’ last hours as he was dying on Calvary, but that great scene between the two thieves. The thief on Jesus’ left said, “If you’re truly the Messiah, save yourself and us.” But the other, the good thief, turned to Jesus and he said um to the first the thief, “Do you do you not realize that we’re under the same condemnation? This man’s done nothing wrong.” Then he turned and he said, “Jesus, God saves, remember me when you enter into your kingdom.” And Jesus turned to him and with the laressa, the king of kings said that he wasn’t just going to remember him after he died. What a strange request that is because we can’t remember when we’re really dead, but this good thief recognized that Jesus would somehow have the ability to remember after he had died. Jesus turned to him and said, “You will be with me in paradise today.” And so that’s what we pray for throughout the month of November. We turn to Christ the King, God who saves. And we want to enter into his kingdom. We recognize that that salvation is not meant to come to us just at the very end of our life. It’s supposed to come to us in the present when we turn to Jesus in this world and experience the fruits of what he won for us on Calvary. So that today we can enter into communion with him through prayer, through the sacraments, through the Christian moral life. So that when our last day comes like it did for that good thief, we might see Jesus turn to us and with that same large S, give us his kingdom. Today you will be with me in paradise. We pray for that. We pray for the work of missionaries all throughout the globe who are trying to bring people everywhere to experience Christ as their universal king to enter into his kingdom here on earth and then to enter the kingdom of heaven with St. Renee Goupil, St. Isaac Jogues and all the saints. God bless you.

            The Gospel reading on which the reflection was based on

            Gospel
            Luke 23:35-43

            The rulers sneered at Jesus and said,

            “He saved others, let him save himself
            if he is the chosen one, the Christ of God.”
            Even the soldiers jeered at him.
            As they approached to offer him wine they called out,
            “If you are King of the Jews, save yourself.”
            Above him there was an inscription that read,
            “This is the King of the Jews.”

            Now one of the criminals hanging there reviled Jesus, saying,

            “Are you not the Christ?
            Save yourself and us.”
            The other, however, rebuking him, said in reply,
            “Have you no fear of God,
            for you are subject to the same condemnation?
            And indeed, we have been condemned justly,
            for the sentence we received corresponds to our crimes,
            but this man has done nothing criminal.”
            Then he said,
            “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
            He replied to him,
            “Amen, I say to you,
            today you will be with me in Paradise.”

             

            The post Daily Reflection for the Pontifical Mission Societies, November 23, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

            3 min
          • Celebrating for the 100th Time the Hope Christ the King Gives, Solemnity of Christ the King (C), November 23, 2025

            Msgr. Roger J. Landry

            Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY
            Solemnity of Christ the King, Year C
            November 23, 2025
            2 Sm 5:1-3, Ps 122, Col 1:12-20, Lk 23:35-43

             

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

            https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.23.25_Homily_1.mp3

             

            The following text guided the homily: 

            • Today the Church celebrates with even greater joy than normal the Solemnity of Christ the King, the culmination of the Church’s liturgical year. Today across the world we make the proclamation that Jesus is the King of the Universe, Lord of all, judge of the living and the dead and that all of time and history is heading toward this climax when Christ will be revealed to people of every race, nation and religion as the universal King of Kings. Today we announce in unison, as St. Paul described today in the second reading, that Christ the King is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, the creator of all things in heaven and earth, the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, the one in whom all the fullness was pleased to dwell and the peacemaker and reconciler of all things both on earth and in heaven.
            • We celebrate with special joy because this year we mark the 100th anniversary of Pope Pius XI’s establishing this feast at the end of 1925 Jubilee. Because the first celebration of this Solemnity happened the following year, today, therefore, is the 100th time we are celebrating this feast liturgically.
            • Why was it established? Within a decade after the terrible devastation of World War I, in the midst of social and political instability flowing from the dissolution of four historic European monarchies, the rise of militant atheism seeking to repress belief in Christ and suppress Christian presence in the world, revolutions against the “old order” leading to ferocious anti-clerical persecution, bishops and faithful around the world were petitioning the Holy Father for a response, one that would be the capstone of the celebration of faith that was taking place in the Jubilee Year and fill them with courage to live out their vocation in the midst of a confused world. Pius XI gave it in his encyclical Quas Primas in which he said that the manifold evils and destruction present in the world “were due to the fact that the majority of men had thrust Jesus Christ and his holy law out of their lives; that these had no place either in private affairs or in politics: and … that as long as individuals and states refused to submit to … our Savior, there would be no really hopeful prospect of a lasting peace among nations.”
            • He led us first through Sacred Scripture, showing how the Old Testament demonstrated that God was king, his scepter was righteousness, and that the Messiah, as son of David, would be called Prince of Peace and execute judgment and justice on earth. In the New Testament the Angel tells Mary that “the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of David his father … and of his kingdom there shall be no end,” Jesus affirms it before Pontius Pilate and tells the apostles that all authority in heaven and on earth had been given to him, and in the Book of Revelation, we join the hymns of the angels and saints in proclaiming his kingdom.
            • Pius XI then guided us through the Church’s liturgical tradition as well as the writings of the fathers, saints and previous popes, in demonstrating the Church’s recognition of Christ’s reign, emphasizing that Christ’s kingdom is, as Jesus himself said, not of this world. It’s a spiritual kingdom, won by Christ’s blood, opposing the work of Satan the power of darkness, but one that is meant to extend to all social relations, from the family to civil affairs.
            • Upon establishing the feast, Pope Pius said he was praying for three benefits. The first was freedom for the Church to fulfill the task given to her by Christ. The second was that rulers would recognize that they, too, are answerable to God. The final was that the faithful would “gain much strength and courage, enabling them to form their lives after the true Christian ideal,” and allow Jesus to reign in their minds, wills, hearts, and bodies, thereby drawing others into Christ’s kingdom and together be accounted Christ’s good and faithful servants who would inherit the kingdom prepared for them since the foundation of the world.
            • So, today, we thank God for the 100 years of celebration of this feast, for all of the graces given, and for the fruits we have seen in those who have spent and even given their lives, like Blessed Miguel Pro 98 years ago today, proclaiming, “Viva Cristo Rey!”
            • The second reason for greater joy today is because it is taking place within the Jubilee of Hope. We remember what hope is. Pope Benedict XVI, basing himself on St. Paul’s words to the Ephesians that before the Gospel came to them, they were “without hope” because they were “without God in the world” (Eph 2:14), taught that hope is essentially living with God in the world. To live with God in the world is to live in his Kingdom. As he as Cardinal Ratzinger said 25 years ago this December, “The Kingdom of God is God. The Kingdom of God means: God exists. God is alive. God is present and acts in the world, in our, in my, life. God is not a faraway ‘ultimate cause,’ God is not the ‘great architect’ of deism, who created the machine of the world and is no longer part of it. On the contrary: God is the most present and decisive reality in each and every act of my life, in each and every moment of history.” The Catechism, in its definition of hope, shows us how the hope is tied up not just with living with God in the world but living with God forever. It states that hope is the “the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit” (1817). Hope orients us to God, to his kingdom, to eternal life, grounding us in Jesus’ promises of that kingdom. Hope helps us to cooperate with the Holy Spirit in entering the kingdom, remaining in the kingdom, and announcing the kingdom. Hope sustains us even when it seems like so many things happening in the world are leading us away from what Pius XI called the “peace of Christ in the kingdom of Christ.” Hope also points us to the “great hope” to live in the Kingdom of God forever.
            • We see the virtue of Christian hope, as well as the way by which Christ wants to reign in our hearts, minds, wills and bodies, on full display in today’s readings. The last thing Jesus looked like as he hung upon the Cross on Good Friday was a king. He was bathed in blood, not clothed with royal purple. He was hammered to a Cross, not seated on a throne. He was crowned with thorns, not with gold and diadems. To ridicule him and humiliate the Jews, Pilate had ordered that a derisive inscription in three languages be placed above his head: “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” Rather than pay him homage, most in the crowd mocked him. The chief priests mocked him. The Roman soldiers and passers-by mocked him. Even the thieves crucified with him mocked him. And all of them derided him in the same way: “If you’re truly the king of the Jews, the Messiah, the Christ, come down from that Cross and save yourself.” Such visible force was the only demonstration of kingly power they could comprehend.
            • For most Jews at the time, Jesus’ crucifixion was the proof that he was precisely notthe long-awaited Messiah-king for whom they had longed for centuries. In the first reading, we see the beginning of David’s kingship in Jerusalem. The Jews anticipated that when the Son of David came, he would rule in the way that his ancestor David had ruled. He would defeat all foreign powers and would be brutal to those who opposed him. When David marched into Jerusalem, right after the end of today’s first reading, the inhabitants of Jerusalem who opposed David told him that even the blind and the lame of the city were united in opposition against him and would defeat him. So when David’s men took the city, they went up and attacked even the blind and the lame. The Jews anticipated that the Messiah-King would use his power to subjugate all those who made themselves his adversaries, not take their abuse and die a horrible death to save his abusers. They were totally unprepared for a king who would serve at all, not to mention to the point of death.
            • The Romans were likewise unprepared for a king like Jesus. When Pontius Pilate interrogated Jesus, he asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “My kingship is not of this world; if my kingship were of this world, my servants would be fighting that I not be handed over to the Jews; but my kingship is not of this world.” Then Pilate retorted, “So you are a king?” Jesus replied by describing more specifically what type of king he was and what type of kingdom he was establishing. “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice.” The Romans thought that kingship meant having the power to crucify or pardon. They thought it was associated with force. Jesus said it is associated with truth and that the meek and humble like him would inherit the earth.
            • Even the apostles had a false idea about the kingdom and what it meant to be in the king’s service. We see throughout the Gospel that they were competing against each for the greatest positions in the messianic administration they imagined Jesus would inaugurate. After James and John pathetically got their mother to go up to Jesus to ask him to do whatever she asked and grant that her baby boys sit on his immediate right and left as he began his kingdom, Jesus used it as a lesson for all the apostles, who similarly were hungering after the same worldly positions: “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men make their authority over them felt. It shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave; for the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” That is Jesus’ kingdom. To enter into his kingdom with him, to be his right hand, to be his cabinet ministers, means to be willing to give our life as a ransom for God and others, to serve rather than be served, to give rather than get.
            • Jesus’ true regality, however, was not lost on everyone. After initially joining in the mocking of Jesus, the criminal on Jesus’s right — at arguably the worst moment of his up-to-then probably bad life, during his excruciatingly painful public execution — had a change of heart. How this came about we don’t know, but I’ve always thought that it was a result of the prayers of the woman standing with hope, not swooning, before the three Crosses, the woman who had not lost hope even when she saw the child whom she used to bathe now bathed in blood. Somehow something happened in the heart of the one on Jesus’ right and he now began to see what up until that point he hadn’t, how special the one being crucified beside him was. The Good Thief could grasp in his own body the incredible, biting pain Jesus would have been experiencing a few feet away, and yet he could see that that pain had not gained the upper hand. He was able to glimpse that for Jesus, to reign is to serve, to reign is to love, to reign is to give witness to the truth, and to reign is to forgive. The good thief perceived what almost everyone else was missing, that Jesus, mysteriously through his suffering and death, was not about to lose a kingdom, but to inaugurate He wasn’t about to experience an ignominious defeat but a glorious triumph. With faith and hope, therefore, he turned to the Malefactor in the middle — who would breathe his last before even the thief himself would! — and humbly begged, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom!” He was asking a seemingly dying man to remember him, something that would be possible only if the thief realized that the dying man would somehow still live and be capable of memory. Jesus the King turned to him and promised that he would do more than remember. With the largesse befitting the most magnanimous monarch, he declared that he would take him with Himself into the eternal kingdom of paradise. We learn here a very valuable lesson. The ancient Christians used to say, Regnavit a ligno Deus!“God has reigned from the Cross.” They prayed, “O Crux, Ave, Spes Unica!,” “Hail, O Cross, our Only Hope.” To say, “Thy kingdom come,” to seek to enter his kingdom, is to resolve to pay him true homage on his throne, to try to live with him on that throne by picking up our own cross and following him, making of our life a true sacrifice out of love for God and others. It means to live with hope even our own sufferings, crucifixions and death, like the Good Thief or Blessed Miguel Pro. It means to make Christ Crucified and Risen the defining reality of our life and live and reign with him in the middle of the world seeking his kingdom.
            • The question is whether this is what we really want when we pray, “Thy Kingdom come!” We live at a time that, just like 2,000 years ago, has many false ideas about Jesus, many erroneous expectations about the kingdom he came to establish, the way he reigns and the way he calls us to reign with him. In his most famous homily, Christ the King said that the kingdom of heaven belongs to those who are poor in spirit, and yet so many — even those who call themselves his followers — set their hearts not on spiritual poverty, but on riches, houses, cars, and material things. Christ the King likewise proclaimed that to enter his kingdom, we need to be willing to be persecuted and hated because of him, and yet so many seek popularity and to be liked so much that they buckle in their fidelity as soon as anyone gives a hint of disapproving the Gospel. He similarly emphasized that, as King, he had come not to be served but to serve, and that in his kingdom, his followers would not seek to be lords over others but would become great by serving the rest, and yet so many are dominated by petty worldly ambitions and a selfish desire to be served by others. Do we really want Christ’s true kingdom to come? Do we want the whole world to enter it?
            • This points to the crucial missionary dimension to the kingdom, as we seek to bring the hope, peace and values of the kingdom to others. When Jesus spoke about the kingdom, he talked about growth, saying that the kingdom is like a tiny mustard seed, which begins as among the smallest of seeds but grows into a tree so that all the birds can come to rest in its branches, like a tiny pinch of yeast that can make rise the dough of the whole world. He said that when we receive the message of the kingdom not with stubbornness, or superficiality, or worldly cares and anxieties but with good soil, the seed of the Kingdom will grow within us to bear 30, 60 or 100-fold fruit that will last. That fruit is not just supposed to be in us but also in the world. He urges us to make entering this kingdom and inviting others to enter it our great priority in life. If we wish to seize it, he emphasized, we have to be all in, because a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. But it’s worth it, he tells us, because the kingdom is like a pearl of great price or a treasure buried in a field worth giving everything else in life to obtain. He has told us that he has chosen us to be the laborers in his kingdom, and promised that, whether summoned at this early time in the morning or at five in the afternoon, if we labor together with him in his great harvest of souls he will give us generously a full life’s wage. And he has compared the reward of his kingdom to an unending wedding banquet that he urges us to prepare with lamps lit and properly vested, vested ultimately in the garments of our baptism, which we were instructed to keep unstained for the eternal life of heaven, and from which the missionary dimension of our Christian life flows. Baptism is the day on which, as St. Paul tells us in the second reading, we were made “fit to share in the inheritance of the holy ones in light.” Baptism is the day on which Jesus “delivered us from the power of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son.” To preserve and intensify our baptismal graces is to remain in the kingdom by living out our vocation as missionary disciples in communion.
            • And so, as we mark for the 100th time the liturgical celebration of Christ our King as King of the Universe, we recommit ourselves not only to living in his Kingdom but in helping everyone else imitate the Good thief in today’s Gospel. St. Thomas Aquinas taught us to pray, in his famous Eucharistic hymn Adoro Te Devote, “I ask for what the Good Thief asked,” “Peto quod petivit latro poenitens.” We turn to Christ the King about to reign on this altar and ask to be with him not only in a paradise to come but to live with him in the world now, because the Kingdom of God is indeed God, it means that God exists, is alive, is present and active in the world, in my life as the most present and decisive reality in each and every act of my life, in each and every moment of my history. And we ask Christ the King to grant us all the help he knows we need so that we may always live in his kingdom as missionaries of his regal loving service and help others to become with us true pilgrims of hope on earth and seize the same kingdom as the most precious pearl and treasure. Viva, Cristo Rey!

