Catholic Preaching

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Wednesday of the Third Week of Advent

December 15, 2021

Is 45:6-8.18.21-25, Ps 85, Lk 7:18-23

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.15.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* As we draw closer to the celebration of Christmas, Isaiah summarizes for us the type of longing for God we’re supposed to have in his words from today’s first reading that were repeated in our Responsorial Psalm: “Let the clouds rain down the Just One and the earth bring forth the Savior.” Those words comprise the refrain of perhaps the most famous Latin Advent chant of all time outside of the original version of “O Come, O Come Emmanuel.” It’s Rorate Caeli Desuper et Nubes Pluant Iustum. We turn to God and beg him to rain down his Son, the Just One, whose mission was to help make us just and holy.

* God reminds us through Isaiah today that he didn’t establish the earth for it to be a “waste,” or just to be inhabited, but to be “lived in.” Jesus came to restore that original plan, being born, living, dying and rising so that we might have life and have it to the full. But for this to occur, the rain of God’s grace coming from above must meet good soil thirsty for God. That’s what Isaiah points to as the response to the rain from above: “Let the earth open and salvation bud forth; let justice also spring up!” That’s what today’s Psalm is also about, as we pray, “I will hear what God proclaims… for he proclaims peace to his people. Near indeed is his salvation to those who fear him.” After God the Father rains down the Just One and the earth brings forth the Savior from the womb of the Virgin, we proclaim what’s God’s plans for us: “Justice shall walk before him and salvation along the way of his steps.” In other words, Jesus the Just one will walk before us bidding us to follow him along the path of holiness, and if we journey along those steps he will guide us all the way to eternal salvation. What consoling words these are! What a consoling reality God wants them to become. But we have to ask humbly whether we have that thirsty soil for God to rain down his Son into our lives, whether we’re ready to receive God’s grace and allow salvation to spring up from God’s work within us.

* That’s why today’s Gospel is so important. The Church puts before us once again the figure of St. John the Baptist so that we might examine honestly whether we have been responding as we should this Advent to God the Father’s holy preparation of our soil to receive his Son the Just One. John the Baptist sends the men and women who were clinging to him to Jesus with the question, “Are you the one who is to come or should we look for another?” He wanted his disciples then and all of us now to get off the fence and, if we really believe Jesus is the One, to act like it. If Jesus really is the one, if he really is the long-awaited Messiah and Son of God, then the logical result is to put Jesus absolutely front and center, first and supreme in life. If he really is the One, then it’s time for us to follow him all the way, to live in his kingdom, to rejoice in his presence, and to share that great news with others. If Jesus really is that Just One poured down from heaven, then we shouldn’t be looking for anyone or anything else, we shouldn’t be hedging our bets on the way we live, but go all in. Faith, after all, is not just an intellectual act of assent saying we believe something is true, but it’s an entrustment of our whole being to God and a staking of our entire life on what God has revealed.

* That’s why each Advent, the Church has us focus on St.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Tuesday of the Second Week of Advent

December 14, 2021

Memorial of St. John of the Cross, Priest and Doctor of the Church

Zeph 3:1-2.9-13, Ps 34, Mt 21:28-32

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.14.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* The essential dynamism of Advent is that Christ is coming, we need to make straight the paths to go out to meet him, and, having encountered him, to be transformed in him so deeply that we begin to journey more closely with him henceforth. The Lord comes with his mercy and we go out to meet him with our conversion in such a way that we will “turn with” him who is God-with-us. Today’s readings spur us to make that necessary conversion, to lower the mountains of our pride and fill up the valleys of anything spiritual shallowness that shirks from seeking to become holy like God is holy.

