Fr. Roger J. Landry

Church of the Holy Family, Manhattan

Advent Day of Recollection for the Leonine Forum

Saturday of the Second Week of Advent

December 11, 2021

Sir 48:1-4.9-11, Ps 80, Mt 17:9-13

 

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

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The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* In today’s Gospel, Peter, James and John asked Jesus, as they were descending from the mountain of Transfiguration and had witnessed Jesus conversing with Moses and Elijah asked Jesus, “Why do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?” The prophet Malachi had foretold, “Behold, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes” (Mal 4:5; Mal 3:1). As daily Mass goers heard on Thursday, when Jesus said that no one born of woman is greater than John the Baptist, “If you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah, the one who is to come. Whoever has ears ought to hear.” In today’s Gospel, Jesus is far more explicit in response to the three apostles’ question, saying, “Elijah will indeed come and restore all things, but I tell you that Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him but did to him whatever they pleased. So also will the Son of Man suffer at their hands” (Mt 17:12), pointing out how that just as they had manhandled his precursor, just as Elijah himself was persecuted, harassed and hunted down by the prophets and royal patrons of the pagan god Ba’al, so Jesus himself would likewise suffer. Just as John the Baptist as the long-awaited “Elijah” pointed out the “Messiah” — in birth, preaching and death — so the long-awaited “Messiah” was pointing out “Elijah.”

* There’s something in the link in today’s readings between Elijah and St. John the Baptist that we should catch. What was John the Baptist’s mission? It was more than level mountains, filling valleys, straightening out crooked ways and smoothing out rough ones. It was to announce the love of God and to help the people get ready to response with passionate love in return. We see this in what the Book of Sirach says about Elijah today. The reading is full of “fire.” Sirach tells us, “Like a fire there appeared the prophet Elijah,” his words were a “flaming furnace,” in his “zeal” three times he “brought down fire,” he was even taken aloft in a “whirlwind of fire, in a charity with fiery horses.” Elijah’s whole prophetic work was to bring the Lord’s fire to earth and to help people respond with fire. It was the same thing with St. John the Baptist. His mission wasn’t a cold engineering project to build spiritual roads. It was to help get us ready to embrace Christ, who when he finally began his public ministry announced, “I have come to set the world on fire and how I am in anguish until it is enkindled.” John the Baptist’s work was, in a sense, to get all the wood ready for this world-embracing blaze.

* Advent is a time in which we are called to ponder the fire of God’s love and to examine whether we meet that fiery love with passionate love in return. That’s what we pray will happen by God’s grace today for each of us on this Day of Recollection.

* Several years back, Pope Benedict gave an unforgettable Pentecost homily when he talked about how God wants to light us on fire with the fire of the Holy Spirit. But he said many of us have to overcome a fear of that holy flame: “The divine fire frightens us, [because] we are afraid of being ‘burned,’ we prefer to stay just as we are. This is because our life is often formed according to the logic of having, of possessing and not the logic of self-giving. Many people believe in God and admire the person of Jesus Christ,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Third Sunday of Advent (C), Vigil

December 11, 2021

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.11.21_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

 

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday, as for the second week in a row, like we do each Advent, we go out to meet Saint John the Baptist at the Jordan River. There the voice of one crying out in the wilderness summons us to make straight the paths of the Lord, to lower the mountains of our pride, to fill up the valleys of spiritual minimalism, to straighten our crooked ways and smooth our rough ones. People were walking for 20-50 miles to meet John out of in the middle of nowhere at the Jordan, some to investigate whether he was the Messiah, others sent by the religious authorities to evaluate him, most to listen to him with sincerity, be converted by him and prepare for the coming of the Messiah whom he was announcing.