              •  

              These were the readings for today’s Solemnity: 

              Reading 1
              2 Sm 5:1-3
              In those days, all the tribes of Israel came to David in Hebron and said:
              “Here we are, your bone and your flesh.
              In days past, when Saul was our king,
              it was you who led the Israelites out and brought them back.
              And the LORD said to you,
              ‘You shall shepherd my people Israel
              and shall be commander of Israel.’”
              When all the elders of Israel came to David in Hebron,
              King David made an agreement with them there before the LORD,
              and they anointed him king of Israel.
              Responsorial Psalm
              Ps 122:1-2, 3-4, 4-5
              R. (cf. 1) Let us go rejoicing to the house of the Lord.
              I rejoiced because they said to me,
              “We will go up to the house of the LORD.”
              And now we have set foot
              within your gates, O Jerusalem.
              R. Let us go rejoicing to the house of the Lord.
              Jerusalem, built as a city
              with compact unity.
              To it the tribes go up,
              the tribes of the LORD.
              R. Let us go rejoicing to the house of the Lord.
              According to the decree for Israel,
              to give thanks to the name of the LORD.
              In it are set up judgment seats,
              seats for the house of David.
              R. Let us go rejoicing to the house of the Lord.
              Reading 2
              Col 1:12-20
              Brothers and sisters:
              Let us give thanks to the Father,
              who has made you fit to share
              in the inheritance of the holy ones in light.
              He delivered us from the power of darkness
              and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son,
              in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
              He is the image of the invisible God,
              the firstborn of all creation.
              For in him were created all things in heaven and on earth,
              the visible and the invisible,
              whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers;
              all things were created through him and for him.
              He is before all things,
              and in him all things hold together.
              He is the head of the body, the church.
              He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead,
              that in all things he himself might be preeminent.
              For in him all the fullness was pleased to dwell,
              and through him to reconcile all things for him,
              making peace by the blood of his cross
              through him, whether those on earth or those in heaven.

              Alleluia
              Mk 11:9, 10
              R. Alleluia, alleluia.
              Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!
              Blessed is the kingdom of our father David that is to come!
              R. Alleluia, alleluia.
              Gospel
              Lk 23:35-43
              The rulers sneered at Jesus and said,
              “He saved others, let him save himself
              if he is the chosen one, the Christ of God.”
              Even the soldiers jeered at him.
              As they approached to offer him wine they called out,
              “If you are King of the Jews, save yourself.”
              Above him there was an inscription that read,
              “This is the King of the Jews.”
              Now one of the criminals hanging there reviled Jesus, saying,
              “Are you not the Christ?
              Save yourself and us.”
              The other, however, rebuking him, said in reply,
              “Have you no fear of God,
              for you are subject to the same condemnation?
              And indeed, we have been condemned justly,
              for the sentence we received corresponds to our crimes,
              but this man has done nothing criminal.”
              Then he said,
              “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
              He replied to him,
              “Amen, I say to you,
              today you will be with me in Paradise.”

