Fr. Roger J. Landry

St. Agnes Church, Manhattan

The Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Extraordinary Form

January 9, 2022

Col 3:12-17, Lk 2:42-52

 

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The following text guided the homily: 

* We celebrate today according to the 1962 Missal of the Roman Rite the Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. We mark the fundamental fact that when the Son of God became man, when the Word became flesh, he became flesh as a little child within a family. That was a divine choice, for Jesus did not have to come into our world in that way. He could have come as a 33-year-old adult and immediately begun his public ministry of preaching, teaching, healing and saving. He could have come as an 80-year-old sage or at least as a 12-year-old wunderkind dazzling the scribes and priests in the Temple like we see in today’s Gospel. But he was conceived and began his existence as a one-celled human zygote in Mary’s womb, progressed to a blastocyst, then an embryo, then a fetus until finally he was born as a baby in a family, where he was nourished according to his human nature and grew, as we see in today’s Gospel, in “wisdom and favor before God and man.” Why did he choose to come into our world this way? He didn’t tell us the reason, but one doesn’t need to be a great theologian to see why it made sense: the eternal Son of God wanted to redeem all of human life in its totality, from its very beginning, which meant redeeming the family from its very beginning.

* All of existence is meant to be familial. Saint John Paul II used to call the Blessed Trinity a family, because it is a structured communion of persons in love, with a Father, a Son and the love between them. The human person was made in the image and likeness of God as a communion of persons, “male and female he made them” (Gen 1:27-28), and hence the image of God is familial: a husband and a wife can love each so much that, like the Trinity, their love can generate a third person. They can literally “make love” and then name, raise and live in joyful communion with the love they make.

* But we know that man, woman and children didn’t live up to their being in the image of God. Right from the beginning, sin invaded the family. It began with Adam and Eve and the first sin, in which Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the serpent, with neither taking responsibility and with both thereafter hiding the most vulnerable aspects of their humanity from each other and God. The legacy of sin quickly affected their children. Cain killed his brother Abel. There was jealousy between Abraham’s sons Isaac and Ishmael, enmity between Isaac’s sons Jacob and Esau, envy between Jacob’s 12 sons, ten of whom ganged up to try to kill their brother Joseph. There was deadly jealousy in King David’s family, with Absalom trying to defeat his father and usurp his crown. Jesus’ family tree chronicles generations of infidelity to each other and to God. There is rampant polygamy and concubinage and divorce was introduced because of the hardness of people’s hearts to keeping their life-time promises. God would sum up the relationship with his people through the Prophet Hosea under the idea of adultery, because adultery, rather than fidelity, had almost become the rule in the relationships within individual families and the family of Israel with God. Simply put, the family had become a mess. As the human family “increased and multiplied,” so did sin.

* Jesus was born of a family in order to redeem the family, to reconcile all of family life to God, because the family has a crucial role in the world God created. The family based on the marriage between man and woman is the primord...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Baptism of the Lord, C, Vigil

January 8, 2022

 

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

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The following text guided the homily: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation God the Father has with God the Son in this Sunday’s Gospel, as we ponder the scene of Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan River by John and its consequences in your life and mine.

* The liturgical celebration of the Baptism of the Lord Jesus culminates the celebration of the Christmas season. It symbolically finishes Jesus’ three decades of hidden life as God the Father announces at the Jordan what was concealed from the beginning from almost everyone except from Mary and Joseph, a few shepherds, the wise men, Simeon and Anna and a handful of others: that Jesus is God’s own beloved Son in whom he is well pleased.