* As a result of his powerful preaching, as we see at the beginning of this Sunday’s Gospel, the crowds were moved to ask him to get practical about how to prepare the way for the Messiah. “What then should we do?,” they asked. And he got very concrete. He called them to self-giving charity: “Whoever has two cloaks should share with the person who has none and whoever has food should do likewise.” When despised tax collectors asked him the same question, he instructed them to stop collecting more than is prescribed and basically cease their greedy ways and the notorious shakedowns of their own people to which they were accustomed. When even the Roman soldiers present had their hearts pierced by his words to ask what they had to do, he told them to practice justice rather than use their power for extortion, to tell the truth rather than falsely accuse, and to be satisfied with their wages so that they would not be prey to corruption.

* We need to be just as practical when we hear John the Baptist’s message each Advent. In a materialist age, in a culture of walk in closets and storage bins, we are called to be generous in sharing our clothes, our food, our money with those in need, to avoid greed, be just, tell the truth, and be content with what we have rather than obsessed about more. We need to be willing to make a journey out into the desert, away from creature comforts, and with courage ask not John, but God in prayer, or even his earthly representatives in our parishes and dioceses, “When then should I do?” And then, as fruits of repentance and a desire for renewal in our faith, act on what God through prayer, conscience or his representative indicates.

* But John calls us further than asking for and making such minor or major course corrections, as important as they are. Ultimately he summons them to a new life through a life-changing relationship with the One for whom he was preparing the way. “I am baptizing you with water,” he blared, “but one mightier than I is coming. I am not worthy to loosen the thongs of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” John was preparing us for Jesus and for our living out the true meaning of Christian baptism. John’s baptism at the Jordan was just a sign of the need for the forgiveness of sins and of a new life; the baptism Jesus would inaugurate, by the power of the Holy Spirit, would actually accomplish that forgiveness and make possible that new life together with him, a life that rejects Satan,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Friday of the Second Week of Advent

Memorial of Our Lady of Loreto

December 10, 2021

Is 48, Ps 1, Mt 11:16-19

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.10.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* As we have been pondering, Advent involves a triple dynamism: the Lord comes, we go out to meet him with lighted lamps, and then, transformed by the encounter with the Bridegroom, we continue to journey with him and finish together with him his mission.

* When we go out to meet him, it’s not just to shake his hand but to have him shake us up and transform us. In the Gospel today, Jesus says that many of us don’t encounter him with that conversion in mind. He describes his generation — and frankly every generation — like children in marketplaces “sitting” — in other words, not wanting to move. They’re playing different music and want everyone to respond to that music: if they play the flute, they want people to dance; if they play a dirge, they want people to mourn. The key is that they themselves want to set the terms of the interaction. Rather than convert, they want the others to move and change. That’s what Jesus was saying they were doing with both of the figures that the Jewish people had been awaiting, “Elijah” and the “Messiah,” the precursor and the Anointed One, ultimately God’s messenger and God himself. They criticized John the Baptist for his ascetical fasting; and when Jesus wasn’t fasting because he was showing us how to rejoice because the Bridegroom was with us, they criticized him for drawing close in mercy to the hedonists like the tax collectors and other sinners, who were enjoying the things of this world in a disordered way. They failed to grasp that it’s we who should be dancing to the Lord’s music and not the other way around. They were classifying-and-conquering not only the principal figure of preparation for the Messiah’s Advent, St. John the Baptist, but the Messiah himself.

* I also think it’s significant that Jesus describes them as sitting in the “marketplace.” The marketplace is where we go to buy things according to our preferences. Today this is an issue because in the marketplace we learn a type of “consumerism” that can then come to impact our faith. We like things to happen according to our pleasures and preferences: we like certain Mass times and not others, certain liturgical forms, certain music or none, certain popes, bishops or priests, certain Psalm tones, certain Eucharistic prayers, certain lengths of homilies, certain messages, certain styles. This consumerism can cause us to behave much like the children in the marketplace, trying to play the music for our relationship with the Lord. We play soft, sentimental hits and want the Lord just to touch our emotions. We’ll play marches and want the Lord to discipline those we criticize and boss them around like a drill sergeant. We’ll play horror movie music to try to “scare the hell” out of people. We’ll play heavy metal and drown out the Lord’s whisper. We won’t play any music at all, because we’re in a bad mood, or hate music, or can’t sing, or anything else. The point is that we need to attune ourselves to what the Lord is playing.