              The post Celebrating for the 100th Time the Hope Christ the King Gives, Solemnity of Christ the King (C), November 23, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

              24 min
            • Becoming Missionaries of Hope: Lessons from the Life of St. Rose Philippine Duchesne, Shrine of St. Rose Philippine Duchesne, November 20, 2025

              Msgr. Roger J. Landry

              Shrine of Saint Rose Philippine Duchesne, St. Charles, Missouri
              Talk for the Archdiocese of St. Louis’ Pontifical Mission Societies Office
              November 20, 2025

               

              To listen to an audio recording of tonight’s talk, please click below: 

              https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.20.25_Lessons_from_Sr._Rose_Philippine_Duchesne_1.mp3

               

              The outline of tonight’s talk was: 

              • Introduction
                • Earlier this week we celebrated the Feast Day of St. Rose Philippine Duchesne on the 173rd anniversary of her death and birth into eternal life.
                • We honor a saint by celebrating them liturgically as we thank God for them and all the graces he showered down upon them. We honor them by praying through their intercession. But we particularly honor them by trying to imitate them in their love for the Lord and others.
                • In this month in which we remember all the saints, we likewise reflect on the fact that the Lord calls us, too, to be holy as he is holy, to be perfect like he is perfect, and to love as he loves, and to be merciful as he is merciful. St. John Paul II wrote in his beautiful encyclical on the missions published 35 years ago this December, “The call to mission derives, of its nature, from the call to holiness. … The universal call to holiness is closely linked to the universal call to mission. Every member of the faithful is called to holiness and to mission.”
                • So it makes sense for us to turn to our great missionary saint, Mother Rose Philippine, and ask her to teach us about holiness and mission.
                • This talk is entitled, “Becoming Missionaries of Hope: Lessons from St. Rose Philippine Duchesne.”
                • We are now 11 months into the Jubilee of Hope marking the 33rd ordinary Jubilee, decreed by Pope Francis and now being completed by Pope Leo. To live this well, we need:
                  • To be people of hope
                    • Hope means living with God in the world (see Eph 2:14 and Spe Salvi)
                    • The Catechism does define hope as “the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit” (1817).
                      • Moral muscle
                      • Desire for God, his kingdom, eternal life. 100th anniversary of Christ the King this weekend. Do we really mean the worlds, “Thy kingdom come!” Is our happiness really placed in God?
                      • Trust in all Christ’s promises, including the biggest promises of all, about our resurrection from death and eternal life with him.
                      • Reliance on the Holy Spirit rather than self-reliance. That we live differently. We seek to live by the Holy Spirit, not by the flesh.
                      • To be pilgrims of hope, the theme of the year
                        • The Church is a pilgrim Church on earth, as we pray in EP III. We’re on the move. Jesus calls us to come to him. He calls us to follow him. He sends us out. Our faith is dynamic. We’re seeking to grow.
                        • We know that the pilgrimage is not a solo activity. It’s done together with others.
                        • What’s the destination of the pilgrimage? What’s its duration? Who’s the guide? Who’s with us on the journey?
                        • These are all great questions.
                          • The ultimate destination is where Jesus has gone to prepare a place for us.
                          • The duration is our whole life and interiorly even time in Purgatory.
                          • The guide is the Jesus, who beckons us to follow him, but he guides us by the Holy Spirit in the Church who is his bride.
                          • And we not only have each other on the journey, but we have the saints who accompany us like a great cloud of witnesses, and we’re meant to help everyone come onto this narrow road that leads to life.
                          • To be missionaries of hope
                            • That leads us to the third aspect of this Jubilee. We’re called to be not just men and women of hope and pilgrims of hope but also missionaries of hope.
                            • Peter calls the first members of the Church to be always ready to give an explanation of the reason of our hope to all who ask (1 Pet 3:15).
                            • We are meant to be full-time heralds of hope.
                            • People will be asking.
                            • To give the reason we need to know the reason. Our hope is reasonable. It’s based on God: who he is, what’s he done and what he’s said.
                            • Missionaries, like St. Rose Philippine seek to bring that hope to the world, so that others can live with God in the world, so that they can know the Father’s love, come to embrace Christ as the Way, the Truth, the Resurrection and the Life, and so that they can correspond to the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
                            • In this talk, we can examine several lessons we learn from St. Rose Philipine how to be missionaries of hope in the midst of a world in which hope matters.
                            • The need for hope
                              • Before we focus on those lessons, just so this doesn’t seem too theological, it’s important for us to focus on the need for hope. So many in our world are desperate.
                                • There are high rates of despair, flowing from loneliness, isolation, individualism, fear and anxiety, lack of meaning, broken friendships and families, the problem of suffering and more..
                                • We see the consequences of a lack of hope in all those pushing, and taking advantage of, what is euphemistically dubbed Medical Assistance in Dying, Physician Assisted Suicide, and other forms of euthanasia.
                                • We see it in the Fetanyl epidemic, and likely too in how many young people are seeking regular escapes from the difficulties of life through getting high on pot, now legalized and incensing our streets. We’ve seen it in the distractions of so many addictive behaviors, whether games and social media accounts that young people and those not so young are now glued to.
                                • We have seen despair among many young people, alarmed by Greta Thunberg, that the world was imminently to cease to exist because of climate catastrophes.
                                • We’ve seen it in the loss of the desire to transmit life, with collapsing birthrates in the West. Having children is an act of hope in the future, and many make the decision not to bring children into the world because of fear for the future, as a result of despair over what they would be born into, over the direction of our culture, and sometimes even by a desire to protest an election or protect the planet by not having one more carbon dioxide emitter.
                                • The crisis of hope facing the world, especially the young, was raised in an undeniable way a couple of years ago, when the Centers for Disease Control published its biennial Youth Risk Behavior Survey Data Summary and Trends Report for 2011-2021 and it showed the truly alarming, and rapidly worsening, situation of the mental and spiritual health of high school students in the United States.
                                  • The Report documented that 42 percent of U.S. high school teens in 2021 said they felt persistently sad or hopeless, 22 percent seriously considered attempting suicide in the previous year, 18 percent had come up with a concrete plan on how they would end their life, and ten percent actually tried to carry out that plan (and thankfully failed).
                                  • As worrisome as those numbers are, the breakdown between boys and girls was even more distressing. 57 percent of high school girls felt persistently sad or hopeless (compared to 29 percent of boys), 30 percent of girls seriously contemplated suicide in the previous year (14 percent of boys) and 24 percent had a suicide plan (12 percent for boys).
                                  • And the rapid increase in persistent sadness and suicidal ideation among teenage girls was likewise startling: since 2011, persistent sadness and hopelessness had grown from 36 to 57 percent, suicidal thoughts from 19 to 30, and suicide plans from 15 to 24, a sixty percent increase in each category in a decade. (Over the same span, chronic sadness among high school boys had grown from 21 to 29 percent, suicidal thoughts from 13-14, and suicidal plans from 11-12).
                                  • The CDC looked at some factors that might be contributing causes to the crisis, but noted that, over the course of the last decade, bullying, drug use, promiscuity and sexual violence all decreased or stayed about the same. It likewise looked into students’ sense of connectedness in school, their housing situation, and communication with their family, but none of these situations correlated to the swiftly growing problem.
                                  • It’s obvious that there is a crisis of hope underneath the persistent sadness and the consideration of ending one’s life. This is linked to a crisis of meaning, of the “why” of living, of what gives motivation to be able to change own circumstances for the better, not to mention change one’s environment and the world.
                                  • This crisis of hope is linked to a crisis of faith. Gen Z, those born between 1999 and 2015, are experiencing a rapid decline of faith in God. Since 2010, religious practice among high schoolers has dropped 27 percent. Thirteen percent now define as atheist, 16 percent as agnostic.
                                  • These reasons pointing to a crisis of hope is in addition to those who need hope because problems at home in their marriages or families, difficulties with bosses or colleagues at work, various health complications flowing from illness or old age, the worries that people have over their kids or grandkids wandering from the faith.
                                  • Even when people aren’t desperate, often they do need hope that there’s something more, because this worldly hopes can distract but never ultimately satisfy. The small-h hopes of this world aren’t able to satisfy the longings of the human heart. Our hearts are made for God and will be restless, disquieted, until they rest or abide in God.
                                  • These are all reasons why we need a Jubilee of Hope. These are all reasons why we, as baptized missionary disciples in communion, are summoned by Jesus to bring him, our hope, to others. These are all reasons why we need to learn these lessons from St. Rose Philippine.
                                  • The value of our faith
                                    • The first thing we need to learn from her is about the treasure of our faith. She, herself, learned this lesson in a few ways.
                                      • The first was as a young girl. She came from a practicing family. She received a good formation. But she began really to grow and long far more for the things of God when her family welcomed a missionary priest who had come from the Diocese of Louisiana and the two Floridas. She began to dream about going to the missions. She saw in this missionary someone who was willing to give his life to help what the French then called “savages” to come to know Jesus. Sharing the gift of the faith was worth one’s life.
                                      • The next stage was when she went to school with the Visitation Nuns. She saw in their life of prayer and of passing on the gift of faith to students something to which she felt the Lord drawing her. To consecrate oneself to God and to pass on the faith to the next generations was something that made her willing to do what the Rich Young Man wasn’t, and to account the faith even more important than the human goods of wealth, or marriage and family, or worldly influence.
                                      • The third stage was when her family opposed what she thought was her vocation and withdrew her from the Visitation Monastery school. When she was 17, she visited with an Aunt, asked for entry right there and entered. It was a bold and decisive choice against opposition. She loved Jesus and wanted to say yes to her vocation and hence was able to “hate” or knock to second place her love for her father, mother, family, outside friends, etc. The relationship with Jesus was willing to say no to all of those good things out of a yes for the pearl of great price or the treasure buried in a field.
                                      • The fourth stage was when, because of the French Revolution, the convent was disbanded. She continued to live the life of her vocation at home with two relatives who were also Visitation Nuns. She also regularly risked her life to care for faithful priests who were clandestinely supplying the sacraments. If she had been caught, she could have been killed like them. To her the faith was worth dying for. One of the reasons why there was such an explosion of saints in France during the 19thcentury is because so many young French boys and girls came from families that were risking their lives to protect priests and provide access to the Sacraments. St. John Vianney is another whose vocation was forged as a young boy in his family’s care for fugitive priests. This was a school of martyrdom, the most indelible lesson is that the faith is worth living for and dying for.
