Fr. Roger J. Landry

Lectio Divina on the Sea of Galilee

Leonine Forum Pilgrimage to the Holy Land

November 28, 2021

 

To listen to the lectio divina, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.28.21_Sea_of_Galilee_1.mp3

 

The readings on which the Lectio Divina was based were: 

Luke 5:1-11: While the crowd was pressing in on Jesus and listening to the word of God, he was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret. He saw two boats there alongside the lake; the fishermen had disembarked and were washing their nets. Getting into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, he asked him to put out a short distance from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. After he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch.” Simon said in reply, “Master, we have worked hard all night and have caught nothing, but at your command I will lower the nets.” When they had done this, they caught a great number of fish and their nets were tearing. They signaled to their partners in the other boat to come to help them. They came and filled both boats so that they were in danger of sinking. When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at the knees of Jesus and said, “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.” For astonishment at the catch of fish they had made seized him and all those with him, and likewise James and John, the sons of Zebedee, who were partners of Simon. Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.” When they brought their boats to the shore, they left everything and followed him.

Mk 4:35-41: On that day, as evening drew on, he said to them, “Let us cross to the other side.” Leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat just as he was. And other boats were with him. A violent squall came up and waves were breaking over the boat, so that it was already filling up. Jesus was in the stern, asleep on a cushion. They woke him and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” He woke up, rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Quiet! Be still!” The wind ceased and there was great calm. Then he asked them, “Why are you terrified? Do you not yet have faith?” They were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this whom even wind and sea obey?”

Matt 14:22-33: Then he made the disciples get into the boat and precede him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. After doing so, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. When it was evening he was there alone. Meanwhile the boat, already a few miles offshore, was being tossed about by the waves, for the wind was against it. During the fourth watch of the night, he came toward them, walking on the sea. When the disciples saw him walking on the sea they were terrified. “It is a ghost,” they said, and they cried out in fear. At once [Jesus] spoke to them, “Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid.” Peter said to him in reply, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” He said, “Come.” Peter got out of the boat and began to walk on the water toward Jesus. But when he saw how [strong] the wind was he became frightened; and, beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” Immediately Jesus stretched out his hand and caught him, and said to him, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” After they got into the boat, the wind died down. Those who were in the boat did him homage, saying, “Truly, you are the Son of God.”

Fr. Roger J. Landry

St. Peter’s House, Capernaum

Proper Mass

Leonine Forum Pilgrimage

November 28, 2021

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.28.21_Homily_Capernaum_1.mp3

 

This was the outline of the homily: 

* The point of Advent is going out to meet Christ as he comes, and the best way for us to meet Christ in history, mystery and majesty is through meeting him in the Holy Eucharist.

* Today we have the privilege to be in the place where Jesus preached his Bread of Life discourse, which gives us the opportunity to focus on not laboring for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life that Jesus gives us. The Eucharist is the true manna God gives us every day. Many in the crowds in Capernaum were there to get another free meal from Jesus, because “they ate their fill of the loaves.” Jesus was trying to change their motivation and their grounds of interaction, to get them to approach Jesus by his categories rather than theirs. When he taught that they — and we — need to eat his flesh and drink his blood, many rejected it, saying it was a hard teaching to endure. It is indeed a hard teaching. But Jesus said that the work of God is to believe in the one he sent and they just didn’t want to place faith in him, which is how they’d come to faith in what he was teaching. St. Peter shows us this at the end of the passage when he said in response to Jesus’ question as to whether the twelve too would abandon Jesus, “Lord to whom shall we go. You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.” Jesus’ words would only make sense a year later when during the Last Supper, Jesus would take bread and wine during the Last Supper passover ritual, totally change it into his body and blood, and say, “Take and eat. … Take and drink.” But because he believed in Jesus, he believed in what he was saying, even if it was hard. Jesus calls us to the same faith.