* The celebration of Jesus’ baptism culminates the Christmas season in another way as well, because it points to our baptism, which is the means by which we enter into the saving work Jesus was born into our world to accomplish. We’ve been singing in Hark! The Herald Angels Singsince Christmas day, “Mild He lays His glory by, born that man no more may die, born to raise the sons of earth, born to give them second birth.” Christ through his incarnation has made it possible for us through baptism to enter into the mystery and meaning of Christmas and the immortality, resurrection and second birth that that baptism promises in this world and forever. Jesus entered the waters of the Jordan precisely in order to bless those waters so that they could bring about this second birth, so that what John’s baptism pointed to could actually be accomplished: John’s baptism indicated our and others’ need for spiritual cleansing, for the forgiveness of sin, for the triumph over the death to which sins lead us, but John’s baptism couldn’t actually take those sins away or deliver those goods. This is the truth to which John the Baptist pointed to in Sunday’s Gospel when he contrasted his baptism with the one Jesus and the Church Jesus founded would carry out: “I am baptizing you with water,” John said, “but one mightier than I is coming. … He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” When Jesus entered the water to be baptized, he sanctified the water so that the sign of washing could actually bring about the interior purification it signified and make it possible for us to be raised and born anew.

* But the baptism Jesus would inaugurate would do far more than that. It would enable the sons of earth to enter into the very life of God. As we see in this Sunday’s Gospel, when Jesus was baptized, three things happened. First, heaven was opened. Second, The Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus. Third, a voice came from heaven saying, “You are my beloved Son; with whom I am well pleased.” The event of Jesus’ baptism gave us a glimpse into heaven, into the very life of God. God the Father and God the Holy Spirit manifest in this world their relationship with God the Son that has existed in heaven since the beginning. God the Father pronounces Jesus his much loved and all pleasing Son. Great Trinitarian theologians and saints, like St. Augustine, have explained the Trinity as love. God the Father is the eternal lover, God the Son as the eternal beloved, and the Holy Spirit as the eternal love between the Father and the Son so strong as to take on personality. When God the Father speaks at the Jordan pronouncing Jesus as his beloved Son in whom he is w...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY

Solemnity of the Epiphany

January 2, 2022

Is 60:1-6, Ps 72, Eph 3:2-3.5-6, Mt 2:1-12

 

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The following text guided the homily: 

* Today we celebrate with joy the feast of the Lord’s epiphany, his “manifestation” to all the Gentiles in the persons of the Magi coming from afar. But the Lord’s epiphany also was an epiphany of the men whom tradition has always called “wise,” as essential aspects of their true character was revealed. Likewise today, those two epiphanies — the Lord’s continual epiphany, the ongoing presence of Emmanuel, God-with-us, and the revelation of how to respond to it in the epiphany of the wise men — provide a mirror that can give us an epiphany of who we really are, our character, our desires. To bring this mystery we celebrate alive, it’s key for us to learn from the response of the wise men, whose example will help us to become the wise men and women our Church, our culture, our country, this neighborhood and our times so need. So today we go on pilgrimage with the wise men to Bethlehem, and to learn from them invaluable lessons about how we’re called to desire God, act on those desires and help accompany others on a pilgrimage to Jesus. Today we can ponder seven lessons.

* The first thing we learn from the wise men is the importance of seeking God.

* The Magi were careful searchers for God. Unlike the shepherds who had angels appear to them proclaiming good news of great joy and telling them that a Savior was born for them whom they would find in swaddling clothes, the Magi had much fainter indications. First they had the Sybilline prophecies that heralded the future birth of a universal king who would be king of all. The famous Roman history Suetonius wrote in his Life of Vespasian, “There had spread over all the Orient an old and established belief that it was fated at that time for men coming from Judaea to rule the world” and Tacitus wrote in his Annales, “There was a firm persuasion … that at this very time the East was to grow powerful and rulers from Judaea were to acquire universal empire.” One of these Sybilline prophecies predicted that the birth of the king would be preceded by a sign in the heavens.

* This was the context in which the wise men would have been looking into the heavens. When they saw the star at its rising, they not only interpreted that God was trying to communicate something to them in general, but that God was specifically heralding the birth of the newborn King in the east, who would be a universal king. The stars as we know were incredibly important to ancients.  2000 years ago, in the deserts of the Middle East and on the seas, people were highly dependent on the fixed stars in the sky as references for their direction. They firmly believed that God had made them this way for that reason. Whenever anything happened in the sky that was new — like the appearance of a comet, or meteor shower, or a planet’s or star’s shining more brightly — the ancients thought that it had to bear some message from God, the creator of the heavens and the earth. So they studied the heavens, because in studying the heavens they were seeking the message of God. And when they saw a star at its rising, they didn’t respond as curious astrologers but as those who hungered to find what they sought. Led by the star, and their simple faith in its meaning, the wise men went on a journey toward the Holy Land. We don’t know how long their pilgrimage took, but the Gospel gives us indications that it wasn’t brief. After Herod asked them the exact time of the appearance of the star,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY

Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God

January 1, 2022

Num 6:22-27, Ps 67, Gal 4:4-7, Lk 2:16-21

 

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The following text guided the homily: 

The Fullness of Time

Today as we mark the transition from one year to the next, having raised a Te Deum to God for all of the graces he’s given us in 2021 and begging his help that 2022 will be a true “year of Lord,” the Church has us turn to the Blessed Virgin Mary and celebrate in particular the ongoing mystery and reality of her motherhood.

Her maternity and the passing of time are intimately connected, as we see in today’s epistle. St. Paul tells us, “When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman … so that we might receive adoption as sons.” The fullness of time is precisely the moment when her fiat allowed the eternal to enter into time, when the Son of God took on her humanity and entered our world, changing human history into salvation history. As chronos has become kairos, so Mary remains not merely as the Mother of God-with-us but the Mother of all of us entrusted to her by that Son when he died so that we might live.

Mary is the mother who seeks to help us to understand how, in fulfillment of the words of the Book of Numbers, God seeks to bless and keep us, let his face shine on us, be gracious to us, and give us his peace, by bringing us to the blessed Fruit of her womb who is the sum of every spiritual blessing in the heavens. She is the Mother who teaches us, in fulfillment of today’s Psalm, how to rejoice and exult that, even if sometimes some say it doesn’t always seem that way, God rules the peoples in equity and guides the nations on earth. She is the Mom who shows us how to experience the fullness of time by living together with her Son and by corresponding to the work of the Holy Spirit helping us to cry out “Abba, Father!” and strengthening us to live not as slaves to our whims, instincts, the age, or the devil, but as children and heirs of God.

Mary mothers us in several ways that are highly relevant as we make this transition from the end-of-one-year-and-the-beginning-of-another to the fullness of time living with Christ who is the same yesterday, today and forever.

Mothering Us To Live in Time with Faith

She does this first by helping us to learn how to live by faith. She seeks to mother us as she mothered Jesus. God the Father didn’t choose Mary just to be the “bearer” or “incubator” of his eternal Son according to his human nature, but as Theotokosshe also was given the awesome responsibility to raise him. Since Jesus was fully man at the same time that he was fully God, he would, according to his humanity, like us, have to learn how to accomplish most human activities. It was Mary, together with Joseph, who taught Jesus how to talk, pronouncing the Aramaic he’d eventually speak. She taught him how to read and pronounce the Hebrew in his prayers. It’s an amazing reality that just like we learn how to talk to God in prayer to a large degree from our parents when we’re young, so Jesus according to his humanity learned how to speak to His Father in prayer through echoing Mary and Joseph. Mary, moreover, did not just physically breastfeed Jesus when he was an infant, but she continued spiritually to breast feed him over the course of his upbringing, digesting herself first many of the truths of faith and passing them to him in ways that he, like any child, could assimilate. Mary was the one who would get the young Jesus ready for the Synagogue on Saturday. She was the one who with Joseph would make the 60-mile walk with Jesus up to the Temple i...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, and for the Epiphany

January 1, 2022

 

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The following text guided today’s homily: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversations God wants to have with each of us this weekend as we celebrate both the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God on January 1st and the Lord’s Epiphany on January 2nd. The two feasts are intimately connected to the celebration of Christmas and therefore to each other. They feature, respectively, the visit of the Shepherds to Bethlehem and subsequently the Magi. And so I would like to focus on the dialogue God wants to provoke and deepen in us through the gift of both feasts.