                                      • The fifth stage was after the concordat between Napoleon and the Church in 1801. She tried to reestablish the Visitation Monastery. She had the whole vocation such that she would rebuild. She tried so hard. But those who had vocations didn’t return and there weren’t enough new vocations. Hence she turned the Monastery over to the Society of the Sacred Heart, to St. Madeline Sophie Barat and, to some degree, started anew.
                                      • The last stage was when a chance arose to become a missionary after Bishop DuBourg of New Orleans and the two Floridas was asking for missionary priests and religious to come to his vast diocese. She was 49 years old. Very used to a way of life teaching girls in France. Yet she was willing to lead a group of sisters for 10 weeks sailing across a rough Atlantic and another 7 weeks up the Mississippi, with a three-week wait in between. Rose was sick the entire voyage and twice was near death, but she soldiered on until they arrived in St. Louis. And then to endure rough conditions to pass on the faith to a few. It would have been easy to be discouraged when Bishop DuBourg wasn’t even in New Orleans, when he didn’t want her to open a school in St. Louis but across the Missouri here in St. Charles. The bishop gave them a one-room log cabin, which they used to found a school for poor children, the first free school west of the Mississippi. The sisters needed to battle cold, hunger, sickness and deprivation, not to mention opposition to their French teaching methods, ingratitude and even calumny. “Poverty and Christian heroism are here,” she wrote succinctly back to the motherhouse, “and trials are the riches in this land.” About the calumny, she joked, “They say everything about us, except that we poison the children.” When she endured great opposition, but she persevered for 34 years as a missionary.
                                      • All of this happened because she had really met Jesus, experienced his love, and she couldn’t hold it in. She was willing to endure so much, including risk her life, in order to spread love of him.
                                      • That’s the first lesson we need to be missionaries of hope: a deep, strong, almost indomitable faith in God that doesn’t waver in the face of obstacles but perseveres!
                                      • Pope Francis has some beautiful passages in his exhortation on the Joy of the Gospel that well describe the life of St. Rose Philippine and the life of so many missionary saints.
                                        • “The primary reason for evangelizing,” he wrote in Evangelii Gaudium, “is the love and salvation of Jesus that we have received.”
                                        • He asked, “What kind of love would not feel the need to speak of the beloved, to point him out, to make him known?”
                                        • He emphasized that the Church’s missionary work is a response to that love life: “We have a treasure of life and love that cannot deceive, and a message that cannot mislead or disappoint” (264)
                                        • And then in the most beautiful passage of his document, perhaps of his papacy, he wrote: “It is not the same thing to have known Jesus as not to have known him, not the same thing to walk with him as to walk blindly, not the same thing to hear his word as not to know it, and not the same thing to contemplate him, to worship him, to find our peace in him, as not to. It is not the same thing to try to build the world with his Gospel as to try to do so by our own lights.  We know well that with Jesus life becomes richer and that with him it is easier to find meaning in everything.  This is why we evangelize.” (266)
                                        • The missionary of hope wants everyone to know personally the eternal difference Jesus makes.
                                        • The Stakes of Our Faith
                                          • That’s the second thing she shows us: the importance of people knowing Jesus as their Savior, as their Good Shepherd, as their Way, Truth, Resurrection and life.
                                          • She believed that the Christian faith matters and matters for one’s happiness in this life and forever.
                                          • The faith is not just an added benefit in life but basically essential.
                                          • We’ve lost this in the last several decades. In this month of November, dedicated to the last things of death, judgment, heaven and hell, it’s important for us to confront the soft eschatology that sometimes can be the false conclusion of interreligious dialogue.
                                          • Some can think that basically all religions are the same. So, conscious that God who founded the Church and created the Sacraments, can save outside the visible confines of the Church and give the effects of the sacraments, especially baptism, to people by desire or blood, some think that these are no longer strictly necessary, so why risk one’s life to travel far afield, away from every comfort, to struggle?
                                          • It’s not just love of God, but a deep love of neighbor and a consciousness that what God has revealed matters, that it’s the most important thing to know, the most important grounds for a choice.
                                          • In the Catechism, the Church affirms:
                                            • All salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body.
                                            • Basing itself on Scripture and Tradition, the Council teaches that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: the one Christ is the mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church.
                                            • He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and Baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through Baptism as through a door. Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it.
                                            • This affirmation is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and his Church. Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience – those too may achieve eternal salvation.
                                            • Then it says:
                                              • Although in ways known to himself God can lead those who, through no fault of their own, are ignorant of the Gospel, to that faith without which it is impossible to please him, the Church still has the obligation and also the sacred right to evangelize all men.
                                              • Then it describes mission as “a requirement of the Church’s catholicity.”
                                              • The missionary mandate. “Having been divinely sent to the nations that she might be ‘the universal sacrament of salvation,’ the Church, in obedience to the command of her founder and because it is demanded by her own essential universality, strives to preach the Gospel to all men.””Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and Lo, I am with you always, until the close of the age.”
                                              • 850 The origin and purpose of mission. The Lord’s missionary mandate is ultimately grounded in the eternal love of the Most Holy Trinity: “The Church on earth is by her nature missionary since, according to the plan of the Father, she has as her origin the mission of the Son and the Holy Spirit.” The ultimate purpose of mission is none other than to make men share in the communion between the Father and the Son in their Spirit of love.
                                              • 851 Missionary motivation. It is from God’s love for all men that the Church in every age receives both the obligation and the vigor of her missionary dynamism, “for the love of Christ urges us on.” Indeed, God “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth”; that is, God wills the salvation of everyone through the knowledge of the truth. Salvation is found in the truth. Those who obey the prompting of the Spirit of truth are already on the way of salvation. But the Church, to whom this truth has been entrusted, must go out to meet their desire, so as to bring them the truth. Because she believes in God’s universal plan of salvation, the Church must be missionary.
                                              • Rose Philippine was very much aware of these stakes and loved enough to dedicate her life to trying to help people know, choose, love and serve Jesus.
                                              • That’s the same motivation that led St. Francis Xavier to evangelize four countries.
                                              • That’s the same motivation that led the North American Martyrs to give their lives to share the faith in Canada and upstate New York, or the new Martyrs of Georgia, or St. Junipero Serra, or St. Frances Cabrini, or St. John Neumann and Blessed Francis Xavier Seelos.
                                              • The third thing is prayer for the Missions
                                                • She was drawn to the Visitation Sisters because of the depth of their prayer.
                                                • When she began a Visitation Nun, she would regularly spend long hours at night praying.
                                                • She continued the practice as a Sister in the Society of the Sacred Heart.
                                                • And she continued it in her mission work. She was someone whose whole life was characterized by prayer.
                                                • Prayer is the foundation of the Missions.
                                                  • Jesus prayed before he called his apostles.
                                                  • He taught us to pray to the Harvest Master for laborers. The Church has been praying ever since.
                                                  • B16, 2000: Don Didimo says, for example: “Jesus preached by day, by night he prayed.” With these few words, he wished to say: Jesus had to acquire the disciples from God. The same is always true. We ourselves cannot gather men. We must acquire them by God for God. All methods are empty without the foundation of prayer. The word of the announcement must always be drenched in an intense life of prayer.
                                                  • There’s a reason why St. Therese is co-patronness of the missions, to show the importance of praying for the missions.
                                                  • This was highlighted when she was 72.
                                                    • Vocations from among her students had started to come in large numbers and she was able to establish new houses, schools and orphanages in Florissant, Grand Côteau, New Orleans, St. Louis and St. Michael. But even though she experienced real fruit from her hard work, she longed to bring the Gospel to the Indians.
                                                    • By the time she was 72, she had become ill enough that she had asked to step down as superior. When a request came in from the famous Jesuit missionary Fr. Pierre-Jean De Smet to help establish a school for the Patawatomi in Sugar Creek, Kansas, she volunteered to go. Her fellow sisters wanted to prevent her from the difficult work in her frail condition, but not only did she insist on going but so did Fr. De Smet. “She must come,” the black-robed apostle demanded. “She may not be able to do much work, but she will assure success to the mission by praying for us. Her very presence will draw down all manner of heavenly favors on the work.”
                                                    • That’s precisely what she did and what happened. It had been hard enough for her to learn English upon coming to America at about the age of 50. It was near impossible for her to learn the Indian dialect, but she did the best she could to teach the young Indian girls about Jesus. What she couldn’t convey in words, she conveyed in action.
                                                    • She spent most of her days and nights on her knees in prayer before Jesus in the Eucharist, which taught the Indians more about the real presence of Christ and the love we’re supposed to have for God, at first and always, than hundreds of catechism classes. Once, young Indian girls placed small pieces of paper on the back of her habit to see if she’d move during the night and go to bed. They came back in the morning and the pieces of paper were exactly where they had placed them. So moved were they by her example that they gave her a precise nickname: Quah-kah-ka-num-ad, “the woman who always prays.” Her prayers led to many conversions and great fruitfulness.
                                                    • After a year there, she was brought back here to St. Charles for the rest of her years on earth, where she continued that type of heroic prayer for the missions, for those who were receiving the Gospel.
                                                    • To be a missionary of hope, we need to be people of prayer.
                                                      • Prayer itself is an act of hope in God who hears our prayers.
                                                      • It’s a recognition that God is indeed with us.
                                                      • It’s a longing of the heart for God and for his kingdom.
                                                      • It’s an act of entrustment.
                                                      • It’s a reliance on the Holy Spirit.
                                                      • We bring to God missionaries.