* There is a crisis of faith today in the real presence. Up to 70 percent of US Catholics say they don’t believe in the teaching of the Real Presence. The US Bishops are trying to address it with a three-year Eucharistic Revitalization from 2022-24. But the most important part of this is what the 30 percent who believe in the teaching will communicate. It’s crucial to show what the Eucharist is by our choices, that we’re laboring above all for the food that endures to eternal life. If we believe that the Eucharist is Jesus and really love him, then it will show in our hunger to come to daily Mass, our thirst for Eucharistic adoration, and our simple desire to be in his presence as much as possible.

* The truth is that Jesus desires to give himself to us in Holy Communion more than the Blessed Virgin Mary desired to receive him within her anew from the hands of the apostle St. John, more than all the saints combined desired to receive him. We could never have dreamed of asking God to become incarnate, then be crucified, then to hide himself under the appearances of Bread and Wine to feed us, but what we would never have dared to ask, God in fact did. This is the food for which we’re called to labor. This is the Jesus who comes to meet us in the Advent of each day and whom we are invited to go out to embrace with love!

 

This is the Gospel on which today’s homily was based: 

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.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Duc in Altum Chapel, Magdala

Leonine Forum Pilgrimage to the Holy Land

First Sunday of Advent, Year C

November 27, 2021

Jer 33:14-16, Ps 25, 1 Thess 3:12-4:2, Lk 21:25-28.34-36

 

To listen to today’s homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.27.21_Homily_Magdala_1.mp3

 

The outline of today’s homily was:

* Advent is a time in which we prepare to meet Christ in history, mystery and majesty. On this pilgrimage to the Holy Land just begun, we come to meet and retrace Christ’s footsteps in time here in this land; we do so as part of the pilgrimage of life, preparing for his second coming; and we do not just imagine meeting him in the past or the future, but in the present, through prayer, through the Sacraments, and through the modality of each other, those we meet, the faith of the people over the centuries here and more. Coming on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, visiting these sacred spots, makes it possible for us to return with a much-deepened sacramental vision, so that we can more easily see Christ with us everywhere.

* In this Duc in Altum chapel, we are able to focus, through this boat-shaped altar modeled on one discovered here, how Jesus remains in the boat despite the storms of life and calls us, like he called the apostles depicted all around us, to put out into the deep, with trust in him, in our faith and in our sharing of the faith. Here in Magdala we have the chance to ponder what Jesus himself did in the life of Saint Mary Magdalene, casting forth from her seven demons and then becoming the true love of her life, following him faithfully to Calvary, to the empty tomb and the garden, and to the Father’s House. It’s a sign of the total metamorphosis the Lord wants to give each of us.

* The readings for the First Sunday of Advent help orient us how to meet Christ. At the beginning of the Gospel passage, he speaks of disorientation and changes in the sun, moon, and stars, all of which used to help the ancients find their bearings. They’ll all be convulsed, together with the waves, but then we will “see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.” Jesus wants to become the one who gives us total direction, who orients our entire life. He gives us four verbs to do so, which helps us not just in Advent, not just on pilgrimage, but in life:

* “Stand erect and raise your heads because your redemption is at hand” —  We should lift up our heads, our hearts, our whole existence to our Redeemer. It’s common for us to be weighed down by the things of this world. Like the woman in St. Luke’s Gospel who for 18 years was bent over and incapable of standing up straight, whom Jesus healed on the Sabbath in a synagogue, we often don’t take our eyes off the ground. We focus on our worries; we obsess about what weighs us down. As we prepare to meet Jesus in many new ways on this pilgrimage and renew our orientation of following him on pilgrimage all the way to the Father’s house, he tells us to get up and raise our minds to him, our hearts to him, and souls to him, with all our strength. Our redemption is at hand and he wants us to seize it.

