Fr. Roger J. Landry

St. Agnes Church, Manhattan

Second Sunday after Epiphany, Extraordinary Form

January 16, 2022

Rom 12:6-16, Jn 2:1-11

 

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The following text guided the homily: 

Today we participate liturgically in the most famous wedding of all time, because of who was on the guest list. We meditate on this scene every Thursday as we pray the second Luminous Mystery of the Holy Rosary. Often we pray about what it reveals about the sacrament of marriage and how Jesus takes the “water” of the institution of marriage from the beginning with Adam and Eve and raised it to the “wine” of a sacramental encounter with him: how Christ brings the marriage between a Christian man and woman into the marriage between him and the Church in fulfillment of what Isaiah prophesied with words we ponder every Christmas: “As a young man marries a virgin, your Builder shall marry you, and as a Bridegroom rejoices in his bride, so shall your God rejoice in you.” The wedding feast of Cana is an implicit revelation not merely of Jesus’ miraculous power, but his spousal love, the nuptial intention of his incarnation, even though none, except Mary, would have caught it at the time.

We ponder the Wedding Feast of Cana soon after the celebration of the Christmas Season not only because Jesus’ miracle was one of the principal events that inaugurated Jesus’ public ministry, but also because in the Church’s liturgical history, Jesus’ Epiphany was linked to two other Epiphanies: the Epiphany at the Jordan and the Epiphany at Cana, where Jesus’ glory was revealed. The ancient antiphon for Vespers on the Solemnity of Epiphany, for example, has always linked the three events. But I’ve always liked to look at what happened in Cana as a triple-epiphany in itself: it reveals something about the Blessed Mother, something key about Jesus beyond his power, and something about what our response is meant to be to Jesus and his mother. Today I’d like to focus with you on this triple epiphany.

First, this scene reveals a beautiful characteristic of the mercy of the Blessed Mother. Ancient Jewish wedding celebrations, like the one taking place in Cana, would last eight straight days. There were three sumptuous meals a day. Wine was served throughout the octave. It was the generally the happiest celebration in the life of Jews, which is why Jesus often returned to the image of a wedding banquet to describe the joys of heaven. Rather than leaving on a honeymoon, the couple would remain, reigning so to speak as king and queen over the celebrations. We can only imagine how embarrassing it would be today if, at a wedding reception, the banquet hall ran out of food or beverages early in the celebration. Even though most people would sympathize with the couple and blame the banquet facility, it would still be terribly embarrassing. In the ancient world, it would be incalculably more so, because the family itself threw the reception. If they ran out of supplies, especially with days to go during the reception, if they had to serve only water, it would have been an embarrassment that likely would never have been forgotten.

Mary was at the wedding and noticed the impending catastrophe. Before the wine steward caught on to the predicament, before the couple did, before even the mother of the bride had noticed, Mary saw the problem. The reason why there was no wine left might have been at least partially because people were drinking so much that they just weren’t paying attention. Mary’s love made her notice the details that others were missing. To remedy the problem, she went to her Son. She didn’t twist His arm. She didn’t try to persuade Him that,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Second Sunday of Ordinary Time, C, Vigil

January 15, 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 Jesus wants to have with us in this Sunday’s Gospel, when we will participate liturgically in the most famous wedding of all time, because of who was on the guest list. We meditate on the Wedding Feast of Cana every Thursday as we pray the second Luminous Mystery of the Holy Rosary. Often we pray about what it reveals about the sacrament of marriage and how Jesus takes the “water” of the institution of marriage from the beginning with Adam and Eve and raises it to the “wine” of a sacramental encounter with him: how Christ brings the marriage between a Christian man and woman into the marriage between Christ and the Church in fulfillment of what Isaiah prophesied with words we ponder every Christmas: “As a young man marries a virgin, your Builder shall marry you, and as a Bridegroom rejoices in his bride, so shall your God rejoice in you.” The wedding feast of Cana is an implicit revelation not merely of Jesus’ miraculous power, but of his spousal love, the nuptial intention of his incarnation, even though none, except Mary, would have caught it at the time.

* But I’d like to examine the scene under three different angles: what we learn about Mary’s intercession, what we learn about the way Jesus generously exercises his merciful power, and what we learn about the servants’ zealous cooperation. Each of these has much to say about Christian faith and life.