                                                      • We bring the need for their labor.
                                                      • We bring those who will receive the word of God through them, that they might receive it on good soil and bear fruit 30, 60 or 100-fold.
                                                      • Wouldn’t it be the great honor of our life if someone called us the woman, or the man, who always prays? Jesus calls us to pray always, to unite our whole life to him. That’s what it means to be pray without ceasing.
                                                      • I’ve always been impacted by what Pope Benedict XVI said of St. John Vianney, the patron saint of priests: that he is the example of an “existence made prayer.”
                                                      • In some of his words to priests, Pope Benedict said something that should be ascribable to every Christian.
                                                        • The faithful expect only one thing from priests: that they be specialists in promoting the encounter between man and God. The priest is not asked to be an expert in economics, construction or politics. He is expected to be an expert in the spiritual life. …  What the faithful expect from him is that he be a witness to the eternal wisdom contained in the revealed word. (Warsaw, May 25, 2006)
                                                        • Priests who pray are a real sign of hope for their people.
                                                        • But Christians are called to be those signs of hope. Those who can be relied upon to pray for others. Specialists in the encounter between the human race and God, witnesses to eternal wisdom.
                                                        • That’s certainly what the call to holiness involves. It means to become a person who really prays, who prioritizes prayer.
                                                        • Missionaries of hope are men and women of prayer, praying to God, praying on behalf of others, praying for all to come to God!
                                                        • The fourth lesson is education
                                                          • Rose Philippine gave her life to trying to teach others about God.
                                                          • To evangelize the young is always missionary work. It’s carried out by parents, grandparents, Godparents, older brothers and sisters. But it’s particularly carried out by religious men and women, and now many lay people, who dedicate their life to passing on the faith, so that others may base their existence on Christ the cornerstone.
                                                          • Rose entered the Visitation Convent — rather than Dominican monasteries or Poor Clares — because they were a teaching order. She wanted to give other girls what she had received from the nuns there. When after the Revolution it was impossible to reestablish the monastery, she went from a contemplative sisters to an active one and continued to pass on the faith.
                                                          • And she came here to do so. The spread of the faith in the West has so much to do with her efforts to teach the faith! It was she and her sisters that founded the Catholic school system west of the Mississippi. How grateful we need to be to her.
                                                          • We must prioritize this education. We’re living in an age in which Catholic schools in many places are suffering. The Church isn’t sacrificing enough for them. At a time when government schools are experiencing many issues with regard to passing on various ideologies contrary to the faith, we are continuing to allow Catholic schools to wane. We need to reexamine. Diocese of Wichita. So many vocations flowing from that type of commitment. We shouldn’t be surprised. Catholic families are meant to be the first school of their children and so many families do a great job, and some have even become home schoolers. But we need our Catholic schools to be what St. Rose founded them to be. A place to pass on not just academic skills but introduce children to Jesus, to help form them to be saints, to place their hopes in him, and take up their mission as missionary disciples in communion.
                                                          • In the universal church, the Missionary Childhood Association tries to form kids even from an early age to be missionaries, to help other children, to pray for them, to sacrifice for them. So many saints have been formed by reading the Annals of the Propagation of the Faith, or, listening to stories of missionaries, like St. Rose did as a little girl. We need to do everything we can to form that type of milieu for our young people. God is stronger than the forces in our culture. We can have hope in him. But the whole Church must become a school like those St. Rose Philippine established to pass on the faith.
                                                          • Paul talked about passing on as of the first importance what he received.
                                                          • Moses instructed Joshua and the Israelites to “drill” the faith into their children.
                                                          • That’s at the heart of all missionary work. That’s the way we will form young people to have hope even in the midst of what can lead their contemporaries to despair.
                                                          • The final lesson I’ll mention is the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
                                                            • Rose Philippine joined the Society of the Sacred Heart.
                                                            • She, like so many French, had a deep devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
                                                            • I’ve always found it noteworthy that we don’t have a feast of Jesus’ sacred brain, even though Jesus is the eternal Logos. We don’t honor his hallowed hands, which, despite calluses from hard work in a hidden Nazarene carpentry shop, brought a tender healing touch to so many. There’s no festival of the Lord’s venerable voice, which amplified the word of God made man. There’s no commemoration of the his consecrated feet, which traversed the ancient holy land as he announced the Good News from town to town. There’s no liturgical observation of Jesus’ blessed eyes, which looked on the rich young man with love and were so powerful that, with one glance, they could make Peter weep in the high priest’s courtyard.
                                                            • While there would be a certain fittingness to honoring all of these parts of Jesus’ sacred anatomy — especially since his head was crowned with thorns, his hands and feet pierced by nails, his eyes bruised and beaten and his voice thoroughly parched on Good Friday out of love for us — Jesus has never asked that we do so. Rather, when he appeared to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, the 350th anniversary of which we’re concluding this year, he did so to request that a feast be instituted to honor him under the image and reality of his Sacred Heart.
                                                            • The Lord’s reason for choosing his heart will always remain, in some way, a great and beautiful mystery, but even with our limited human intellects we know that, according to the language and imagery of the Bible, the heart has always been considered the center of the person, the point where reason, will and emotions converge, the place where one finds his inner unity and direction.
                                                            • To honor Jesus’ heart means that we give homage to his entire sacred humanity, conscious that Jesus took our own nature as a missionary of the Father to offer it for us, to redeem it, and to make it the sacred dwelling place of God once again. To honor his heart means that we want our humanity to be transformed by his, so that we may come fully alive and thereby give God glory.
                                                            • Moreover, we don’t have to be poets to grasp that the heart is the bodily organ that most effectively symbolizes love. To adore Jesus’ heart is to venerate his great love for us. When Jesus appeared to St. Margaret Mary, he exposed his heart and she saw it engulfed in flames and crowned with thorns, a visible sign of the passion with which he burns with love of us and is willing to suffer anything to save us.
                                                            • But Jesus’ heart is a sign of the Church’s mission.
                                                            • Last October 24, Pope Francis, in the final encyclical of his pontificate, indicated that he wanted us to see in the love of the Sacred Heart the root of the vocation each of us has to be a missionary.
                                                            • There is, he wrote in Dilexit Nos, a strong connection between devotion to the Sacred Heart and the missionary dimension fo the Christian life. “The enduring relevance of devotion to the heart of Christ is especially evident in the work of evangelization,” he stated. Mission is “a radiation of the love of the heart of Christ.” When we meet the ardent, crucified love of Jesus, we cannot but burn to share it ourselves, he indicated.
                                                            • “The flames of love of the Sacred Heart of Jesus,” he said, “expand through the Church’s missionary outreach, which proclaims the message of God’s love revealed in Christ.” He quoted Saint Vincent de Paul, who taught that “the heart of our Lord … sends us, like [the apostles], to bring fire everywhere.”
                                                            • To bring fire everywhere, to be a spiritual arsonist, is the vocation of every one of the baptized. In his Sacred Heart, Christ continues to proclaim, “I have come to set the earth on fire and how I wish it were already blazing” (Lk 12:49). The Holy Spirit came down upon the Mary, the apostles and the members of the early Church not as ice-cold noses or lukewarm feet but as tongues of fire, so that we might bring that divine and human fire to the ends of the earth by proclaiming the Gospel.
                                                            • The fully formed Christian’s greatest desire, he said, is, like St. Rose Philippine, to be a “missionary of souls,” to be able “to speak of Christ, by witness or by word, in such a way that others seek to love him. For a heart that loves, this is not a duty but an irrepressible need.”
                                                            • Once we have met the burning love of Jesus, Pope Francis underlined, we cannot help but make our own Jeremiah’s admission, “Within me there is something like a burning fire shut up in my bones” (Jer 20:9), or St. Paul’s words, “Woe to me if I do not proclaim the Gospel!” (1 Cor  9:16).
                                                            • Pope Francis concluded his beautiful encyclical by reminding each of us of our vocation to bring the fire of Jesus’ Sacred Heart to others.
                                                            • “Jesus is calling you and sending you forth to spread goodness in our world. … Wherever you may be, you can hear his call and realize that he is sending you forth to carry out that mission. He himself told us, ‘I am sending you out’ (Lk10:3). It is part of our being friends with him. For this friendship to mature, however, it is up to you to let him send you forth on a mission in this world. … Never forget that Jesus is at your side at every step of the way. … He will always be there to encourage and accompany you. He has promised, … ‘For I am with you always, to the end of the age’ (Mt 28:20).”
                                                            • Last week in Baltimore the bishops of our country decided that during the 250th anniversary celebrations of our country next year, we will consecrate the country to the Sacred Heart. This is not just another prayer or act that’s supposed to remain on the periphery of Church life. It’s supposed to be highly consequential. And it’s highly missionary. Because to be consecrated to Jesus’ heart, crucified and enflamed, is meant to lead us out to set fire everywhere. Next year’s consecration is meant to lead to a new missionary age among Catholics within our country — what would be called the new evangelization — and a new missionary age ad gentes, to all the peoples of the earth. It’s going to be a time when we need to be acting on the lessons we learn from St. Rose Philippine, as well as the other great missionaries whose faith led them to our shores to build the Church. It’s going to be a time in which we’re called to consider our own co-responsibility for the mission of the Church everywhere and ask how we can become a saint in the way we, like St. Rose, look at our treasure as a great gift, understand the stakes involved in aligning our life with that gift, praying that everyone receive it, seeking to teach other about Jesus the Gift and Giver and help them to experience and desire to share the fire of his love.
                                                            • During this week in which we celebrate the Feast of St. Rose Philippine, on this sacred spot where she founded the first free school west of the Mississippi taught, reestablished later, and returned at the end of her life on earth to await Jesus’ coming, we ask her to pray for us that we might have the same fire within us that burned within her, and with faith, courage, love and Christian hope become missionaries of hope among the peoples.
                                                            • Rose Philippine Duchesne, pray for us!