* “Be vigilant” — Elsewhere in the Gospel, Jesus gave a parable about his second coming in which he contrasted the faithful and prudent steward who awaited his Master’s return and faithfully fed himself and others with the nourishment the Master provided versus the unfaithful and stupid servant who said “My Master is long delayed” and began to get smashed and to abuse the servants under his care. We remember that when Jesus came into the world the first time, some people were vigilant, prayerful and ready, but most people were not.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

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

November 27, 2021

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.27.21_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, in which he gives us the orientations he would like us to have as we begin the Season of Advent and a new liturgical year.

* Advent is about preparing for Christ’s second coming by reliving the preparation of the Jewish people for his first coming and by embracing him in the present in the various ways he comes to us, most especially in prayer and the Sacraments.

* Jesus begins this Sunday’s passage by talking about the end times, which he says will feature changes in the sun, moon and stars, the shaking of the heavens and the roaring of the seas and the waves. He was describing how the things by which people at his time would get their bearings — like the sun during the day and the moon and the stars at night — would be dramatically altered and people would be like mariners on convulsing seas. Things in which people formerly took their security would be no more. At that time, he said, we would see the Son of Man, Jesus our incarnate Lord, coming in a cloud with power and great glory. We celebrated last week the Solemnity of Christ the King and this is a divine image taken from the Book of the Prophet Daniel. Jesus was saying that we would now find our bearings in him, in his divinity shining through our humanity.

* To this coming, Jesus says, we should respond in four ways.

* First, we should stand erect and raise our heads because our redemption is at hand. We shouldn’t try to hide. We shouldn’t run away. We should lift up our heads, our hearts, our whole existence to our Redeemer. It’s common for us to be weighed down by the things of this world. Like the woman in St. Luke’s Gospel who for 18 years was bent over and incapable of standing up straight, whom Jesus healed on the Sabbath in a synagogue, we often don’t take our eyes off the ground. We focus on our worries; we obsess about what weighs us down. As we begin this new liturgical year, Jesus tells us to get up and raise our minds to him, our hearts to him, and souls to him, with all our strength. Our redemption is at hand and he wants us to seize it. He comes precisely to redeem us and that should make us eager not alarmed.

* Second, he tell us to be vigilant. Elsewhere in the Gospel, Jesus gave a parable about his second coming in which he contrasted the faithful and prudent steward who awaited his Master’s return and faithfully fed himself and others with the nourishment the Master provided versus the unfaithful and stupid servant who said “My Master is long delayed” and began to get smashed and to abuse the servants under his care. We remember that when Jesus came into the world the first time, some people were vigilant, prayerful and ready, but most people were not. Mary Immaculate was ready and said a hearty “yes” to God’s will. St. Joseph was ready and therefore capable of adapting quickly to God’s mysterious plans. The shepherds were ready, vigilant at night, and ran to Bethlehem as soon as they heard the good news of great joy. The Magi were ready, so ready in fact that they were able to discern the newborn king’s presence through the presence of a star. On the other hand, Herod was not ready, too caught up in his own pride and sensuality, in his own fears and anxieties,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Wednesday of the 34th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of Saint Andrew Dung Lac and Companions, Martyrs

November 24, 2021

Dan 5:5:1-6.13-14.16-17.23-28, Dan 3, Lk 21:12-19

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.24.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* November is a month in which we pray for our faithful departed and focus on the last things, especially about our call to holiness and heaven. It’s also a month in which the Church forms us concretely for what is to come. In the early Church, catechumens could not be baptized until they were ready to be martyrs, because many of them would be threatened with martyrdom as soon as they were Christians. As we ponder Jesus’ words at the end of his journey to Jerusalem, we can see that he was doing the same. He was telling us what was to come so that we wouldn’t be surprised, shocked, scandalized, or paralyzed when they occurred, and so that, just like a soldier well-trained in boot camp for war, we might be prepared to know what to do when these eventualities transpire.