* Let’s begin with what the scene reveals about the Blessed Mother. Ancient Jewish wedding celebrations, like the one taking place in Cana, would last eight straight days. There were three sumptuous meals a day. Wine was served throughout the octave. It was the generally the happiest celebration in the life of Jews, which is why Jesus often returned to the image of a wedding banquet to describe the joys of heaven. Rather than leaving on a honeymoon, the couple would remain, reigning so to speak as king and queen over the celebrations. We can only imagine how embarrassing it would be today if, at a wedding reception, the banquet hall ran out of food or beverages early in the celebration. Even though most people would sympathize with the couple and blame the banquet facility, it would still be terribly embarrassing for the family. In the ancient world, it would have been incalculably more so, because the family itself threw the reception. If they ran out of supplies, especially with days to go during the reception, if they had to serve only water, it would have been an embarrassment that likely would never have been forgotten.

* Mary was at the wedding and noticed the impending catastrophe. Before the wine steward caught on to the predicament, before the couple did, before even the mother of the bride had noticed, Mary saw the problem. The reason why there was no wine left was probably because the others were drinking so much that they just weren’t paying attention. Mary’s love made her notice the details that others were missing. To remedy the problem, she went to her Son. She didn’t twist His arm. She didn’t try to persuade Him that, even though it wasn’t His “hour” for working public miracles (because that would inexorably precipitate the Cross), He should act. She simply said, “They have no wine!,” confident that her Son, even though he didn’t think the timing was app...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Friday of the First Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

January 14, 2022

1 Sam 8:4-7.10-22, Ps 89, Mk 2:1-12

 

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

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The following points were attempted in today’s homily: 

* Throughout this first week of Ordinary Time, we have been focusing on the beginnings of Jesus’ public ministry, his teaching, preaching the reality of the kingdom, his healing, his exorcising, his praying. Pope Francis repeatedly says that everything Jesus did — preaching, teaching healing — was an expression of his fundamental plan of mercy, the reconciliation of the human race with God. Today in the Gospel we get to the summit of that plan. When a paralyzed man was delicately and dangerously lifted onto a roof and lowered into his midst in a home where Jesus was teaching, the first thing Jesus did was to heal his sins. The physical healing, which was important but less important than that, came later.

* There are several lessons we can draw from this scene. First, we see how important the forgiveness of sins is to Jesus. It’s his priority. Heaven rejoices more for one repentant sinner than for 99 who didn’t need to repent, as Jesus would say later. The second lesson is the importance of bringing friends to Jesus so that he can give them his merciful love like the friends of the paralytic brought him to Jesus. The third lesson is about letting others carry us to Jesus in his mercy if we’re not going. We can think of the Blessed Mother praying for us, the saints praying for us, the contemplatives across the world praying for us.

* What are the sins that paralyze us most? We can learn the answer from today’s first reading: it’s a general desire not to allow God to reign in our life. It’s not just disobedience, but not wanting God to reign. It’s not really wanting to be like God, to live in his image. We see both in the attitude of the Israelites in today’s first reading who were asking for a king so that they could be like “other nations.” Samuel had ruled them as judge for many years, not only guiding them according to God’s wisdom and indications but helping them to triumph in battle against the Philistines. As he aged, he placed his two sons Joel and Abijah as judges ruling over them from Beersheba, but, as the sacred author tells us, they “did not follow his example, but looked to their own gain, accepting bribes and perverting justice.” So they asked Samuel they said to him, “Now that you are old, and your sons do not follow your example, appoint a king over us, as other nations have, to judge us.” Through Samuel, God told them in no uncertain terms what the cost would be, that kings would take their sons and daughters, their best fields, vineyards, olive groves, their male and female servants, their best animals, their flocks and eventually their liberty, but their unholy stubborn desire to be like other nations who did not follow the Lord blinded them. This wasn’t the first time such a request was made. Jotham had warned the people of Shechem during the time of the Judges (Judges 9) that if they allowed Abimelech to be their king, they were choosing a buckthorn, who would devour them. But they consented anyway. It’s unbelievable sometimes how we fail to convert even when we see the negative consequences of our choices, whether retrospectively or in this case, by sage and inspired advice, ahead of time. Our desire to be like others can be stronger than our desire to be like God. This temptation is one of the great tricks of the evil one and we fall for it over and again. (It’s important to note that God doesn’t condemn civil leaders...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Sacred Heart Chapel of the Sisters of LIfe, Manhattan