* We begin with what we will hear on Friday night and Saturday at Mass for the Holy Day of Mary, the Mother of God. It’s important to ask why the Church has us begin each new civil year pondering Mary’s Motherhood. Most of us, on the vigil of the feast, December 31, give our attention not to Mary to the last year, as we look to what the year about to finish has brought us, the good memories, the difficult crosses. We recall with joy the happy times, the births, the weddings, the reunions, the achievements in school or work or elsewhere. We also remember with some sadness the deaths or sufferings of loved ones, the pain of relationships and friendships that have broken down, the personal and familial consequences the pandemic, the economy and more. The reason why the Church proposes that we mark a Marian feast on this vigil is precisely because, as we see in St. Luke’s recounting of the Gospel of the Shepherds, Mary teaches us how to “contemplate things in our heart,” to “treasure” the graces, to ponder the Crosses. All the events of 2021 are meant to be taken to our prayer, be brought to the Lord, be internalized in a way that binds us ever more to God, but few of us profit from the events of our life in this prayerful way. Mary, the mother of God and our Mother, is looked to by the Church each December 31 as an icon of how not to let so many of the graces of the past year just pass away.

* Likewise, on January 1, most of us look ahead wondering what the new year will bring. We look forward with excitement to graduations or retirements, to long-desired proposals and weddings, to the births of kids, grandkids or younger brothers and sisters, to pilgrimages and vacations, to new friends, experiences and loves, hopefully for an end to the pandemic and its many hardships and to a better year economically for ourselves or so many we know who are struggling. We also might look ahead with a little trepidation hoping that certain things will not occur, like a terrorist attack, a fire or burglary, a drunk driver, a terrible call by in the middle of the night by a hospital or the state police, the funerals of loved ones. As we look ahead blindly, not knowing what the year will bring, the Church also has us focus on the Mother of God, because she shows us how to approach all of these events with a trusting faith, that the Father of her Son is the Lord of history, and that everything — both what seems adverse or propitious — works out for the ultimate good for those who love God. The Blessed Virgin Mary helps us to look back on the previous year and ahead to the one that’s beginning as a believer, as someone in communion with the Lord should and does. She shows us how to be grateful and hopeful,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Feast of the Holy Innocents

December 28, 2021

1 John 1:5-2:2, Ps 124, Mt 2:13-18

 

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The following points were attempted in the homily:  

* Today’s feast of the Holy Innocents brings us to face one of the most challenging parts of the faith. We’re celebrating the mass murder of all the boys in Bethlehem under two, in which the words of Jeremiah that were fulfilled in Bethlehem, “sobbing and loud lamentation; Rachel weeping for her children and she would not be consoled, since they were no more.” If we mourn the death of any loved one, how much more we mourn the death of those murdered, and how much more we grieve the execution of innocent children! Yet today, despite those fundamentally human reactions, implanted in our nature and supernature by God,  we celebrate with a Gloria the feast of the Holy Innocents, and we have to ask why. The answer is not just “because they’re in heaven with Jesus,” because that would be celebrating only a good outcome of a deplorable evil. We’re celebrating something more profound. We’re celebrating the fact that these baby boys in a very important way experienced the fullness and purpose of human life, which is to die for Jesus who had come to die for them and for us. Much later Jesus would say that the one who seeks to save his life will lose it, but the one who loses his life for Jesus’ sake and the sake of the Gospel would save it. This is a truth we proclaim every time we celebrate the feast of a martyr. No matter how much that martyr was tortured and killed, we celebrate it as a victory, because the martyr died out of love for the Lord and because of that death now lives forever with Jesus in heaven. The Feast of the Holy Innocents is the most powerful articulation of this most challenging Christian truth we have in the liturgical cycle.

* How Christians mark the feast of the martyrs and, a fortiori, of the Holy Innocents really indicates a great deal about our faith and how we go about our life. Do we look at their deaths principally as great victories or colossal defeats? If we look at their deaths as manifestations of the triumph of evil, then we often will seek to avoid suffering, avoid martyrdom, avoid conflict. If we look at their deaths as exclamation points on lives lived as lives ought to be lived, then we will often accept our own martyrdom should it come to that and, in the meantime, live a life in regular self-offering to Jesus, to the people for whom he gave his life, and to his kingdom. The purpose of human life is to life and die for Jesus, to live and die with Jesus, in little things and ordinary moments, and even in big things and extraordinary ones.