* In the Gospel Jesus describes what was coming for his disciples. Just like would happen to him, so they, too, would be seized and persecuted, handed over to religious and civil leaders, thrown in prison, betrayed my family members and friends, hated by all, and even martyred. But he told them why it would occur: so that they would be able to give witness. Sometimes persecution is the Christian’s greatest pulpit. Jesus told them not to worry about what to say, that the Holy Spirit would teach them what to say, and despite their martyrdom, not a single follicle would be destroyed but that all would be restored — even to the baldest of them! — in the resurrection. “By your perseverance,” he stressed, “you will secure your lives.” He was stressing — in words that are highly relevant to our age of rampant personal insecurity — that real security comes from building our whole life on God. Once we do, nothing in all of creation — not persecution, peril or the sword (Rom 8:31-39) — will be able to separate us from God. By persevering in faith, we will be secure now and secure later, even if all fleeting forms of worldly security disappear. This is a lesson we always need to learn. The first Christians suffered so much, including the plundering of their property and even their lives, as we read in the Letter to the Hebrews (10:34), but they didn’t fear, because they had a greater security in God. True security in God can’t be given by the world or stolen by those in the world. That’s why the martyrs in every age weren’t afraid even during while suffering torture or death.

* There’s a great contrast between this type of security in faith in relation with God that Jesus wants us to have even in the humanly worst of circumstances and the type of insecurity we see in King Belshazzar in today’s first reading. He was living outwardly very securely. He was throwing a banquet for 1,000 courtiers and their wives at a time of great prosperity. He decided to have some of the 5,400 gold and silver chalices that King Nebuchadnezzar had taken from Jerusalem brought out, using what was sacred for the Jews for their drunken party. But when, straight out of a script of the Addams’ Family television program, a hand started writing on the wall, we see that his security was just an outward show: “When the king saw the wrist and hand that wrote,” the Prophet Daniel tells us, “his face blanched; his thoughts terrified him, his hip joints shook, and his knees knocked.” None of his pagan experts could mollify his anxiety, because no matter how smart they were,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Tuesday of the 34th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of Blessed Miguel Pro, St. Clement and St. Columban

November 23, 2021

Dan 2:31-45, Dan 3:47-61, Lk 21:5-11

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.23.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

 

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* In this week in which we celebrate the Solemnity of Christ the King, we have a chance to think about the distinct nature of his kingdom and how to enter it. It is a time to allow Christ our King to destroy false allegiances to earthly notions and to learn from him how to become a kingdom of priests offering sacrifices to God the Father.  Today’s readings help us to do just that, examining the foundations and goals of our life by inserting us more consciously within world and salvation history.

* In the first reading, we have the dream of Nebuchadnezzar, which none of his magicians, sorcerers, or others could interpret. Nebuchadnezzar didn’t reveal what he had seen. God had nevertheless revealed the dream to Daniel as well as its interpretation and so Daniel asked to be introduced into the king’s presence to interpret properly the dream. The king saw a large and bright statue with a head of pure gold, the torso silver, the belly and thighs bronze, the legs iron and the feet partly iron and partly clay. At the end of the dream the king saw a stone that was thrown from a mountain without a hand that rendered the entire statue to dust. Daniel said that Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, was the gold head. He would be surpassed by the Persians (the silver torso), who themselves would be defeated by the Greeks (bronze belly and thighs). The Romans (iron legs) would come next, as strong as iron, but eventually their kingdom would have some weaknesses (feet half of clay). The stone that would come from above to pulverize the Romans would be the “stone rejected by the builders,” Christ himself, the Cornerstone. That’s what we celebrate during this week of Christ the King. Christ didn’t establish an earthly kingdom — his kingdom is not of this world — but the kingdom he did establish is the everlasting one that will know no end. But we know that there are three different spiritual interpretations of Sacred Scripture: the Christological (how it points to Jesus, or typological), moral (how it relates to us and our behavior) and anagogical (how it relates to the last things). The moral application would for us to recognize that if we have feet of clay, no matter how strong we are in other parts of our life, everything can come down. We need to look to our foundation. More on this soon.