* In the Gospel, Jesus gives a parable of two sons. The first refuses to do the father’s will but eventually repents and does, whereas the second merely gives lip service, saying he’ll do it but not following through.  This is an illustration of what Jesus had said elsewhere, that it’s not enough for us to say “Lord, Lord,” but we need to “do the will of [his] Father in heaven.” Jesus illustrates the choice we must make by referring to St. John the Baptist. He came preaching conversion, a message that the prostitutes and tax collectors were acting upon but many of the scribes and elders were not. Similarly, it’s important for us to ask ourselves whether we’ve acted on John’s call to conversion. All of Advent, heeding the words of St. John the Baptist, is meant to bring us to change our behavior, not just to say “Amen!” to the Lord but to make our life an illustration of the prayer “Thy will be done!” The real model of this, of course, is Mary, who not only said “Let it be done to me according to your word,” but then let her entire life develop in accordance with that word. Regardless, today’s parable could be called the parable of a second chance: that after an initial refusal, or many failures to do what God was wanting, God has given us this Advent in order to go out and work in the vineyard, building his kingdom, bringing others to the same type of conversion in correspondence to grace as we have done.

* In the first reading, we see not only the need for conversion but the help and hope God gives us. God through Zephaniah pronounces woe on the “rebellious,” “polluted” and “tyrannical” city that “hears no voice,” “accepts no correction” “has not trusted in the Lord” and “has not drawn near to her God.” These are four different descriptions of sin. Sin is a failure to listen to God’s voice and obey it, as Pope Benedict powerfully described in Verbum Domini. When we sin, we often become too proud to receive fraternal correction even for our own good. We fail to trust in God and in his promises. And we marginalize him or withdraw from him. This Advent we’re called to do the opposite: to listen, to seek correction from God and others, to trust ever more in the Lord and draw near to him. Zephaniah describes that if we seek to do this, God will meet us with his mercy. He will “change and purify the lips of the peoples,” Zephaniah says, so that “they may all call upon the name of the Lord,” “serve him with one accord” and “bring offerings” to him. God promises, he says, to create a “remnant” that will be “humble and lowly,” who will “take refuge in the name of the Lord,” who “shall do no wrong and speak no lies,” who shall not speak with deceitful tongues but “pasture and couch their flocks.” Essentially this humble,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan

Monday of the Third Week of Advent

Memorial of St. Lucy, Virgin and Martyr

December 13, 2021

Num 24:2-7.15-17, Ps 25, Mt 21:23-27

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.13.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

* We can’t help but notice a huge contrast today between the first reading and the Gospel. In the Book of Numbers, we see this mysterious figure called Balaam, who was a pagan diviner whom the Moabite King Balac bribed to pronounce a curse over Israel. When Balaam tried to curse Israel on four separate occasions, however, he couldn’t. Instead he pronounced a blessing — and the greatest blessing of all, foretelling the coming of Jesus 1,300 year later: “I see him, though not now; I behold him, though not near: a star shall advance from Jacob and a [shepherd’s] staff shall rise from Israel.” Even though Balaam certainly didn’t start in the right place, he couldn’t help but acknowledge and announce the truth and the light that God revealed to him.

* In the Gospel we see something totally different. The chief priests and elders of the people, who had started with God’s revelation, who had prayed since their youth the words of today’s Psalm, “Teach me your ways, O Lord!,” ended up rejecting God’s ways, spurning Jesus’ fulfillment of all the Old Testament Messianic prophecies as well as the prophetic announcement of John the Baptist. They were objectively no longer interested in the truth or hungry to learn and follow God’s paths, because they thought they already had all the answers they needed. They thought that they were firmly on the path. They were interested only in authority, and, frankly, not God’s authority but their own. They asked Jesus, “By whose authority are you doing these things?,” because they knew Jesus didn’t have their authority, and almost certainly, they thought, hadn’t received a mission from anyone else who could give it in categories they would acknowledge. The fact that God had given him authority — or even more, that he was God and was speaking on his own authority — hadn’t even crossed their mind because it was a category they did not want to acknowledge even existed. Jesus knew this and for that reason asked a question not to trip them up but to bring them conversion, seeking to have them acknowledge God’s authority. That’s why he asked, “Where was John’s baptism from? Was it of heavenly or of human origin?” We can see just how central John the Baptist’s mission is to Jesus that that would be the retort he would use to question the judgment of those who were questioning his authority. Since John had obviously not received their authority, the question was designed to open them up to the fact that God, as the Source of all authority, could have sent John. But they didn’t respond with a desire for the truth of things, just with a political calculation: “If we say, ‘Of heavenly origin,’ he will say to us, ‘Then why did you not believe him?’ But if we say, ‘Of human origin,’ we fear the crowd, for they all regard John as a prophet.’ So they said to Jesus in reply, ‘We do not know.’” Even though they supposedly “didn’t know” and didn’t really care enough to know, they were not agnostic in their approach to Jesus, but in thorough and homicidal opposition. They did not treat John as a prophet. They didn’t heed John’s message. They didn’t make straight the paths. And they didn’t heed John’s indication of Jesus as the Lamb of God who had come into the world to fulfill all the prophecies of the sacrificial lambs in the temple.