* In the first reading, God tells us through Isaiah, “I, the Lord, your God, teach you what is for your good, and lead you on the way you should go.” We need to allow him to teach and guide us, rather than our seeking to teach him how the world, our life and the lives of those around us should run. We need to follow him rather than, like Peter when Jesus called him “Satan,” try to lead him. We prayed in the Psalm,

Fr. Roger J. LandrySacred Heart Mission of the Sisters of Life, ManhattanThursday of the Second Week of AdventMemorial of St. Juan DiegoDecember 9, 2021Is 41:13-20, Ps 145, Mt 11:11-15

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

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The following text guided the homily: 

* The Jews were waiting in the long Advent for two figures. The first was the Messiah. The second was Elijah, whom God had said through the Prophet Malachi, “Behold, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes” (Mal 4:5; Mal 3:1). Jesus in today’s Gospel identified the work of Elijah with St. John the Baptist, telling us, “If you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah, the one who is to come.” Later in St. Matthew’s Gospel, after Elijah appeared with Moses speaking to Jesus during the Transfiguration, Jesus was even more explicit: “Elijah will indeed come and restore all things, but I tell you that Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him but did to him whatever they pleased. So also will the Son of Man suffer at their hands” (Mt 17:12), pointing out how they had manhandled his precursor. “Elijah” pointed out the “Messiah” and the “Messiah” was pointing out “Elijah.” The fulfillment of the Advent for the one who would come in the person of Elijah was an indication of the even greater fulfillment.

* But because of John the Baptist’s role in pointing out the Messiah, not to mention because of his personal holiness and witness to the point of martyrdom, Jesus said something astonishing in today’s Gospel: “Amen, I say to you, among those born of women, there has been none greater than John the Baptist, yet the least in the Kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” First, Jesus was saying that up until then John was the greatest human being who had ever lived. We need to ponder that. There were lots of heroic martyrs and faithful Israelites, but he had the role to make straight the paths of the Lord. He was one born of a woman having already been blessed by God in the womb. No one had been born so exalted as to have pointed out by his leaping the Messiah. And he was still pointing him out, at the Jordan, through preaching repentance and faith, through martyrdom. But Jesus goes on to say that the littlest in the kingdom of God was even greater than John, that the one sanctified in the womb of the Kingdom is greater than all those born just of women. This is not so much a testimony about moral greatness, but about objective greatness, and a reminder to us of just how lucky we are to have been reborn in that womb of the Church soon after birth or whenever we entered into the sacred waters. We’re also greater because we’ve seen and received the full revelation of Christ to which John was still in some sense prophesying, because John hadn’t seen what would come later: Jesus’s incredible love revealed for us on the Cross that gave us the power to become children of God.

* But just as there was a cost for John’s becoming the greatest born of woman — his suffering on account of pointing out not only the Lamb but the Bridegroom and therefore the truth about marriage before Herod — so there’s a cost for our Christian greatness in fully entering the kingdom. Jesus describes both sufferings in the Gospel: “From the days of John the Baptist until now, the Kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent are taking it by force.” There are two types of violence Jesus describes: violence against the Kingdom and violence for the Kingdom. We see the violence against the Kingdom from the beginning. The slaughter of the Holy Innocents. Jesus’ neighbors in Nazareth trying to murder him by throwing him off the Nazarene cliff. The collusion of the arch-inimical Sadducees,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