* That’s a truth many don’t want to accept or to live. King Herod certainly didn’t want to live it. When he heard the Wise Men speaking about a newborn king of the Jews, of the long-awaited Messiah, he viewed Jesus only as a threat. And when the Magi didn’t fall for his ploy to return to him to tell him where he was to be found so that he could be selectively assassinated, in a rage Herod killed any infant boy in the area. His lack of willingness to serve God’s plans in the coming of the Messiah led him to wreak so much evil. Once upon a time he had been a faithful man, building the temple, obeying scrupulously the Mosaic law. But he began to get corrupted by lust, power and pleasure and then was totally opposed to sacrifices big and small, not even wanting to put up with people who didn’t agree with him or like him. The Jewish historian Josephus tells us that he murdered most of the members of the Sanhedrin.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for Christmas Day

December 25, 2021

 

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The following text guided the homily: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation God wants to have with each of us as together we celebrate the great gift of the birth of the Lord Jesus.

* On Christmas, the Church gives us four different Masses to help us to mark the wonder of the day, and the Gospel and liturgical prayers of each of them have a different focus. At the Vigil Mass we ponder the Angel’s words to St. Joseph not to be afraid to take Mary and the Child growing within her into his home and we ask God for the grace to help us “joyfully welcome” Jesus as our Redeemer. At Midnight Mass we contemplate the radiant glory of God shining around the angels as they announced the good news of great joy to the shepherds awake keeping watch over their flocks by night and we pray to God that the light of Christ’s birth might shine in the darkness and lead us to see all things in the light of Christ. At the Mass at Dawn, we accompany the Shepherds in their going with haste to Bethlehem to see the infant Savior and we ask the Lord to allow the light of faith to shine through our deeds and help us to go to encounter Christ and offer ourselves to him as worthy gifts. In all of them, we retrace the history of progressive revelation by God and deepening awareness among his people, seeking to lead us step-by-step into a greater assimilation of the mystery.

* At the Mass on Christmas Day, however, in the Gospel and in the prayers, we come to the dramatic conclusion, the Church’s most profound explanation of the meaning of the birth of Jesus. Many people, as you know, talk about the “reason for the season” of Christmas and by it they basically mean Jesus is the reason for the season as they seek to keep themselves, their families and our culture focused on God rather than on commercialism. But as praiseworthy as those efforts are, we need to state that it’s not sufficient or theologically precise to declare that Jesus is the reason for this season. The real reason for the season of Christmas iswhat Jesus seeks to do in us. It’s the why behind the what of the Son of God’s becoming man. This is what Christmas Mass During the Day helps us to ponder.

* The Gospel for the Mass from the Prologue of St. John is one of the deepest passages in all of Sacred Scripture. Unlike the Gospel readings at the other Christmas Masses, which have had hundreds of Christmas hymns written about them in various languages, this passage seldom makes it into music. There are no herald angels singing, no shepherds watching, no cattle lowing, no stars brightly shining, no little town of Bethlehem, no swaddling clothes, no Mary and Joseph. But it brings up to the heart of what lies underneath all of those unforgettable details.

* It communicates to us, first, that the child placed in the manger is the actual incarnation of the Word who was in the beginning with God and was God, that this Child is the eternal word who out of love for us took on our flesh, our whole human nature, and made his dwelling among us.

* Second, it points to the whole mystery of whether we and others accept or reject this gift, whether we’re like the ancient Bethlehem inn-keepers who refused to make room even for a pregnant woman in labor, or whether we’re like that woman and her construction worker husband who welcomed that child and allowed him to alter the trajectory of their lives.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Mass for December 24

December 24, 2021

2 Sam 7:1-5.8-12.14.16, Ps 89, Lk 1:67-69

 

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

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The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* The essence of the human response to the Christmas mystery is to get ready to respond to what Zechariah calls the “tender compassion of our God,” the mercy he promised to the Jews through so many covenants, the mercy that would dawn for Zechariah in Jesus in the womb in his own house, the mercy that his own son John the Baptist would announce, “salvation through the forgiveness of their sins.” On this last day of Advent, we enter into this mystery of God’s merciful action, as John the Baptist his Son, even at eight days old, completes through his father’s words the task of making straight the paths for us to embrace our Merciful Savior.