Thursday of the First Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Hilary of Poitiers, Bishop and Doctor

January 13, 2022

1 Sam 4:1-11, Ps 44, Mk 1:40-45

 

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: 

* One of the great dangers in living the faith is the temptation to manipulate God for our own ends. This temptation obviously can affect those with no or very little faith: “If you really exist, then show it by working this miracle I ask of you.” But it can also affect those who have faith, who are very familiar with God. Egocentrism can invade our relationship and rather than truly worshipping God, seeking his will, his kingdom, his glory — and seeking them as our great priorities — we seek our own will, kingdom and glory, and seek God’s really only to the extent that it doesn’t get in the way of our own or seemingly advances our own. It’s important for us always to examine the rectitude of our intention when it comes to God and, as a litmus test, to examine whether we’re actually seeking his will in action with a pure heart. Today’s readings help us to examine this reality in depth.

* In today’s first reading, the Israelites, who were not being faithful to God, were fighting against the Philistines. The Israelites had suffered a defeat but then immediately said, “Let us fetch the ark of the Lord from Shiloh, that it may go into battle among us and save us from the grasp of our enemies.” They wanted to use the Ark of Covenant as a magical object to bring them earthly victory. They essentially wanted to use God for their ends, rather than stopping with reverence to ask what were God’s ends. And when they came to the Temple to “fetch” the Ark, Phinehas and Hophni, the two sons of Eli, just let them take it. They were supposed to be guardians of the Ark, but we know that their presence in the Temple of Shiloh, their proximity to this great reminder and instantiation of God’s saving power in the history of the people of Israel, hadn’t transformed them for the better. They were corrupt: sexually abusing women who had come to adore at the temple and seeking to profit financially from people’s desire to serve God. And so priests and people — in short, almost everyone — were just trying to use God for their own purposes rather than seeking and doing his will. God allowed the Philistines to triumph, we can say, at his own expense, out of a just mercy meant to bring the Israelites to conversion, rather than allow them to persevere in such manipulation. Since the Israelites had brought the Ark into battle, “God” himself was being defeated as 30,000 Israelites were slain and the ark was stolen. But just like on Good Friday, God permitted it in order ultimately to convert and save.

* In the Responsorial Psalm we see the first step of their Redemption, but the prayer still oozes with spiritual subjectivism, with a focus on themselves rather than God. Rather than being crestfallen at how they have dishonored God and sullied his name among the peoples, they were concerned principally about their own: “Now you have cast us off and put us in disgrace, and you go not forth with our armies. You have let us be driven back by our foes; those who hated us plundered us at will. You made us the reproach of our neighbors, the mockery and the scorn of those around us. You made us a byword among the nations, a laughingstock among the peoples. Why do you hide your face, forgetting our woe and our oppression?” They were trying to guilt trip God to act, when it was their own sins that had divided them from the Lord.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Wednesday of the First Week of Ordinary Time, Year II

Memorial of St. Marguerite Bourgeoys

January 12, 2022

1 Sam 3:1-10.19-20, Ps 40, Mk 1:29-39

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.12.22_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in today’s homily: 

* At the beginning of Ordinary Time, the Church has us ponder the beginning of St. Mark’s Gospel that helps us learn how to live in the kingdom of God in every time. It begins with the encounter of Jesus and how he calls us to repent, believe, follow him and fish for others to follow him. It helps us to learn how we should be astonished and amazed by the encounter with Jesus, to hang on his words, and to obey them. Today we continue to enter into the beginnings of the public ministry of Jesus and get a glimpse at an ordinary day in his life and how he was filling his full days preaching, healing, praying and sharing himself with others. The way Jesus behaved in Capernaum shows his perennial priorities.