* We see in the Psalm the attitude each of us should have toward God’s word announced to u...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Convent of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx, NY

Third Sunday of Advent, Year C

December 12, 2021

Zeph 3:14-18, Is 12:2-6, Phil 4:4-7, Lk 3:10-18

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.12.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following text guided today’s homily: 

* For the second Sunday 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 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 today’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. We are called to be generous in sharing what we possess 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 our comforts, and with courage ask not John, but God in prayer, or even his earthly emissaries, “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, his empty promises and evil works, and lives consciously by faith in God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in communion with the holy, Catholic Church, forgiven by sin, risen with Christ, seeking eternal life. Jesus would come with fire, John indicates, to clear his threshing floor of chaff so that we might be free to live this new, fully Christian, way of life.

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Saint Agnes Church, New York, NY

Third Sunday of Advent, Extraordinary Form

December 12, 2021

Phil 4:4-7, Jn 1:19-28

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.12.21_EF_Homily_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* Like we do each Advent, today we go out to meet Saint John the Baptist at the Jordan River. There the one who identifies himself as voice of one crying out in the desert 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 in the middle of nowhere at Bethany across the Jordan, some out of curiosity to see this man dressed in camel hair eating wild locusts and honey, 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.

* We go out to meet him not out of curiosity, or assessment, or suspicion, but out of spiritual need, to receive his help in bringing us to converstion. To convert means more than to eliminate a bad habit. The Greek word for conversion is metanoete, which means to rethink and question one’s whole way of living, judging it not according to polls and the lives of celebrities but seeing our whole life through the eyes of God and making the love of God and others the measure and the criteria of our life. To convert means resolving to live the way Jesus Christ lived and taught us to live. It ultimately means a death and resurrection in which we die to the old Adam and begin to live a new life with Christ by means of the forgiveness of sins gratuitously bestowed in the Sacraments of Baptism and Penance.

* One of the characteristics of that new life being offered, of the truly Christian life with Jesus, is joy. This Sunday the Church celebrates Gaudete Sunday, taken from Saint Paul’s command to the Philippians which we hear in the second reading, “Gaudete semper in Domino,” “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say rejoice.” Elsewhere he said the same thing to the Christians in Thessalonika: “This is God’s will for you: rejoice always!” (1 Thess 5:16). Our vocation, our fundamental Christian mission, is to rejoice. To highlight the importance of this calling, the priest uses rose vestments and we light a rose rather than a purple candle on the Advent wreath according to medieval color schemes for joy. A Christian who is not joyful is not just an oxymoron but a false prophet. If we’re not joyful, we imply that the “good news” is a lie. On the other hand, if we are really filled with joy, the world will eventually bust down the doors of our churches to get in, because our family, our friends, our neighbors, are made for joy, don’t have it, and consciously or unconsciously are seeking it in the midst of short-lived technological pleasures that can never deliver it. If they see it in us, they’ll hunger to know why, and they’ll follow us to the source of our joy, who is Christ Jesus. One of the biggest challenges facing the Church, Pope Francis has been saying, is that many Christians do not live the faith we joy. That’s why in 2013 he wrote a beautiful exhortation called the Joy of the Gospel, since he said that joy “fills the hearts and lives of all who encounter Jesus, who accept his offer of salvation [and] are set free from sin, sorrow, inner emptiness and loneliness.” But we must really encounter Jesus at the depth at which he seeks to meet us.