* In the Gospel, we also see predicted destruction. Jesus describes how the temple itself would be destroyed such that “there will not be left a stone upon another stone that will not be thrown down.” That’s because for many Jews the Temple had become an idol. Rather than a place of true encounter with God, they, as we saw at the end of last week, had perverted it to a den of thieves. They were not willing to grasp that that Temple was provisional until Christ the true Temple, the Messiah, came. Their foundation was built on the temple rather than on the God worshipped in the Temple. We can similarly have our own religious idols that rather than bringing us to God take us away. There are Catholics who if their Church is closed, sadly stop practicing the faith, as if the Church building, rather than God himself who dwells within the Church, is really the most important thing of all. Others make the liturgy an idol, treating the most minute change of a rubric by the Pope as if it’s cold-blooded murder and exalting the s...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattah

Monday of the 34th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I

Memorial of St. Cecilia

November 22, 2021

Dan 1:1-6.8-20, Dn 3, Lk 21:1-4

 

To listen to today’s homily, please click below:

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.22.21_Homily.mp3

 

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Yesterday we celebrated the Solemnity of Christ the King, pondering that he is ultimately in charge of the universe and has inaugurated a kingdom that is both now and not yet, now insofar as we can and should live by its principles, not yet, because not everyone does live by its principles. One consequence of the reality of his kingship is a trust in his providence, a trust that everything will work out for the good for those who love him. We see the homage of faith and trust to be given to him three different ways today.

* The first is in the widow Jesus points out in the Gospel. After he had finished his “formal” teaching in the courtyard of the Temple of Jerusalem, Jesus began to “people watch,” in order to continue to instruct his apostles about how to put what he taught into action. They saw the stream of people putting money in the temple treasury, which was a large trumpet shaped receptacle leading to a secure money box. They would put their coins in the horn at the top, which was like a funnel, and then the sound of the coin would resonate as it rolled down the metal tubing into the box. Many rich people, St. Luke tells us, were putting in large sums and “making a lot of noise” on the treasury trumpet. But then a poor widow came and put in two lepta, two small coins which together were worth less than a penny and likely barely made a sound. Then Jesus gave a surprising lesson that obviously the disciples never forgot. Jesus praised the poor widow rather than all the rest, saying that she had contributed more than all them, for they “gave out of their surplus, but she gave everything she had, all she had to live on.” This widow, because of her poverty, could easily have been excused for giving nothing. She could have easily chosen to drop into the trumpet only one of the coins and kept the other for herself, or, because of his poverty, kept them both. But she didn’t. She gave it all. And her generosity was praised by Jesus and will remain until the end of time. What could have moved her to give to the temple even what she needed to survive? There’s only one reason: her deep faith and trust that God would take care of her. She believed not simply that God exists, or that he worked various miracles in the past to help her people. She believed so much in him and was so convinced of the importance of what was going on in God’s house that she wanted to dedicate her life and all her goods to continuing and expanding that work of salvation. She accounted the continuance and expansion of that work even more than her own life.  The first moral lesson is not how much we contribute, but how much of a sacrifice it is; not how much we give but how much we have left over. This woman sacrificed her entire livelihood, spending herself and what she had in the service of the Lord. We should always seek to give in such a way that Jesus would be tempted to pull the saints aside in heaven and point out the way we are spending ourselves in his service, seeking to build up his Kingdom, the Kingdom we celebrated yesterday on the Solemnity of Christ the King. Many people give “something” to God, we may even give “a lot” to God, but we try to hold on to not just what we need but more than we need as an insurance policy, because, at a practical level, they often can put more of our faith, hope and love in the security that money provides than they do in God’s providence.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

St. Agnes Church, Manhattan

Last Sunday after Pentecost

November 21, 2021

Col 1:9-14, Mt 24:15-35

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.21.21_EF_Homily_1.mp3

 

 

The following text guided the homily: 

Today in the ordinary form of the Latin Rite the Church celebrates the Solemnity of Christ the King, which is the culmination of the entire liturgical year, helping us to ponder not only the end of time but also how to live in the present time, recognizing the kingdom Christ inaugurated in but not of the world, entering into that kingdom, helping others enter into it, and living in such a way that we may share in its fullness forever. While in the extraordinary form, we celebrated Christ the King three weeks ago, today’s readings help us to revivify the graces of that feast, focusing us on actualizing the realities it indicates and preparing us for what is to come.