                                                              • The post Becoming Missionaries of Hope: Lessons from the Life of St. Rose Philippine Duchesne, Shrine of St. Rose Philippine Duchesne, November 20, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

                                                              1 hr 4 min
                                                            • Having the Mind and Heart of Missionaries: Missionary Spirituality and Formation, Retreat for the Diocesan Directors of The Pontifical Mission Societies, November 19, 2025

                                                              Msgr. Roger J. Landry

                                                              Augustine Institute, Florissant, Missouri
                                                              Retreat for the Diocesan Directors of the Pontifical Mission Societies
                                                              November 19, 2025

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                                                              The post Having the Mind and Heart of Missionaries: Missionary Spirituality and Formation, Retreat for the Diocesan Directors of The Pontifical Mission Societies, November 19, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

                                                              55 min
                                                            • Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, The World Day of the Poor and the Jubilee of Hope, Feast of St. Frances Cabrini (Observed), November 16, 2025

                                                              Msgr. Roger J. Landry

                                                              Shrine of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, New York
                                                              Feast of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini
                                                              Jubilee of the Poor and World Day of the Poor
                                                              November 16, 2025
                                                              Is 58:6-11, Ps 34:1-7, Rom 12:9-16, Jn 6:24-35

                                                               

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

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                                                              The following text guided the homily: 

                                                              • Today we have the joy, at this Shrine of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini housing her sacred relics under the altar, to be able to celebrate her feast day on the closest Sunday, to thank God for her vocation, life and missionary work, and to invoke her powerful intercession. We do so on the 33rd Sunday of Ordinary Time in the Church’s liturgical year, on which, since 2017, has marked the World Day of the Poor. This now annual observance is augmented today by the Jubilee of the Poor within the year-long Jubilee of Hope. In his Message to help the Church prepare for this observance, Pope Leo explicitly connected the World Day of the Poor to the Jubilee of Hope and focused specifically on the loving care for the poor that is meant to flow from our Christian hope. The points he makes we can easily see illustrated in the life of the great missionary of hope, St. Frances Xavier Cabrini.
                                                              • “Hope, sustained by God’s love poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, turns human hearts into fertile soil where charity for the life of the world can blossom,” the Holy Father wrote, clearly describing the good and rich that led to so much fruit in the life of our saint. Pope Leo emphasized, “The Church’s tradition has constantly insisted on the circular relationship between the three theological virtues of faith, hope and charity. Hope is born of faith, which nourishes and sustains it on the foundation of charity, the mother of all virtues. … Charity is not just a promise; it is a present reality to be embraced with joy and responsibility. Charity engages us and guides our decisions towards the common good.” He said that each of us, like St. Frances Cabrini and the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart she founded, “is called to offer new signs of hope that will bear witness to Christian charity, just as many saints have done over the centuries.” In his recent encylical Dilexi Te, on love for the poor, he specifically mentioned St. Francis Cabrini whom he said distinguished herself, among other things, by her love for and pastoral care of migrants. The first American pope wrote, “Saint Frances Cabrini, born in Italy and a naturalized American, was the first citizen of the United States of America to be canonized. To fulfill her mission of assisting migrants, she crossed the Atlantic several times. Armed with remarkable boldness, she started schools, hospitals and orphanages from nothing for the masses of the poor who ventured into the new world in search of work. Not knowing the language and lacking the wherewithal to find a respectable place in American society, they were often victims of the unscrupulous. Her motherly heart, which allowed her no rest, reached out to them everywhere: in hovels, prisons and mines.” He noted that’s why, 75 years ago during the Jubilee of 1950, Pope Pius XII proclaimed her “Patroness of All Migrants.” That’s why the US Bishops, under her patronage, have urged all Americans to to make “The Cabrini Pledge” and become “Keepers of Hope” for others. St. Frances Cabrini founded hospitals, schools, orphanages, universities and so many other institutions to reach out to the most vulnerable and marginalized. Those institutions of hope, what in St. Frances Cabrini’s life was dubbed an “empire of hope,” all flows from the conviction, Pope Leo underlined, that “the poor are not a distraction for the Church, but our beloved brothers and sisters, for by their lives, their words and their wisdom, they put us in contact with the truth of the Gospel.” In the poor, we don’t find disruptions and disturbances but in fact the divine: we find Jesus who himself became poor and personally identifies with the poor, hungry, thirst, naked, stranger, ill, imprisoned and otherwise in need. Hence Pope Leo concludes, “The celebration of the World Day of the Poor is meant to remind our communities that the poor are at the heart of all our pastoral activity. This is true not only of the Church’s charitable work, but also of the message that she celebrates and proclaims. God took on their poverty in order to enrich us through their voices, their stories and their faces. Every form of poverty, without exception, calls us to experience the Gospel concretely and to offer effective signs of hope.” St. Francis Cabrini’s proclamation of the Gospel, her missionary work, was a response, first, to the “gravest form of poverty,” that of not knowing God, but it also led her and her sisters to the explosion of love that led her to care for those in other forms of deprivation, from orphans, to girls not receiving education, to the sick, to the homeless, hungry and hopeless.
                                                              • In the readings for the Feast of St. Frances Cabrini that we celebrate today, God illustrates for us the charity for the poor that is meant to flow from what the Holy Father calls charity’s circular relationship with Christian faith and hope. The Prophet Isaiah tells us that the worship God wants is meant never to remain just focused on him, but overflow into love for those he loves. He wants us to fast, to hunger, indeed to starve to release those bound unjustly, set the oppressed free, share our bread with the famished, shelter the oppressed and homeless, clothe the naked, oppose false accusation and malicious speech, satisfy the afflicted and care for our family and fellow human beings. He wants us, as St. Paul reminded the first Christians in his Letter to the Romans, to love one another sincerely, with affection, humbly contributing to each others’ needs and welcoming them into our lives and homes, sharing their sorrows and joys, indeed enduring in affliction with them, perserving in prayer and rejoicing in and with the hope that comes from faith. The ultimate fruit of our faith and hope is the charity that leads us, as we prayed in the Psalm, to bless the Lord at all times, with his praise always in our mouth. When our soul glories in the Lord in this way, when we magnify the Lord and exalt his name, when our faces are radiant in joy despite misfortune, then the poor, we pray, can “hear and be glad” and learn from us how to seek the Lord who desires to answer us and save us from fear and distress, as we become conscious that he is with us. St. Francis Cabrini’s faith blessing the Lord at all times, trusting in him who was her strength in every trial, praying to him with filial confidence, led so many of her sisters and the poor to be able to find joy in the midst of their poverty and sufferings and helped them to magnify the Lord with her.
                                                              • We see the center of the circle of St. Frances Cabrini’s faith, hope and love in the Gospel in Jesus’ teaching about the Eucharist in which he identifies himself as the new and true manna given to us each day by heaven to feed our deepest hunger and enrich to overflowing our most profound poverty. Jesus tells us not to work for perishable food but for the nourishment that endures to eternal life that he would give us, and St. Frances Cabrini dedicated all her energies to striving for the Holy Communion that the Eucharistic Jesus makes possible. The work of God, Jesus said, was to believe in the One whom God the Father sent, and to believe in Jesus means to believe in what he said and did. That’s why she staked her life on what Jesus taught us in today’s Gospel and acted on one year later in the Last Supper, when he took bread and wine, totally changed them into his body and blood, and said, “Take and eat; this is my Body,” and “Take and drink; this is the chalice of my Blood.” She took with the utmost seriousness Jesus’ words, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst,” and gave her life to help others similarly act on those words. She taught the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart and so many of their students, “The Eucharist is the life of the soul,” “Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament is the fountain of all graces, the center of all virtues,” and “Our Strength is in the Eucharist; let us remain close to Jesus.” She urged everyone, “God often to Holy Communion. Go very often. This is your one remedy” and told those who might be looking for her, with words that apply both to her life and after her death, “If you want to find me, look for me in the presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.” She insisted that every institution she founded have a chapel with the Blessed Sacrament and made Eucharistic adoration the center of community life. When she had to make important decisions, like founding a new mission, or sending sisters overseas and solving one crisis after another, she prayed for long periods before Jesus. She encouraged frequent communion well before it became common in the Church, catechized immigrants and prepared thousands of children for Holy Communion, organized Eucharistic processions, journeyed with priests long distances through dangerous areas to help bring the Eucharist to the sick and dying. If her motto was that she could do all things in Him who strengthened her, that was concretized by her believing she could do all things in Jesus, her Eucharistic Lord, God-with-us, who in the Blessed Sacrament has kept his promise to be with us always until the end of time. Her love for the Eucharistic Jesus was the fullest daily expression of her faith, the source of her abiding hope, and the root of all her charity, as she sought to make her life a Eucharistic offering, giving all she was and had out of love for God and others.
                                                              • We celebrate her feast day not on December 22, which is the day she died in 1917, which falls within the special last days of Advent in preparation for Christmas, but on November 13, which is the day 20 years later she was beatified by Pope Pius XI, the great Pope promoter of the missions. In order to be declared a saint, as many of you know, there needs to be an investigation as to whether someone lived the theological virtues of faith, hope, charity towards God and towards neighbor, as well as of the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, temperance, fortitude, and their associated virtues, in a heroic degree. In the papal decree for her beatification, Pius XI linked her heroic hope to her heroic charity. “Beyond doubt,” the Holy Father wrote in Latin, “there is evidence of the theological virtue of … hope … in a heroic degree.” It described, “Frances Xavier Cabrini endured many insults, adversities, and incredible hardships for the salvation of souls, bravely bearing them as the Apostle did, claiming: ‘I can do all things in Him who strengthens me,’ which she left as a noble legacy of her Institute. Strengthened by this hope, she could not be deterred from her holy purpose by any difficulty. She crossed the Atlantic Ocean twenty-four times, traveling thousands of kilometers on horseback or on foot over the rugged Andes mountains, disregarding dangers and sparing no consideration for her frail health. … She reaped abundant fruits from her immense labors until she succumbed to exhaustion on December 22, 1917, in Chicago.” Pope Francis, as the Church was preparing to celebrate the 100th anniversary of her death and birth into eternal life in 2017, called her a “true missionary” who kept her eyes constantly open “to see where God was sending her on mission” and that led to a burst of “such great energy to accomplish extraordinary work within a few years,” indeed, “a whirlwind life laden with work, endless journeys on foot, by train, ship, boat, horse…; creating out of nothing 67 charities including shelters, schools, colleges, hospitals, orphanages, workshops … all in order to propagate the power of the Gospel that had opened her heart, so that it could belong to everyone.” This is what she did here in New York, as she came to care for the 50,000 poor and frazzled Italian immigrants being served by only 12 priests, beginning with those children who no longer had a mom or a dad. This is what led her to New Orleans and Chicago and Denver, to Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, France and England as she brought hope, faith and Christ-like love to the poor who were falling through the cracks.
                                                              • Today as we celebrate her feast, we ask her to pray for us so that we might imitate her faith and hope in the Lord in whom she believed she could do all things, her love for God that led her to consecrate her life to him and love for others that helped her to give her best and her all. How fitting it is that as we make this prayer to God through her intercession, we do so here, where her mortal remains are under the altar where the Eucharist is celebrated. “If you want to find me,” she said, “look for me in the presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament,” and her body will soon rest under that very presence of his Body and Blood. She reminds us that the Eucharistic Jesus is our strength, the life of our soul, the fountain of all graces, and the center of all virtues and urges us to remain close to him as he seeks to draw close to us and become the food that endures to eternal life for which he urges us to labor just like she did. The Eucharistic Jesus wants to make us, like he made her, missionaries of hope in the midst of an often desperate world that ever needs to find in him the hope that never disappoints. Let us ask her to intercede for this grace so that we, like her, can hunger for what God calls us through Isaiah to do, to magnify the Lord with her in a way that the poor can see and be glad, and indeed rejoice in hope while enduring in affliction, as we await the blessed hope, the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, in the Eucharist now, and one day, we pray, in his risen state, together with St. Frances Xavier Cabrini and all the saints.