* One of the problems for many of us is that we relate to Jesus mainly as a moral teacher rather ...

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Our Lady of Bethesda Retreat Center, Bethesda, MD

Third Sunday of Advent, Year C

Memorial Mass for Heidi Seubert

December 11, 2021

Zeph 3:14-18, Is 12:2-6, Phil 4:4-7, Lk 3:10-18

 

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

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.11.21_Heidi_Seubert_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* “Rejoice in the Lord always. I shall say it again: rejoice!” Those words are particularly challenging as we come together tonight still in shock at the sudden death of our beloved sister Heidi. It’s easy to rejoice on the day babies are born and baptized, children receive Jesus in Holy Communion for the first time, days of consecrations, professions, ordinations, marriages and similar occasions. But St. Paul and the Church emphasize that inconvenient adverb “always.”

* The Word of God we have just pondered gives us several grounds for joy, even now:

* The first reason we’re able to do so is because God is with us. “The Lord is near” and never leaves. The Lord’s presence, his accompaniment, is the first reason for joy.

* The second reason we rejoice always is because of the meaning and consequences of our baptism. In today’s Gospel, St. John the Baptist foretells how different the baptism Jesus would inaugurate would be from what John himself was doing. “I am baptizing you with water, but one mightier than I is coming. … He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” Christ’s baptism would accomplish what John’s watery rite only symbolized, the forgiveness of sins, spiritual adoption in Christ Jesus when God the Father pronounces us his beloved son or daughter in whom he is well-pleased, in which the Holy Spirit comes down upon us to make us a temple of God’s presence and member of Christ’s body the Church, who, from Mary on down to the most recently baptized, prays for us always and at the hour of death. It was on the day of Heidi’s baptism, soon after her birth on All Saints Day, that Heidi entered into Christ’s death and resurrection, was dressed in a white garment for the eternal wedding banquet and had the baptismal flame of faith lit by the Paschal Candle, as she took that flame and sought to keep it burning brightly, even in the midst of darkness, for Christ the Bridegroom’s return.

* The third motive is because God hears our prayers. St. Paul tells us, “Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition, make your requests known to God.” Tonight we have come to pray with loving fervor and confidence for Heidi. And St. Paul tells us that this capacity and awesome privilege allows us to be filled “with the peace of God that surpasses all understanding,” a peace that preserves our “hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”

* The fourth reason for joy is because God loves us with an unbreakably faithful spousal love. Zephaniah tells us, “He will renew you in his love,” and sings joyfully for us like a new bridegroom over his bride. Isaiah would tell us that even if a loving mom could somehow forget her child, God could never forget us (Is 49.15). St. Paul would later say that nothing in all of creation, including death, can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom 8:38-39). The fact that we are loved, with an everlasting love, a love that is willing to carry a cross to Calvary and die to forgive us of everything, is the indestructible rock of Christian joy.

* The fifth reason for joy given by tonight’s readings is because the God who is with us, the God whose life is given us in baptism, the God to whom we turn in prayer, the God who is committed to us with an everlasting nuptial love, is a saving God. Zephaniah tells us in the first reading,

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Church of the Holy Family, Manhattan

Leonine Forum Advent Day of Recollection

December 11, 2021

 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.11.21_Joy_1.mp3

 

Fr. Roger J. Landry

Church of the Holy Family, Manhattan

Leonine Forum Advent Day of Recollection

December 11, 2021

 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.11.21_Isaiah_and_John_the_Baptist_1.mp3

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: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.11.21_Homily_1.mp3

 

 

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,