Today’s first reading literally does that, because it is from the same passage we heard 21 days ago, in which St. Paul reminds the Colossians and us that God the Father has “delivered us from the power of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son.” Christ came to accomplish a rescue and a transfer, an exodus through baptism from the kingdom of this world into the kingdom of Christ by means of “the forgiveness of our sins.” St. Paul tells us that the new life of the “kingdom of [the] beloved Son” is supposed to flourish in seven different ways:

* First, we are “filled with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding.” To live in Christ’s kingdom means to have our minds renewed with Christ’s wisdom and understanding. The Lord wants to give us not just a “little” of this wisdom but to fill us with it and those who dwell in the kingdom hunger for it, receive it and respond to it. To seek this wisdom is a clear sign that we mean the words “Thy Kingdom come!”

* Second, we “live in a manner worthy of the Lord so as to be fully pleasing.” The summary of the Christian life is to please the Lord. We do so by living in a manner worthy of him, to live as Christians, or little Christs, seeking to model our behavior after his and follow him all the way. To live as Christians is to live differently than the rest, to be, but not of, the world, like Jesus, Mary and Joseph lived in Nazareth, doing all the normal things of ordinary human life, but differently than the crowds, converting those ordinary things into opportunities to please the Lord.

* Third, “In every good work bearing fruit.” Our union with Christ as branches on the vine (Jn 15:1-8) is meant to produce fruit. When Jesus plants his seed within us — the seeds of his Word, the seeds of his Body and Blood as a grain of wheat — if we have good soil, we will bear 30, 60 or 100 fold. Our faith, our communion with God, is shown in the fruit of acts of love and lots of them. A clear sign of that we’re living in the Kingdom is overflowing charity.

* Fourth, “Growing in the knowledge of God.” The longer we are alive, the longer we’re dwelling in Christ’s kingdom, the more we are supposed to grow not merely in the knowledge of things about God, but in the personal knowledge of God, not just savoir but connaitre, not saber but cohecer, not sapere but conoscere. We come to know him personally. We deepen our friendship with him. We come to know him more than a wife and mom knows her husband, kids and best friends. This is lifetime project that happens as a result of our prioritizing prayer. It is something that makes living in the kingdom so exciting.

* Fifth, we are “strengthened with every power, in accord with his glorious might,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Solemnity of Christ the King (B), Vigil

November 20, 2021

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.20.21_Landry_ConCon.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 celebrate him as King of the Universe and enter into, and seek to learn from, the dialogue he has with Pontius Pilate on Good Friday morning.

* I’d like to focus on two points. Pilate begins his conversation with Jesus by asking the question that Jews had been asking, and trying to answer, about Jesus for the previous couple of years: “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus replied, “Do you say this on your own or have others told you about me?” Pilate tried to deflect the question, saying, “I am not a Jew, am I?” But the question cannot be ducked and it cannot really simply be answered by what others have told us. Jesus came into the world to establish a personal, saving relationship with everyone he has created. As the Good Shepherd who would leave the 99 behind and go after the one sheep who is lost, he is interested in 100 out of 100. It’s not enough for him to be the King of “others” or even the King of the “cosmos.” It’s not enough for the pope, or the priests, or the Catechism to proclaim him sovereign Lord. It doesn’t suffice that we dedicate Churches to Him or whole religious institutes under the title of Christ the King. It’s not adequate, in order words, even that the whole Church in heaven and on earth acclaims him as the Savior and Lord. Jesus wants each of us personally and intimately to say and mean, “thy Kingdom come!,” rather than just doing so because others have told us about this reality. Jesus died in order to become your king and my king and wants to have that life-giving relationship with each of us. He wants to become the most decisive reality in our life. And so the first response we’re called to have this Sunday is to ask ourselves honestly whether we have that relationship with him. Is he King of our time, not just Sunday but each day? Is he king over our family and love life? Is he king of our work? Is he king of our leisure? Is he king over our money? Is he King of our mind, heart, soul and strength? He is objectively the one through whom all things are made, it’s a fact that he’s King and Lord of all, but have we subjectively, freely, wholeheartedly, lovingly chosen him to be our King, to submit to and follow him with trust, with love, with joy? If we have not established him as a King of all parts of our life, then we really do not have the relationship with him that is right and just.