* Jesus began this day in the Gospel by preaching for a long time in the synagogue on the Sabbath, which must have been somewhat exhausting all-day work since people would return home normally only at sunset. Then he went to Simon’s house where he healed his mother-in-law. Soon after that, the whole town was at the door asking for miracles, and Jesus, per his custom, would work with every sick person one-on-one, bringing people into a personal relationship with him so that he could give them an even greater gift, salvation through faith. After that, well before dawn in the next day, he went out to pray. Finally, when the apostles found him and said that everyone was looking for him, rather than rejoice in what might be called “success,” he mentioned that they needed to be on their way, because he wanted to preach the Gospel in surrounding towns as well. “For this reason I was sent,” he said. Such was his passion to spread the faith that he wasn’t just looking for a few to receive him, but for all. He carried out four activities: preaching, healing, praying and zealously bringing the truth to others. These show what he wants to do for us and also how he wants to transform us to be his instruments in doing this for others.

* I’d like to ponder more extensively Jesus’ prayer in the middle of the night. Even though he was exhausted, he still went out to pray. That was how much he desired that communion with the Father. There’s something particularly special about prayer at night, prayer, we can say, that triumphs over the body’s desire for sleep, because it really tests and strengthens the will to choose God over one’s appetites. Jesus was regularly praying at night not only because he was mobbed during the day but because that’s a time in which the distractions of each day are fewer and we can sense the light of God shining in the midst of the nocturnal darkness. This is likewise one of the reasons why adorers who take the “graveyard shift” speak about how special it is. It’s one of the reasons why monks and nuns for centuries in cloisters have arisen to pray matins at about 3 am. There’s something special about prioritizing God in the middle of night, about getting up before dawn to express our desire for God before the sun that symbolizes God rises. Praying at night is not only praying at a time with fewer distractions but often it’s done when everyone else is sleeping, when no one else can notice. These two lessons — prioritizing the Lord in prayer and praying to him, not for the attention of others — are meant to influence our prayer at all times. In In Sinu Iesu, Jesus intimates in prayer to the priest author,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Tuesday of the First Week in Ordinary Time, Year II

January 11, 2022

1 Sam 1:9-20, 1 Sam 2:1-8, Mk 1:21-28

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.11.22_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Yesterday, on the first day after the end of the Christmas season, we received some of the basic coordinates for the Christian life in ordinary time, to encounter Jesus and respond to his summons to repent, believe in him, follow him individually and in communion with others, and fish for others to follow him. Today we are able to make more profound that encounter and the great gift God gives us to help us convert, grow in faith as his disciples, follow him with zeal and bring others to him. It’s God’s holy word. On Christmas Day, the Church has us ponder St. John’s prologue as we remember how “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was before God and the Word was God” and how the “Word became flesh and dwelled among us.” To call Jesus Emmanuel, God-with-us, is to remember that the Word-is-with-us. God meets us in his Word. On January 23, the Third Sunday of Ordinary Time each year, we will mark the Sunday of the Word of God, which Pope Francis established in 2019 in order to “enable the Church to experience anew how the risen Lord opens up for us the treasury of his word” and to enable “us to proclaim its unfathomable riches before the world.” Today’s Gospel, at the beginning of Ordinary Time, helps us to do just that, to ponder our relationship with God’s Word. Very often we can think that when we approach Sacred Scripture, our reverence should be to a “thing,” to this compilation of texts in which, through the various sacred authors, God’s holy words have been transmitted to us. But there’s a greater and more important way. Through Sacred Scripture God-with-us, Emmanuel, continues to speak to us. And as we celebrated on Sunday with the feast of the Lord’s Baptism, he has opened our ears in our own Baptism to receive his Word and our tongues to proclaim our faith to his praise and glory, as the Ephphatha blessing in the Baptismal rite prays.

* Jesus entered the synagogue and taught. All those who listened to him, St. Mark tells us, were “astounded at his teaching, for he taught with authority and not like the scribes.” He then showed the tremendous power of his authoritative words by silencing and casting a demon out of a man. That amazed the crowd even further. They asked, “What is this? A new teaching — with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” The same Jesus who entered the Capernaum synagogue enters this sanctuary today. After he speaks “live” in the Gospel as it is proclaimed, he who created the heavens and the earth with his word, who called fishermen and tax collectors to follow him so powerfully that they immediately got up and did so, will do something far more amazing than cast out a devil or silence a storm at sea. He will change bread and wine into his body and blood and cast himself into believers. If we recognize what is really going on, if we awaken to the power of his words, we will be far more amazed than Jesus’ contemporaries two millennia ago.