December 8, 2021

Gen 3:9-15.20, Ps 98, Eph 1:3-6.11-12, Lk 1:26-38

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.8.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* Twenty-five years ago in his beautiful exhortation Vita Consecrata, St. John Paul II described the connection between the reality of Mary’s Immaculate Conception and the life of everyone consecrated to God through baptism and especially those who live the more intimate form of consecration that is religious life.  “Mary,” he wrote, “is the one who, from the moment of her Immaculate Conception, … is the sublime example of perfect consecration, since she belongs completely to God and is totally devoted to him. Chosen by the Lord, who wished to accomplish in her the mystery of the Incarnation, she reminds consecrated persons of the primacy of God’s initiative. At the same time, having given her assent to the divine Word, made flesh in her, Mary is the model of the acceptance of grace by human creatures.” She is the model of God’s initiative, the model of acceptance of that initiative, and the sublime example of the consecration that flows from that initiative.

* We see all of those realities in today’s readings. In the first reading, after Adam and Eve sinned, God took the initiative and announced the redemption, what’s called the “first Gospel,” telling the serpent he would place “enmity between you and the woman and between her offspring and yours.” Mary is the one who had nothing to do with the devil and her Offspring, Jesus, was the one who defeated him once and for all. Mary received the fruits of Jesus’ triumph 47 years in time before he accomplished it eternally on Calvary. The prevenient grace she received from the first moment of her existence is this sign of God’s initiative and the beginning of the final phase of the unveiling of God’s plan of redemption. We see that initiative continue to be proclaimed in St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, in which we learn that “before the foundation of the world,” God the Father ” blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavens, as he chose us in him … to be holy and without blemish before him.” God has these blessings in store before we were conceived, before the world was created. We see God’s initiative likewise with Mary, sending the Angel Gabriel to announce to her, “Rejoice, you who have been filled with grace.” She was filled with God by God before even she had even developed the faculties to make her first choice. She was filled with every spiritual blessing and the greatest of all, God himself, in her soul, then her heart and then her womb.

* But we also see in her how to respond. After having her questions about God’s modality answered — essentially asking how she would be a mom while remaining true to her consecration to God as a virgin — she replied, “I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be done to me according to your word.” This points not only to her receptivity of the grace God was extending, but to the way she sought to live her entire life: as a handmaid of the Lord, consecrated to the Lord’s service, not just allowing but with all her heart wanting her life to develop according to God’s will. She shows an unequivocal response to God’s blessing. Mary so identified with God’s initiative at the beginning that when, in 1858, St. Bernadette asked her what was her name, she didn’t reply, “Miriam,” or “I am the Mother of God,” or “Ecce Ancilla Domini,” but rather “I am the Immaculate Conception.” Her whole life was defined by this singular grace and her cor...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Tuesday of the Second Week of Advent

Memorial of Saint Ambrose, Bishop and Doctor

December 7, 2021

Is 40:1-11, Ps 96, Mt 18:12-14

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.7.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* When Handel wrote his famous Messiah in 1741 to summarize salvation history and tell the story of Jesus the Messiah, the first words in the entire oratorio, what we might call the theme of the whole work, he took from today’s passage: God is, at it were, addressing the entire heavenly court of angels saying, “Comfort, give comfort to my people,” now in exile in Babylon. Everything Jesus would do could be summarized by the comfort he was bringing. What comfort is that? It’s mercy: that Israel’s guilt has been expiated, her service of prayer and reparation is all over. Even though there would be a first fulfillment of this in the return of the exiled Jews to Jerusalem, the prophecy was pointing even more deeply to the return from the exile from the Garden of Eden, the exile from sin. When we pray in the Psalm verse, “The Lord our God comes with power,” we need to remember that his power is mercy. He “com-forts” us, literally makes us “strong with” the power of his merciful love. But we need to cooperate with that merciful strengthening.

* The passage from the Prophet Isaiah continues today with words made even more famous by St. John the Baptist, as we heard on Sunday: “In the desert prepare the way of the Lord! Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God! Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill shall be made low; The rugged land shall be made a plain, the rough country, a broad valley.” We need to do the work to prepare for the Lord’s mercy through examining our sins, confessing them, repenting of them, repairing the damage. The Lord’s way, as we heard yesterday, is a way of holiness that, as we heard Saturday, is the one the Lord himself indicates and on which the redeemed shall walk. But this path of mercy and repentance is what the Messiah wants from us to fulfill his work. Then what Isaiah says we will behold: “Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together. This will lead to people seeing the glory of the Lord.”