                                                                •  

                                                                These were the readings for the Mass: 

                                                                A Reading from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah

                                                                This, rather, is the fasting that I wish: releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke; 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. Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your wound shall quickly be healed; Your vindication shall go before you, and the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer, you shall cry for help, and he will say: Here I am! If you remove from your midst oppression, false accusation and malicious speech; If you bestow your bread on the hungry and satisfy the afflicted; Then light shall rise for you in the darkness, and the gloom shall become for you like midday; Then the LORD will guide you always and give you plenty even on the parched land. He will renew your strength, and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring whose water never fails.

                                                                Psalm — I will bless the Lord at all times

                                                                Of David, when he feigned madness before Abimelech, who forced him to depart. I will bless the LORD at all times; praise shall be always in my mouth. My soul will glory in the LORD that the poor may hear and be glad. Magnify the LORD with me; let us exalt his name together. I sought the LORD, who answered me, delivered me from all my fears. Look to God that you may be radiant with joy and your faces may not blush for shame. In my misfortune I called, the LORD heard and saved me from all distress.

                                                                A Reading from the Letter of St. Paul to the Romans

                                                                Let love be sincere; hate what is evil, hold on to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; anticipate one another in showing honor. Do not grow slack in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, endure in affliction, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the holy ones, exercise hospitality. Bless those who persecute [you], bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Have the same regard for one another; do not be haughty but associate with the lowly; do not be wise in your own estimation.

                                                                A Reading from the Holy Gospel According to St. John

                                                                When the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into boats and came to Capernaum looking for Jesus. And when they found him across the sea they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?” Jesus answered them and said, “Amen, amen, I say to you, you are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled. Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him the Father, God, has set his seal.” So they said to him, “What can we do to accomplish the works of God?” Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent.” So they said to him, “What sign can you do, that we may see and believe in you? What can you do? Our ancestors ate manna in the desert, as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” So Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave the bread from heaven; my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” So they said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.” Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.

                                                                The post Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, The World Day of the Poor and the Jubilee of Hope, Feast of St. Frances Cabrini (Observed), November 16, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

                                                                28 min
                                                              • Persevering With Faith and Hope through Trials, 33rd Sunday (C), November 16, 2025

                                                                Msgr. Roger J. Landry

                                                                Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY
                                                                Thirty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
                                                                World Day of the Poor
                                                                November 16, 2025
                                                                Mal 3:19-20, Ps 98, 2 Thes 3:7-12, Lk 21:5-19

                                                                 

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

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                                                                The following text guided the homily: 

                                                                • During the month of November, the Church leads us in a meditation on the Last Things. This is helpful for Catholics in every stage and state of life, because we can often be tempted to defer pondering death, judgment, heaven and hell out of a lack of urgency, assuming that we have many years and even decades before the humanly inevitable. Today, however, the prophet Malachi describes that the day of the Lord will come suddenly, blazing like an oven scorching proud evil doers but rising like a sun of justice with healing rays on those who fear God’s name. In the Gospel, that long awaited Sun of Justice, Jesus himself, gives far more details about the end times. In apocalyptic language that we shouldn’t downplay, he describes how the temple of God will be attacked, how there will be imposters claiming to be speaking for God and asking us to follow them, how there will be wars, insurrections, earthquakes, famines, plagues, persecutions, hatred, betrayals by family members and friends, and how even some of us will be put to death. It’s a harrowing account demonstrating, essentially, that the foundations on which we’re often tempted to place our stability and security — from physical health, to food and drink, property, family, governments, religious edifices and practices — will be shaken and collapse. The only thing left will be the only true and secure foundation, the one on which we should be constructing our life now, God himself.
                                                                • The immediate reaction of Jesus’ listeners was to ask, “Master, when will this happen?,” presumably so that they could be prepared. Jesus didn’t answer their question directly, because he wanted them to act on the information right away. If he had given a date weeks, decades, centuries or millennia later, the temptation would have been just to go on with life as normal. But Jesus had come to establish a totally new normal: a norm of faith, of vigilant waiting, of full-time Christian behavior. He wanted the day of the Lord to be a perpetual state, so that each day would be the Lord’s day, a day in which we could exclaim, like we do every Easter, “This is the day the Lord has made!” And the signs of the day of the Lord Jesus gave us help us to maintain this awareness, because they are in fact events we see in the newspaper almost every day: destruction, natural disasters, wars, famines, illness, betrayals, attacks on the Church, and the persecution and killing of Christians.
                                                                • Instead, Jesus gave them and us three ways to respond to what he was saying.
                                                                • The first was, “See that you not be deceived!” and described that many would come, supposedly in his name, trying to exploit the situation. “Do not follow them!,” Jesus tells us emphatically. In every age there are legions of false prophets and Jesus tells us to be on guard against them. They deceive us about God, ourselves, and what God expects of us. They proclaim a false Gospel, indeed a false religion and ideology, and want us to believe their lies and fall in line. So many of the “isms” of modern life broadcast through the media, taught in the classroom, propagated by governments in political campaigns and internationally are part of this false prophecy. Are we alert not to be deceived? Do we know the Gospel well enough to spot even the most subtle of them?
                                                                • The second thing Jesus told us was that our sufferings “will lead to [our] giving testimony,” as we will be blessed with a “wisdom in speaking that all [our] adversaries will be powerless to resist or refute.” God only permits evil so that he can draw from it greater good. He allows us to endure these difficulties to help us grow in faith and become better disciples and better apostles, more fervent followers of him and more passionate proclaimers of his salvation. The adversities we encounter for our faith shouldn’t separate us from the Lord, but move us to abandon ourselves even more to Him. When we’re brought to our knees by natural disasters or man-made hatred, it provides the opportunity for us to pray far more devoutly, to grow in faith, and to be proven like gold in a crucible. When we’re tested more severely, God comes to our aid to help us pass those tests, provided that we open ourselves up to his presence during trial and respond to him. And that type of faith is the greatest means to bring others to faith.
                                                                • We’ve seen this since the earliest days of the Church. So many converted when they saw the way Christians suffered harassment, persecution, imprisonment, torture and even martyrdom with peace, serenity, joy and songs, how they forgave their enemies, how they prayed for their persecutors, how they freely laid down their lives in love for the One who freely laid down his life to save their own. We’ve seen it when Christians, having suffered natural disasters like their neighbors, have rushed unselfishly, in imitation of Christ the Good Samaritan, to help others before thinking of themselves. We’ve seen it in the way Christians have endured physical illnesses and become salt, light and leaven in hospitals and nursing homes to their fellow patients, doctors, nurses, orderlies and family members. We’ve seen it in the way that Christians, having been betrayed by their spouses, children, siblings or parents, have forgiven them, just as they have been forgiven by God. Suffering, betrayal and persecution can become pulpits in which we’re able to show in even greater relief than normal the presence of God and his power and consolation. They provide the chance for us to show that we Christians live, suffer and even die differently than others, because we know, as St. Paul wrote to the Romans, that neither persecution, famine or the sword, neither death nor life, nor anything in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom 8:31-39). That type of witness can’t help but move people.
                                                                • The third and final thing Jesus tells us is “by your perseverance you will secure your lives.” He means here perseverance in faith, hope and love, perseverance in trusting him, in placing our treasure in him, and in loving him and others. The great temptation when we’re experiencing suffering, hardships, or challenges, is to focus on ourselves, become discouraged and sometimes even give up. Jesus tells us not to quit, but to go on living our faith, knowing that with the Lord as our shepherd, even if we are walking, or crawling, through a dark valley, we still lack for nothing, because with him, we indeed still have it all (Ps 23). In telling us this, Jesus isn’t just stating, “Do what I say,” but rather “Follow me!” During his Passion, after all, he was seized, handed over to religious and civil leaders, betrayed by the apostles and disciples, hated by the scribes and Pharisees, mocked, scourged, crucified and put to death. There was an eclipse of the sun, an earthquake and the veil of the Holy of Holies in the Temple was ripped from top to bottom. 40 hours later, however, he rose from the dead, without a hair on his head being destroyed. He shows us what perseverance is. And he will give us all the help he knows we need not to lose hope, not to give up, but by his grace to keep faithfully fighting the good fight until the end.
                                                                • So as we ponder the last things as well as try to make sense of and respond to the natural disasters, wars, pandemics, persecutions, betrayals, and sufferings present in our time, Christ is calling us not to be led astray but to follow him more fully. He wants us to cooperate with the Holy Spirit to give testimony of divine wisdom through words and deeds. He wants to strengthen us to persevere in living our faith with confidence in the midst of whatever chaos we may find ourselves.
                                                                • The great temptation when we suffer is to assume a “victim” mentality — and when we see others’ suffering, to “distract” ourselves or become “resigned” to their plight. We need to confront these tendencies straight on. Today is the Jubilee of the Poor. It’s also the World Day of the Poor, an annual observance Pope Francis began in 2017, during the middle of this month of November in which we ponder the last things, so that we might all remember that Christ has told us that after we die, we will be judged — and our eternal destiny will hinge — on our charity, on whether we have cared for him in the hungry, thirsty, naked, stranger, ill, imprisoned or otherwise in need in our midst (Mt 25:31-46). It’s an opportunity for us and the whole Church to recommit ourselves to those who are suffering, who are experiencing the effects of famine, war, plague, persecution, hatred and betrayal and to do something about it. It’s a chance for us to get practical about what we’re doing to help the victims of war in Ukraine and the Middle East, of natural disasters in the Caribbean, of political or religious persecution in so many countries across the globe, of families broken by betrayal all around us, of hunger, homelessness and poverty, of being unwanted, unloved, and rejected in the forgotten corners of our city. This is an opportunity for us to bear witness to the love with which God fills us, to seize the chance to live the Gospel, and build a world that is better, more loving and more fraternal.
                                                                • In his Message for today’s 9th observance of the World Day of the Poor, Pope Leo wrote within the context of the Jubilee of Hope about the hope we’re all supposed to receive from our brothers and sisters who are materially poor and about the charity that is meant to flow from our Christian hope and faith.
                                                                • He said, first, about Christians who are poor that they “can be witnesses to a strong and steadfast hope, precisely because they embody it in the midst of uncertainty, poverty, instability and marginalization. They cannot rely on the security of power and possessions. …Their hope must necessarily be sought elsewhere. By recognizing that God is our first and only hope, we too pass from fleeting ‘hopes’ to a lasting ‘hope.’ Once we desire that God accompany us on the journey of life, material wealth becomes relativized, for we discover the real treasure that we need. The words that the Lord Jesus spoke to his disciples remain forceful and clear: ‘Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consume and where thieves do not break in and steal’ (Mt6:19-20). … This is a rule of faith and the secret of hope: all this earth’s goods, material realities, worldly pleasures, economic prosperity, however important, cannot bring happiness to our hearts. … A saying of Saint Augustine comes to mind: ‘Let all your hope be in God: feel your need for him, and let him fill that need. Without him, whatever you possess will only make you all the more empty’ ( in Ps., 85:3).” These are lessons that faithful Christians who are poor teach us all. They are not deceived by the lure of riches and the love of mammon but testify with wisdom to a “greater possession” and by their perseverance in seeking first the kingdom of God and his holiness, not only show that their security is like an anchor cast into heaven but evangelize others to invest in what moths can’t eat, rust corrode or thieves rob.
                                                                • Pope Leo also said that when we live by the virtue of hope, knowing that God is with us and in him we can do all things, that overflows into charity that improves not just individual lives but all of society. “Hope,” he wrote, “sustained by God’s love poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, turns human hearts into fertile soil where charity for the life of the world can blossom. The Church’s tradition has constantly insisted on the circular relationship between the three theological virtues of faith, hope and charity. Hope is born of faith, which nourishes and sustains it on the foundation of charity, the mother of all virtues. … Charity is not just a promise; it is a present reality to be embraced with joy and responsibility. Charity engages us and guides our decisions towards the common good. Conversely, those who lack charity not only lack faith and hope; they also rob their neighbors of hope.” He continued, “Each of us is called to offer new signs of hope that will bear witness to Christian charity, just as many saints have done over the centuries.” He wrote about these many saints in his recent encylical, Dilexi Te, co-authored with his predecessor Pope Francis. In his message for today, he described how “hospitals and schools …were … established to reach out to the most vulnerable and marginalized. … Today, signs of hope are increasingly found in care homes, communities for minors, centers for listening and acceptance, soup kitchens, homeless shelters and low-income schools. How many of these quiet signs of hope often go unnoticed and yet are so important. … The poor,” he finished, “are not a distraction for the Church, but our beloved brothers and sisters, for by their lives, their words and their wisdom, they put us in contact with the truth of the Gospel. The celebration of the World Day of the Poor is meant to remind our communities that the poor are at the heart of all our pastoral activity. This is true not only of the Church’s charitable work, but also of the message that she celebrates and proclaims. God took on their poverty in order to enrich us through their voices, their stories and their faces. Every form of poverty, without exception, calls us to experience the Gospel concretely and to offer effective signs of hope.” As Missionaries of Charity, you are indeed Missionaries of Hope, quasi-sacraments, efficacious signs of hope, and the more effectively you draw near to the poor in their various sorrows, you will discover in their resilience many reasons to help you grow in hope and in the God in whom we hope.
                                                                • Mass is the daily opportunity we’re given to be filled with what we call the “blessed hope,” the coming of Savior Jesus Christ. That’s not just an eschatological expectation but a daily fulfillment as “Christ Jesus our Hope” (1 Tim 1:1) comes from heaven to this altar. This is the daily gift he bestows so that we may follow him and not be led astray, where we receive the divine strength to give testimony no matter what difficulties are around us, where we are helped day to day to persevere in faith until Christ, the Sun of Justice, comes to rule the earth and bring the just with him to the place where all the saints rejoice forever. Today on this World Day of the Poor within the Jubilee of Hope, no matter what we and the world are enduring, we pray the words with which we conclude the Te Deum and that Pope Francis chose to guide this Holy Year: ‘In you, O Lord, is our hope, and we shall never hope in vain.’”