* In today’s first reading, a millennium before the angels would sing “Hark!” in Bethlehem, King David tells the prophet Nathan that he is intending to build a temple, a fitting house for the Lord, asking Nathan to confirm that that would be pleasing to God. Nathan’s first reply was simply to have David go for it, that of course such a construction project would please God. But the Lord came to Nathan and told him to return to David saying that rather than have David build a house for the Lord, the Lord himself would mercifully establish a house for David, saying, “I will raise up your heir after you, sprung from your loins, and I will make his Kingdom firm. I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me. Your house and your Kingdom shall endure forever before me; your throne shall stand firm forever.” One-thousand years later, God would make good on that promise. When the Archangel Gabriel appeared to Mary, he said, “Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his Kingdom there will be no end.” The Lord had spent a millennium preparing to give us that gift! David intended to do something for God and God far outdid David’s intended generosity.

* At the time of Christmas, those of us who remember that Jesus is the reason for the season, often make all types of good plans and resolutions about what we will give to God. We imitate the Shepherds in going with haste to the manger. We emulate the Magi in giving the Lord the best we have and falling down before him in prayerful homage. We model ourselves on Mary and Joseph in loving him. We echo the angels in announcing him. We strive to make loving crèche displays in our homes and convents and Churches as a sign of our loving expectation, receptivity and response in the temple we have become through baptism. But to all of this work, God says to us as he said to David, “Should you build me a house to dwell in?” God, in response builds us a house, builds us a dwelling place in him, a dwelling that will be secure forever. Christ has come in order to build that house so that where he is we may be with him (Jn 14:1-6). And the house he builds for us is even greater than the house he builds for David. Jesus would say 30 years later that John the Baptist was the greatest born of woman but the least in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than he. The Lord wants to build us something even greater than what he did for David. The Messiah and Son of God doesn’t descend from us according to the flesh, but by baptism he makes us spiritual sons not of an earthly King but of the King of Kings.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Mass for December 21

Memorial of St. Peter Canisius during the 500th Anniversary of his Birth

December 21, 2021

Song 2:8-14, Ps 33, Lk 1:39-45

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.21.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* There’s a great irony of proclaiming in today’s first reading from the Song of Songs, “The winter is past,” on the day winter begins, with the winter solstice occurring at 10:59 am Eastern time today. But the connection will make far greater sense if we understand these words from the Song of Songs from the perspective of today’s O Antiphon* (see explanation below): O Oriens, splendor lucis aeternae et sol iustitiae: veni et illumina sedentes in tenebris et umbra mortis. “O Rising Sun in the East, splendor of eternal light and sun of justice, come, illumine those sitting in darkness and the shadow of death.” Jesus is the Rising Sun and his light — his eternal “Light from Light” — shines in the midst of the greatest darkness and makes the darkest day of the year radiant. Even when we’re walking through the dark valley of the shadow of death, Jesus comes to bring us into the kingdom of light.

* We see this happen in the Gospel. Even though John the Baptist is in the darkness of Elizabeth’s womb, Jesus comes in the womb of Mary and irradiates that darkness with his light and joy. We see the same dynamism in the first reading, the Song of Songs, which is an allegory of the dramatic loving dialogue that’s supposed to happen between God and each one of our souls. Much more than a husband and wife who have been apart for a year run across airports to embrace each other, so our longing is meant to be even greater for God because his longing is greater for us. There’s darkness in separation, but the hope of reunion shines in the midst of that darkness, and when the encounter happens, the long night is forgotten.