* Part of making straight that path for the Lord to come to comfort us is to recognize the vanity of earthly things in comparison to the perennial stability of the word of God. That’s what God tells Isaiah to announce first when he asks, “What shall I cry out?” The Lord responds, “All flesh is grass, and all their glory like the flower of the field. …Though the grass withers and the flower wilts, the word of our God stands forever.” This is an important message for us to grasp in order to live Advent well. Today a real danger in the living of Advent is that we get particularly children’s but almost everyone’s hearts focused so much on things that “wither,” whether material things or ephemeral celebrations rather than for the Word of God who comes to dwell among us. Isaiah was sent to help the people recognize the contrast between God’s word and everything else not associated with God and we need to be Isaiahs for our modern commercialized age, praising the generosity of those who sacrifice to give to others, but at the same time, not sacrificing for vain things, unintentionally helping to distort others’ value structures.

* As soon as Isaiah has helped people to appreciate the true value of the Word of God, then God instructs him to go up to Mount Zion as a herald of good news and and cry out at the top of his voice, “Here is your God!

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Monday of the Second Week of Advent

Memorial of St. Nicholas, Bishop

December 6, 2021

Is 35:1-10, Ps 85, Lk 5:17-26

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.6.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

 

The following points were attempted in the homily:

* Throughout the first week of Advent, the Church has us focus on the triple dynamism of Christ’s coming to us, our going to meet him, and, having been transformed by the encounter, traveling with him forward. That’s what I’ve been doing with the pilgrims from the Leonine Forum in the Holy Land since the start of Advent, but it’s what the Church has been doing liturgically through the Advent readings. Yesterday, St. John the Baptist reminded us of our need to prepare the way for this encounter and make straight the paths. On Saturday, Isaiah prophesied that the Messiah who will feed us, quench our thirst and teach us will speak to us from behind and say, “This is the path. Walk in it!” Today the Prophet Isaiah tells us that this path Jesus will come into our world to indicate is a special one: it’s a highway called “the holy way.” And Isaiah says that this way of sanctity has several characteristics:

* First,  “no one unclean may pass over it.” It’s not only for those who desire holiness, but those who have been cleansed. God’s mercy, in other words, precedes our repentance, our making straight the paths.

* Second, it’s “for those with a journey to make.” It’s not for the inert who desire to remain exactly where they are, who don’t want to change, who don’t want to move.

* Third, it’s an exodus route on which “the redeemed will walk.” Even when we’re redeemed that is not the end of the journey, but in a sense the beginning. Once we’ve been redeemed, now we can begin that journey. “Salvation,” as we prayed in the Psalm, is “along the way of his steps.”

* But this journey along the highway of holiness is something that sometimes we don’t have the strength to journey on our own. Jesus said elsewhere in the Gospel that the road that leads to life is narrow and few find it but the way that leads to perdition is broad and there are many on it. Many of us need the help not only of God but of others to get on the path of holiness. We can think of those who first taught us the faith, those who nourished us in faith, those who continue to pray for us, and guide us, and inspire us, correct us with love, and set the example for us. We can think about those people who really helped us when we couldn’t move, when we were neck-deep in uncleanness. We can think about those who are constantly picking us up as we fall and helping us anew. And we can think about the way as Catholics we’re called to assist others to come to God’s mercy, to gain the strength for the journey, and to walk with us on the pilgrimage of the redeemed.