                                                                  •  

                                                                  The readings for today’s Mass were: 

                                                                  Reading 1
                                                                  Mal 3:19-20a
                                                                  Lo, the day is coming, blazing like an oven,
                                                                  when all the proud and all evildoers will be stubble,
                                                                  and the day that is coming will set them on fire,
                                                                  leaving them neither root nor branch,
                                                                  says the LORD of hosts.
                                                                  But for you who fear my name, there will arise
                                                                  the sun of justice with its healing rays.
                                                                  Responsorial Psalm
                                                                  Ps 98:5-6, 7-8, 9
                                                                  R. (cf. 9)  The Lord comes to rule the earth with justice.
                                                                  Sing praise to the LORD with the harp,
                                                                  with the harp and melodious song.
                                                                  With trumpets and the sound of the horn
                                                                  sing joyfully before the King, the LORD.
                                                                  R. The Lord comes to rule the earth with justice.
                                                                  Let the sea and what fills it resound,
                                                                  the world and those who dwell in it;
                                                                  let the rivers clap their hands,
                                                                  the mountains shout with them for joy.
                                                                  R. The Lord comes to rule the earth with justice.
                                                                  Before the LORD, for he comes,
                                                                  for he comes to rule the earth,
                                                                  he will rule the world with justice
                                                                  and the peoples with equity.
                                                                  R. The Lord comes to rule the earth with justice.
                                                                  Reading 2
                                                                  2 Thes 3:7-12
                                                                  Brothers and sisters:
                                                                  You know how one must imitate us.
                                                                  For we did not act in a disorderly way among you,
                                                                  nor did we eat food received free from anyone.
                                                                  On the contrary, in toil and drudgery, night and day
                                                                  we worked, so as not to burden any of you.
                                                                  Not that we do not have the right.
                                                                  Rather, we wanted to present ourselves as a model for you,
                                                                  so that you might imitate us.
                                                                  In fact, when we were with you,
                                                                  we instructed you that if anyone was unwilling to work,
                                                                  neither should that one eat.
                                                                  We hear that some are conducting themselves among you in a
                                                                  disorderly way,
                                                                  by not keeping busy but minding the business of others.
                                                                  Such people we instruct and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to work quietly
                                                                  and to eat their own food.
                                                                  Alleluia
                                                                  Lk 21:28
                                                                  R. Alleluia, alleluia.
                                                                  Stand erect and raise your heads
                                                                  because your redemption is at hand.
                                                                  R. Alleluia, alleluia.
                                                                  Gospel
                                                                  Lk 21:5-19
                                                                  While some people were speaking about
                                                                  how the temple was adorned with costly stones and votive offerings,
                                                                  Jesus said, “All that you see here–
                                                                  the days will come when there will not be left
                                                                  a stone upon another stone that will not be thrown down.”Then they asked him,
                                                                  “Teacher, when will this happen?
                                                                  And what sign will there be when all these things are about to happen?”
                                                                  He answered,
                                                                  “See that you not be deceived,
                                                                  for many will come in my name, saying,
                                                                  ‘I am he,’ and ‘The time has come.’
                                                                  Do not follow them!
                                                                  When you hear of wars and insurrections,
                                                                  do not be terrified; for such things must happen first,
                                                                  but it will not immediately be the end.”
                                                                  Then he said to them,
                                                                  “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.
                                                                  There will be powerful earthquakes, famines, and plagues
                                                                  from place to place;
                                                                  and awesome sights and mighty signs will come from the sky.”
                                                                  Before all this happens, however,
                                                                  they will seize and persecute you,
                                                                  they will hand you over to the synagogues and to prisons,
                                                                  and they will have you led before kings and governors
                                                                  because of my name.
                                                                  It will lead to your giving testimony.
                                                                  Remember, you are not to prepare your defense beforehand,
                                                                  for I myself shall give you a wisdom in speaking
                                                                  that all your adversaries will be powerless to resist or refute.
                                                                  You will even be handed over by parents, brothers, relatives, and friends,
                                                                  and they will put some of you to death.
                                                                  You will be hated by all because of my name,
                                                                  but not a hair on your head will be destroyed.
                                                                  By your perseverance you will secure your lives.”

                                                                  The post Persevering With Faith and Hope through Trials, 33rd Sunday (C), November 16, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.

                                                                  23 min

                                                                About Catholic Preaching

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                                                                Father Roger J. Landry is a priest of the Diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts, who works for the Holy See’s Permanent Observer Mission to the United Nations in New York.

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