* Throughout Advent our desire is supposed to be growing like we see in the Song of Songs. The main purpose of the Advent wreath is to indicate what’s supposed to be happening within us: that week by week, the flame of our intense desire is meant to be doubling, tripling and quadrupling. And that’s what we see in the relationship between Bridegroom and Bride in this passage, which has inspired so many mystics, like St. Bernard and St. John of the Cross, to use it as a paradigm for the loving relationship we’re supposed to have with God. Jesus is coming as a Lover “springing across the mountains, leaping across the hills, … like a gazelle or a young stag.” He was doing that in the Gospel within Mary’s womb before he had even the tiniest of feet. He speaks, continually saying, “Arise, my beloved, my dove, my beautiful one and come!” He wants to raise us from sitting in darkness and the shadow of death, and come to him who loves us, who finds us beautiful and pure. He wants to see us, to hear our voice, to have us “sing a new song” (today’s Responsorial Psalm, literally the “song of the dove,” the song inspired by the Holy Spirit that we’re called to sing to our Emmanuel). This is the whole essence of Advent. Jesus is coming out of love for us because he seeks to espouse us to him forever. He’s coming because he loves us, because he finds us beautiful, and wants, by water and the word,  to make us like a dove, “pure and immaculate in his sight” (Eph 5:25-27).

* In our world, in our souls, the darkness that Christ wants to heal is wherever Christ doesn’t shine. St. John tells us in his Gospel about Jesus, “The light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil” (Jn 3:19).

Fr. Roger J. LandryVisitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, ManhattanMass for December 20December 20, 2021Is 7:10-14, Ps 24, Lk 1:26-38

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.20.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily:

The O Antiphon on which the Church has us meditate today in anticipation of Christ’s birth is “O clavis David, et sceptrum domus Israel: qui aperis, et nemo claudit; claudis, et nemo aperit: veni, et educ vinctum de domo carceris, sedentem in tenebris,” which is translated, “O Key of David, and scepter of the house of Israel, who opens and no man shuts, who shuts and no man opens: come and lead forth the captive who sits in the shadows from his house arrest (his home of prison).”

Jesus is the Key of David who opens and locks the door to heaven. He identifies himself as such in his message to the Church of Philadelphia in the Book of Revelation, where he identified himself as “the holy one, the true, who holds the key of David, who opens and no one shall close, who closes and no one shall open” (Rev 3:6). He was the descendant of David to whom the keys of the kingdom were eventually transmitted and who in turn transmitted them to Peter and his successors. But this reference to a key to open and close goes back to the time of today’s first reading. We encounter King Ahaz who, if you remember the Gospel of Jesus’ genealogy from December 17, was the eighth generation grandson of King David. We’ll return to King Ahaz shortly, but his son, Hezekiah, was one of the most faithful kings in the Davidic line. He replaced the master of his household — Shebna, basically his prime minister, who had allowed the temple of God to become sullied — with Eliakim. God said to Shebna through Isaiah, “I will thrust you from your office and pull you down from your station. On that day I will summon my servant Eliakim, son of Hilkiah; I will clothe him with your robe, and gird him with your sash, and give over to him your authority. He shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and to the house of Judah. I will place the key of the House of David on his shoulder; when he opens, no one shall shut, when he shuts, no one shall open.  I will fix him like a peg in a sure spot, to be a place of honor for his family” (Is 22:19-23). Jesus received those keys according to his humanity. As the Archangel Gabriel said to Mary in today’s Gospel about the Son she would conceived in her womb by the power of the Holy Spirit and bear, “The Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his Kingdom there will be no end.”

As we draw near to the celebration of Christmas, we prepare to welcome Jesus as that key, the one who comes to lead those sitting in darkness from our house arrest. We recognize that Jesus has come into the world to open up the doors to our prison cells and lead us out of darkness into light. The key he holds is the Cross, which is what — through his passion, death and resurrection — freed us from sin and the death to which it leads and opened up for us a life of grace and the gates of the heavenly Jerusalem.

But while Jesus has done his work of opening up our prisons, we must leave our “house arrest” behind. The doors are open but we must walk out that door. Plato, 500 years before Christ, in his famous work The Republic, gave an allegory (extended metaphor) of a cave, which he puts on the lips of Socrates in one of the most famous philosophical images ever made. Plato describes an underground cave which has an opening toward the light. In this cave there are living human beings chained from childhood in such a way that they face the inside wall of the cave and have n...