* Today’s Gospel is about that. We see how the friends of the paralyzed man perseveringly and faithfully overcame every obstacle to bring their friend to Jesus. When they couldn’t get him in through the front door, they did what was very difficult — keep him balanced on his stretcher as they lifted him up on the roof and then lowered him right on top of Jesus. In the case of the paralyzed man, he needed more than to fill in valleys and level mountains. He needed friends to help him overcome the obstacle of too many people in the way and to climb roofs. But he got that help. And when Jesus saw him, he helped him with the first condition Isaiah specifies: he made him clean, saying to him, on account of the true friends’ faith, “Your sins are forgiven.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Chapel of the Notre Dame Center, Jerusalem

Leonine Forum Pilgrimage to the Holy Land

Second Sunday of Advent, Year C (Vigil)

December 4, 2021

Bar 5:1-9, Ps 126, Phil 1:4-6.8-11, Lk 3:1-6

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.4.21_Vigil_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Tonight, at this vigil Mass for the Second Sunday of Advent and the final Mass of our pilgrimage together to the Holy Land, we make our own the words of the Psalm, “The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy!” We are filled with joy that we were able to come, despite the many challenges of the pandemic. We are filled with joy at all we have been able to see, and hear, and touch and experience: The Sea of Galilee, Capernaum, Caesarea Philippi, the Mount of the Beatitudes, Mount Tabor, Nazareth, Cana, Taghba, the Church of Peter’s Primacy, the Jordan River, Jericho, the Dead Sea, Masada, Ein Karim, Bethlehem, Emmaus, three Mass in the Tomb of Jesus and a Mass on Calvary and so much more here in Jerusalem. We are filled with joy for the new friendships we’ve made with each other. The Lord has indeed done great things for us. We’re filled with joyful gratitude for our awesome guide Rami Munayer and for our amazing driver Hamad. And we’re filled with joy for so many graces given to us by the Lord himself whose footsteps we have been following, whose words we’ve been pondering, whose call we’ve been hearing and recommitting to keeping.

* Sometimes on the last day of a great pilgrimage there’s some bittersweet feelings. Sure we’re filled with joy at what God has given, but we are like Peter on Mount Tabor trying to build a booth to keep the experience going. We’re a little afraid that the graces we’ve received are like a burning taper in the wind that is going to be hard to protect upon our return. That’s why St. Paul’s words to us in the second reading are such a consolation. “I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of Christ Jesus.” What God has given us here is just a down payment on the graces in store. As I’ve been saying throughout this pilgrimage, we’re just getting started. God is just getting started. He will continue to accompany us moving ahead. Every earthly pilgrimage is meant to help us on the pilgrimage of life following Jesus’ footsteps not here to the earthly Jerusalem but to the heavenly Jerusalem. Jesus, the Good Shepherd, will continue to call us to follow him to the eternal sheepfold. We need to continue to live the virtues of this pilgrimage, the virtues we talked about in our first Mass together, to stand up and lift up our heads to him, to be vigilant and pray, and not to succumb to carousing and drunkenness.

* But I’d like to give a few pieces of advice to keep the great things the Lord has given us not just alive but growing.

* In the Gospel, St. John the Baptist, whose message we pondered at the Jordan, reminds us to continue to prepare the way of the Lord, to make straight the paths for the Lord to come deeply into our life, to fill in the valleys of religious minimalism or shallow prayer, to level the mountains of our pride, to make winding and rough roads straight and smooth. Here we’ve lived a different set of priorities. We’ve been less dependent on our devices. We’ve been much more attentive to prayer, to Sacred Scripture, to communion with our companions on the journey, even to getting up early and awaking the dawn. God wants to complete the good work he’s begun.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Second Sunday of Advent (C), Vigil

December 4, 2021

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.4.21_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday, as we meet his forerunner, his herald, Saint John the Baptist, at the Jordan River.

* John was chosen and sent by God the Father to get his people ready to receive Jesus when at last he openly manifested himself to begin his public ministry. At the Jordan, John blared, not, “I am one crying out in the desert,” but rather, “I am the voice of one crying out in the desert.” John was the voice, the loudspeaker, the spokesperson. The “one crying out” was of course the word, Christ Jesus himself. John’s message, therefore, was God’s message, which John was screaming at the top of his powerful lungs. The message was urgent and clear: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.”