* This thought is conceptually simple, but morally hard. For us to name Christ as King is, in this world, not like rooting for a championship team because they’re the winners. By worldly logic, it might indeed seem crazy. 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 bejeweled throne. He was crowned with thorns, not capped with gold and diadems. To ridicule him and Jews in general, Pilate would later order that an 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 thief on his left mocked him.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Friday of the 33rd Week in Ordinary Time

November 19, 2021

1 Mc 4:36-37.52-59, 1 Chron 29:10-12, Lk 19:45-48

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.19.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* In today’s first reading, we see the reconsecration of the Temple of Jerusalem on the first anniversary after its desecration by the soldiers and co-conspirers of Antioches Epiphanes IV. There were two parts to their work. Judas and his brothers said, “Let us go up to purify the sanctuary and to rededicate it.” The first was purification. The sacred author tells us, “They found the sanctuary desolate, the altar desecrated, the gates burnt, weeds growing in the courts as in a forest or on some mountain, and the priests’ chambers demolished.” They first needed to wash and ritually cleanse the sanctuary. They removed the statue of a pagan God upon the altar of sacrifices and tore down the defiled altar of sacrifices and stored the stones until a prophet would tell them what to do with it. They repaired the gates, priests’ chambers, the sanctuary and the interior of the temple, restored doors, ornamented the temple with gold crowns and seals, took uncut stones and built a new altar, they made new sacred vessels and brought the lampstand, the altar of incense and the table into the temple, and hung up curtains. The work of purification was thorough and a lot of work. Then they were ready for the rededication on the anniversary of its defilement. With songs, harps, flutes, cymbals, incense, holocausts and sacrifices of deliverance and praise, they celebrated the rededication of the altar and sanctuary for eight days with “great joy … and gladness.” The Jews have continued this eight-day celebration every year down to the present during the octave of Chanukah, which means “inauguration.”

* In the Gospel, Jesus goes to the sanctuary that was reconsecrated by Judas Maccabeus and his brothers and adorned even more gloriously a century later by Herod the Great. But when he arrived, he saw that it was being defiled not by Gentiles but by sins, and he immediately began the two-fold process of purification and rededication. It’s an image of Jesus with whom many Christians, especially today, are unfamiliar. The same Jesus whom Isaiah prophesied would “not break a bruised reed nor quench a smoldering wick” (Is 42:3), the same Jesus whom the psalms would call “kind and merciful” (Ps 145:8) the same Jesus who called himself “meek and humble of heart” (Mt 11:29), started to overturn tables, tossing money on the floor, and making a whip of cords to drive the sheep and the cattle out of the temple. And there is no contradiction between the image of Jesus as the kind, merciful friend of sinners and Jesus as consumed with zeal for his Father’s house, because out of love for sinners and his Father, he both really loved sinners and really the hated the sins that can kill sinners. What he was doing and its application to us can more easily be seen if we know two Greek words. The first is the word for “temple” or “temple area” that St. John employs in his depiction of this scene. The first is to hieron, which is a neuter form of the word that means “consecrated.” The temple was called “the consecrated place,” the locus totally separated to allow people to come to be with God and filled with him so as to be able to return from there changed by God and capable of changing the world with God. The second word is ekballein, which is the word used to describe how Jesus “drove out” the animals. It’s the same verb used when Jesus did exorcisms and drove out the temple. When we see these two words,