* Jesus teaches unlike any other teacher. His contemporaries said he “taught with authority, unlike the scribes.” The scribes always used to cite the Torah or the Prophets or Jewish tradition, to base their teachings on the authority of the word of God: e.g., “There’s a verse that says…” “Moses taught…” and so on. They did this, of course, because, as we see clearly in the chronicle of Sacred Scri...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Monday of the First Week of Ordinary Time, Year II

January 10, 2022

1 Sam 1:1-8, Ps 116: Mk 1:14-20

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.10.22_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* Today as we begin Ordinary Time in the Church, which will continue through Ash Wednesday on March 2, Jesus gives us the coordinates with which we should be living ordinarily in this and every time. It’s the words and actions with which he began his public ministry. Yesterday we celebrated the Feast of his Baptism, which marked the end of the Christmas season, in which we pondered anew the reality that God had come into our world as a little baby and according to his humanity grew, learned, worked and experienced all aspects of human life except sin. After the revelation of God the Father and God the Holy Spirit in his Baptism, we know that the Holy Spirit led him into the desert for 40 days. Once he left, he began to preach as we hear today. He started by describing that the long wait is over, that we had entered the time of the fulfillment of all man’s hopes and all the Messianic predictions of the prophets because “the kingdom of God is at hand” with the coming of the King, with the advent of God-in-the-flesh. Then this Word who summarizes in himself all God wants to say gives us four verbs, four commands, four things we need to do: repent, believe, follow him, and fish. Today we consider those imperatives and begin ordinary time by seeking to take each of them more seriously than we have until now.

* The first word is “repent.” In Greek, this word is metanoete, which means a total revolution of our mind, of the way we look at things. It’s a call to conversion, to no longer think as everyone else thinks, to no longer do as everyone else does, but to put on the mind of God, to align our heart and our actions to him. It means to recognize we’re not yet living enough as the image and likeness of God, we’re not yet “turning with” Jesus (con-verting) in all aspects and we need to change. In today’s first reading, we see that it’s not enough just to be around the things of the Lord, but to be in his kingdom externally but not interiorly. Penninah, the fertile wife of Elkanah, used to mock Hannah because she was sterile. She used to mock her particularly when Elkanah’s whole family would go up to pray and sacrifice to God at the Temple in Shiloh, which shows that God’s house, rather than bringing out the best in people can bring out the worst when one isn’t really centered on pleasing God. As we’ll hear this week, God in his mercy had a much bigger plan in mind for Hannah, who will become the mother of the great prophet Samuel. Jesus would say in the Sermon on the Mount that in his kingdom those who weep like Hannah will be consoled, and Hannah will be consoled far more than she would have ever dreamed, not just becoming a mom but the mother of one of God’s most famous servants. Not only did Penninah need a conversion, however, but Hannah also needed to have a revolution of mind in terms of the way she approached this situation, she needed to trust in God and act on that trust. Ordinary Time is a time in which we repeatedly repent, in which we continuously convert, in which we incessantly seek to change to become more and more like the Lord who calls us to that penance and renewal. We have to overcome the spiritual stubbornness that makes us hardened soil to the Lord. The Lord who calls us to this metanoia will give us all the help he knows we need to achieve it, but we have to correspond.

* The second word is “believe.” To believe means not just to accept something as true,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx

Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, Year C

January 9, 2022

Is 40:1-5.9-11, Ps 104, Tit 2:11-14;3:4-7, Lk 3:15-16.21-22

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.9.22_Homily_1.mp3

 

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* Today’s 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 effectuate. We’ve been singing in Hark! The Herald Angels Sing since 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 today’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.

* 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. When Jesus was baptized, three things happened, as we see in today’s Gospel. 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 well-pleased, He is just making explicit what has always been and will always be within the Blessed Trinity. Similarly when the Holy Spirit comes down from the Father in heaven upon the Son whose assumed humanity was wet in the Jordan, it is just a manifestation of the love between Father and Son whom the Holy Spirit has been since before the foundation of the world.

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

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.9.22_EF_Homily_1.mp3

 

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: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/1.8.22_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 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...