* In the ancient world, the roads were a mess. Every time there was a battle, the roads would be attacked and bridges destroyed, to try to stop the advance of the enemy. The weather took its toll as well, leading to all types of serious potholes and other obstacles. Any time a dignitary would be coming, they would have either to fix the roads or build new ones so that the rolling caravan accompanying him could arrive without delay and without hassle. John the Baptist is telling us that to get ready for the Lord whom we are constantly bidding to come this Advent, we, too, need to prepare a way for him. We, too, need to make straight the paths. In the ancient world, preparing such a path meant a great deal of manual work. Quoting the Prophet Isaiah, John says, “Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth” (Lk 3:5). We have to call those topographical formations by their proper names. We have to make low the mountains of our pride and egocentrism. We have to fill in the valleys that come from a shallow prayer life, a minimalistic way of living our faith. We have to straighten out whatever crooked paths we’ve been walking: if we’ve been involved in some secret sins or sinful behaviors, the Lord calls us through John the Baptist to end it; if we’ve been involved in some dishonest practices, we’re called to straighten them out and do restitution; if we’ve been harboring grudges or hatred, or failing to reconcile with others, now’s the time to clear away all the debris; and if we’ve been pushing God off the side of the road, if we’ve been saying to Him that we don’t really have the time for him, now’s the time to get our priorities straight. The gift of Advent will succeed or fail on the basis of how well we convert and clear our lives of sin so that the Lord may come to us.

* There’s a reason why John the Baptist preached at the Jordan River. It was more than just a source of water where he could baptize. The Jordan River was the place that represented the border between the desert — where the Jews wandered aimlessly for 38 years after centuries of slavery in Egypt— and the Promised Land. By preaching his message there, John was inviting the Jews of his day to come out of the bondage of slavery, to leave their faults and wandering, sinful lives behind, and enter into the promised land full of God’s blessings. The Baptist preaches the same thing to us this Sunday.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Lectio Divina on Jesus and the Disciples on the Road to Emmaus

Church of the Resurrection, Abu Ghosh

Leonine Forum Pilgrimage to the Holy Land

December 4, 2021

 

To listen to the lectio divina, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.4.21_Emmaus_1.mp3

 

The Gospel based on which the Lectio Divina was based was: 

Lk 24:13-35: Now that very day two of them were going to a village seven miles from Jerusalem called Emmaus, and they were conversing about all the things that had occurred. And it happened that while they were conversing and debating, Jesus himself drew near and walked with them, but their eyes were prevented from recognizing him. He asked them, “What are you discussing as you walk along?” They stopped, looking downcast. One of them, named Cleopas, said to him in reply, “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know of the things that have taken place there in these days?” And he replied to them, “What sort of things?” They said to him, “The things that happened to Jesus the Nazarene, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, how our chief priests and rulers both handed him over to a sentence of death and crucified him. But we were hoping that he would be the one to redeem Israel; and besides all this, it is now the third day since this took place. Some women from our group, however, have astounded us: they were at the tomb early in the morning and did not find his body; they came back and reported that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who announced that he was alive. Then some of those with us went to the tomb and found things just as the women had described, but him they did not see.” And he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are! How slow of heart to believe all that the prophets spoke! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them what referred to him in all the scriptures. As they approached the village to which they were going, he gave the impression that he was going on farther. But they urged him, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening and the day is almost over.” So he went in to stay with them. And it happened that, while he was with them at table, he took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them. With that their eyes were opened and they recognized him, but he vanished from their sight. Then they said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning [within us] while he spoke to us on the way and opened the scriptures to us?” So they set out at once and returned to Jerusalem where they found gathered together the eleven and those with them who were saying, “The Lord has truly been raised and has appeared to Simon!” Then the two recounted what had taken place on the way and how he was made known to them in the breaking of the bread.